Another busy week in the Los Ángeles Literary community featuring both in-person and virtual events. Readings, workshops, open mics, book clubs, etc. Local Writers reading this week are: Linda Ravenswood, Nicelle Davis, Christian Hanz Lozada, Tommy Domino, Luivette Resto, Namrata Poddar, Melissa Chadburn, Noel Alumit and Pete Hsu. Continue reading Los Angeles Literature Events: 05/16/22 – 05/22/22
NOTE: There Are Both Online and Virtual Events Listed Here
Book Club Bonanza: Let’s Celebrate Asian Pacific Voices via Central Library, LAPL – Online Teen Event
Teens may join our librarians online as they share books for teens that celebrate Asian Pacific voices in YA literature and celebrate and join the Big Read.
The Best We Could Do, by author Thi Bui, is an illustrated graphic noel portraying one family’s poignant journey from war-torn Vietnam to America and will resonate with all who hope for a better future while longing for a simpler past.
The book club discussion itself will be held on Monday, May 23rd, but we will also host a read-alikes discussion on May 9th.
Watch past episodes on YouTube for more book recommendations.
NOTE: See site for RSVP & event details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 9th
Time: 4:30 pm
Address: LAPL – Online (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-bonanza-lets-celebrate-asian-pacific-voices
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 05/09/22 – 05/15/22”
NOTE: There Are Both Online and Virtual Events Listed Here
Teen Book Bites: Neurodiversity in Young Adult Fiction via Central Library, LAPL – Online Teen YouTube & FB Event
Teens may join our librarians online as they share books for teens that celebrate neurodiverse characters in YA literature.
Watch past episodes on YouTube for more book recommendations.
NOTE: See site for RSVP & event details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL – Online YouTube & FB event
Date: Monday the 25th
Time: 3 pm
Address: LAPL – Online (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/teen-book-bites-neurodiversity-ya
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 04/25/22 – 05/01/22”
NOTE: There Are Both Online and Virtual Events Listed Here
A Celebration of Chicano Culture with Dr. José Ángel Gutiérrez at El Camino College – In-Person Event
Dr. José Ángel Gutiérrez, a primary figure of the Chicano Movement and founder of the Raza Unida Party, will speak on identity and activism.
Dr. José Ángel Gutiérrez, the author of numerous books on Chicano culture, including The Eagle Has Eyes: The FBI Surveillance of Cesar E. Chavez of the United Farmworkers Union of America, 1965-1975 (2019), is a primary figure of the Chicano Movement and founder of the Raza Unida Party. He will speak on identity and activism in an afternoon presentation.
NOTE: See site for event details. Free and open to the public.
Where: El Camino College, Haag Recital Hall
Date: Monday the 18th
Time: 1:15 pm – 2:45 pm
Address: 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance, CA 90506
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 04/18/22 – 04/24/22”
NOTE: There Are Both Online and Virtual Events Listed Here
World Literature Book Club: Story Selections via Central Library, LAPL – Online Event
Join us for a spirited discussion of the world’s best short stories! All selections are from The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story (New York, 2021) ed. John Freeman. This month’s selections are:
April 11: Water Child by Edwidge Danticat (2000)
April 18: The American Embassy by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2003)
April 25: The Conductor by Aleksandar Hemon (2005)
NOTE: See site for event details and Zoom link.
Where: West Valley Regional Branch Library, LAPL – Online event
Date: Monday the 11th
Time: 10 am
Address: LAPL – Online Event
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/world-literature-book-club-32
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 04/11/22 – 04/17/22”
NOTE: There Are Both Online and Virtual Events
World Literature Book Club: Story Selections via Central Library, LAPL – Online Event
Join us for a spirited discussion of the world’s best short stories! All selections are from The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story (New York, 2021) ed. John Freeman. This week’s selection is:
March 21: A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri (1998)
NOTE: See site for event details and Zoom link.
Where: West Valley Regional Branch Library, LAPL – Online event
Date: Monday the 21st
Time: 10 am
Address: LAPL – Online Event
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/world-literature-book-club-28
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 03/21/22 – 03/27/22”
Many Events Are Online/Virtual DUE TO CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS
World Literature Book Club: Story Selections via Central Library, LAPL – Online Event
Join us for a spirited discussion of the world’s best short stories! All selections are from The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story (New York, 2021) ed. John Freeman. This month’s selections are:
March 14: The Hermit’s Story by Rick Bass (1998)
March 21: A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri (1998)
NOTE: See site for event details and Zoom link.
Where: West Valley Regional Branch Library, LAPL – Online event
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 10 am
Address: LAPL – Online Event
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/world-literature-book-club-28
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 03/14/22 – 03/20/22”
Many/Most Events Are Online/Virtual DUE TO CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS
Vroman’s Live Event: Local Author Day via Vroman’s – Online Event
Join Vroman’s Live Local Author Day, featuring three authors and their new work.
Barbara Mossberg is the author of the book, Here for the Present. In this exuberant record of the author engaging audiences from California to Finland, you will find poems, stories, memoir, humor, elegies, celebrations, travel narratives, rollicking speeches, nature rapture, literary tributes, cooking instructions, and love songs, among other riches. In her company, experience moments “when the Universe will reveal itself … as something generous and good, some whiff of passing grace.”
