By Brian Dunlap
Poet and L.Á. native Amanda Gorman will be President Elect Joe Biden’s Inaugural poet Wednesday. She made history by being named the first ever Youth Poet Laureate of Los Ángeles, then became the first-ever Youth Poet Laureate of the United States.
Continue reading “L.Á. Native To Be Presidential Inaugural Poet”
2020 has been one shit show of a year. Especially for Los Ángeles. Kobe died in January. The pandemic hit Los Ángeles County harder than anywhere else in California. The election. However, with businesses shut down and public gatherings banned, the city’s literary community quickly adapted and created community and continued to amplify voices virtually. At the same time writers continued to publish powerful literature.
Continue reading “Los Ángeles Writers Publish in 2020”
After a a year like no other which saw the Los Ángeles literary community move online, 2020 has come to an end. This holiday week between Christmas and New Years, the literary community takes a vacation. Events run to barely a trickle. As such, there will be no list of weekly events this week. Next week the list of event will return with the new year.
Continue reading “No List of Weekly Events”
by Mike SonksenFROM: L.A. Taco If COVID-19 was good for anything, it’s for reading. When the March rain and quarantine came, I got the chance to read all the books I wanted. This book list centers around Los Angeles and overlaps with creative nonfiction, poetry, urbanism, California history, music, and cultural studies. Most of these books came out in 2020, but a few came out … Continue reading THE 2020 L.A. TACO BOOK GUIDE: 32 L.A.-CENTERED BOOKS TO READ, GIFT, AND GET INSPIRED ON
By Mary McNamara
FROM: Los Angeles Times
Once upon a time, in the hills above Los Angeles, where owls hoot, bear cubs frolic and deer trip daintily down the street, there lived a family with two little girls, named Jessica and Amelia, who loved to read.
Continue reading “America’s Oldest Children’s Bookstore is Struggling in the Pandemic. But There’s Hope”
By PICO IYER
FROM: The L.A. Times
Los Angeles is the city without a heart, we used to hear when I was growing up in England, few of us having come within 5,000 miles of California. Seventy-eight school districts in search of a center, a desert car culture in which every last soul is locked inside her own four doors, a teenage wasteland: The clichés came streaming in on us as we stood in the rain at bus stops in chilly Oxford, on our way to another unheated basement.
Continue reading “How Pico Iyer found L.A.’s Beating Heart at the L.A. Times Festival of Books”
By Brian Dunlap
It’s been five years since “Dryland: A Literary Journal Born in South Central Los Angeles,” published its first issue. Since Founding Editor-in-Chief, Viva Padilla, set out to publish “the best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction of the Los Angeles literary underground, and to prioritizing Black and POC artists, writers, and poets,” as it states on the journal’s website.
Continue reading “Dryland Expands Its Mission”
By J.T. The L.A. Storyteller
FROM: Medium
To come to terms with one’s status as a survivor is to relive the moments that nearly ended one’s life. To collect those moments and offer them to the world is to relieve their weight on one’s mind so new possibilities in one’s life may take shape. Lisbeth Coiman, an Afro-Venezuelan poet and writer, has embarked on this process in a particularly relevant reading journey for working-class people in cities like Los Angeles, especially for migrants from Latin America.
In Wanda Coleman’s National Book Award Winning poetry, she code switches in over 1,000 poems, as she wrote about the real Los Ángeles, becoming the UNofficial Poet Laureate of Los Áangeles. Continue reading Literary History: American Sonnets: PolyVocality and Code Switching With Wanda Coleman and Terrance Hayes
An interview with South Central poet and Professor bridgette bianca about what inspires her and what led her to the life of a poet and professor. Continue reading Meet Bridgette Bianca | Poet & Professor
Los Angeles Literature 