Felicia Taylor E. is the author of Southern Spiced: A Brown Girl’s Tale, which weaves stories through narrative poetry of the author’s memories of her childhood in the 1970’s South. She writes of stories of self-identity in an honest and often humorous way.
Robert Vincent is the author of the children’s book, From the Pocket of an Overcoat. It tells the true story of his son’s black cat named Max, who was rescued by a homeless woman in Dallas. A portion of books sales will be donated to organizations that promote animal rescue and adoption.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and event details.
Where: Vroman’s Live – Online event
Date: Monday the 28th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Vroman’s – Online Event (see site)
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 02/28/22 – 03/06/22”
Many/Most Events Are Online/Virtual DUE TO CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS
45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival via UC Riverside – Online Event
Join the 45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival of Events: February 12 and 14-18, 2022. This series of events is online, free and open to the public, (captioned & ASL translated), and you may register at site link or on any session time listed there.
DAY 2 of 6, EVENTS:
Session 1: 3 pm PST:
Edgar Gomez is the author of High Risk Homosexual: A Memoir, which follows a touching and often hilarious spiral-like path to embracing his gay, Latinx identity against a culture of machismo. This is a crackling, witty and poignant debut.
Daniel Olivas is the author most recently of How to Date a Flying Mexican, New and Collected Stories (University of Nevada Press, 2022). He is the author of ten books and editor of two anthologies, as well as plays produced for the stage and readings by Playwrights’ Arena, Circle X Theatre Company, and The Road Theatre Company. He has written for many publications, including the New York Times, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, LARB, La Bloga, BOMB, and others
Steve Erickson is the author of ten novels, and has written two books about American politics and popular culture, Leap Year and American Nomad. He has also written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Salon, and other publications and journals. He was editor and co-founder of Black Clock literary journal, and is now film/TV critic for Los Angeles magazine and a Distinguished Professor at UC Riverside.
Session 2: 5 pm PST:
Jamaica Heolimeleikatani Osorio is the author of Remembering Our Intimacies (University of Minnesota Press, 2021). She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule. Dr. Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli artist and scholar and an Assistant Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Elisa Washuta is the author most recently of White Magic (Tin House, 2022), long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Award, a collection of intertwined essays about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural aspects of her own life to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule. She is a member of the Cowlitz Indian tribe and an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.
Session 3: 6:30 pm PST
Anthony Cody is the author most recently of the 2021 American Book Award winning Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020). He has a lineage in both the Bracero Program and the Dust Bowl and his poetry has appeared widely. He has taught eco-poetry at Fresno State University, and read and led workshops across the country. He continues to run the Laureate Lab Studio with Juan Felipe Herrera at Fresno State, and serves as poetry editor for Noemi Press and a poetry editor for Omnidawn.
Carribean Fragoza is a passionate writer, journalist, and artist from South El Monte, and is the author most recently of the collection Eat the Mouth that Feeds You (City Lights), and is also co-editor of East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte. She is also founder and co-director of the South El Monte Art Posse (SEMAP), a multi-disciplinary arts collective.
Sesschu Foster taught composition and literature in East L.A. for over 20 years, and also taught at the University of Iowa, CalArts and UC Santa Cruz. His most recent books are City of the Future, poetry; World Ball Notebook, poetry; and Atomik Aztex, a novel. His has won numerous literary awards, including the Paterson Poetry Prize for City Terrace Field Manual. He is based in Alhambra, CA.
NOTE: See site for event link and details.
Where: UC Riverside Writers Week – Online Event
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 3 pm – 8 pm (Day 2 of 6)
Address: UC Riverside – Online (see site)
Website: https://writersweek.ucr.edu/schedule22
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 02/14/22 – 02/20/22”
Many/Most Events Are Online/Virtual DUE TO CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS
At Skylight: Daniel Alexander Jones & Omi Osun Joni L. Jones Present: Love Like Light & Particle and Wave at Skylight Bookstore – On-site Event
Daniel Alexander Jones in conversation with Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, will present the books: Love Like Light and Particle and Wave, respectively.
Daniel Alexander Jones’ Love Like Light: Plays and Performance Texts (53rd Street Press) collects the author’s texts of Bel Canto, Black Light, Blood: Shock: Boogie, clayangels, Duat, Phoenix Fabrik, and The Book of Daniel into a shifting transformational body of work. Each play is a provocation to the possibility of a more just and loving world. It’s a reunion of the avant-guards of New York, Austin, and Minneapolis, among others, and includes an interview and essays by others.
Particle and Wave: A Conversation (53rd State Press) is a companion volume, and features a book-length conversation between Daniel Alexander Jones and poet, scholar, and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs about Love Like Light, and the ways that love, like lights, suffuses everything and is the condition and power of change in the world.
Joni Osum Joni L. Jones is an artist/scholar/facilitator who employs black feminist aesthetics and theatrical jazz principles in her performance work, her pedagogy, and her facilitation. Her most recent book is Theatrical Jazz: Performance, Ase, and the Power for the Present Moment (Ohio State University Press). She is Professor Emerita from the African and African Diaspora Studies Department at the University of Texas, at Austin.
NOTE: See Site for book purchases, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore – On-site Event
Date: Monday the 7th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events: 02/07/22 – 02/13/22”
Los Angeles Literature 