Living Room Floricanto: liz gonzález Dancing In the Santa Ana Winds

by Michael Sedano
From: La Bloga

lrmvsliz_gonzales_at_casa_sedanoxcuLiving room floricantos fill a home with gente and arte for a few memorable hours, the perfect way to celebrate friends, community, culture, a whole lot of good things. For liz gonzález, Saturday afternoon celebrated the publication of her recent collection, Dancing in the Santa Ana Winds: Poems y Cuentos  New and Selected.

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Accolades for Long Beach Poet Michelle Brittan Rosado

by Brian Dunlap

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Michelle Brittan Rosado is a poet from Vacaville, CA who now lives in Long Beach. Her first full-length collection of poetry Why Can’t It Be Tenderness was published last month by the University of Wisconsin Press. In this collection she explores the themes of coming-of-age, mixed-race identity, diaspora, and cultural inheritance. However, Brittan Rosado has also recently received good news about her next collection of poetry.

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Los Angeles, City of Poets

by Sesshu Foster
FROM: LARB

phpThumb_generated_thumbnailONE DAY, when my brother Paul was 12, he came home wearing a shirt made from the American stars and stripes. My uncle caught him — my uncle owned the East L.A. house we lived in at the time and he reminded us of this fact regularly. He beat Paul to the floor and tore the shirt off. That same year, they put Paul on a Greyhound bus at the old terminal on Sixth and Los Angeles Streets and sent him up to Northern California to live with our dad. After a couple years, Paul was out on his own, moving through a series of hippie communes, Big Sur cabins, and foster homes, where he started reading Allen Ginsberg and the Beats.

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Nancy Lynee Woo is an Incorrigible Optimist and that’s a Good Thing

FROM: Palacio Podcast

BJOIA-picNancy Lynee Woo is a freelance writer, editor, and creative consultant, and organizer of creative events including community writing workshops and poetry series. She is also an incorrigible optimist and is not shy about admitting it and for good reason. (Her middle name is actually “Lynée” but WordPress won’t let me use it in SEO. My apologies.)

“I cannot help but try and see the best in everything and I have to believe that things are getting better.”

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Douglass by Day / Douglass by Night: Reading F. Douglas Brown’s ICON

by Mike Corrao
From: Empty Mirror

icon-f-douglas-brown-cover

Icon is an ekphrasis of the place where personal and global histories coalesce. F. Douglas Brown examines the prominent images of those who have shaped his past. Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass (the poet’s namesake) take center stage. Prominent icons are transformed into art. They become walls, housing the projections of a reflective poet. Brown stands at the base of these beautiful panels (created by Jacob Lawrence back in the 1930s) and sees himself contained within them.

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Los Angeles Literature Events 9/17/18 –9/23/18

downloadCourtenay Hameister & Okay Fine Whatever at Book Soup

Join us to hear Courtenay Hameister discuss and sign her book, Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went from Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things.

In this book the author has written a refreshing, relatable, and funny account of her adventures of fighting chronic dread and anxiety. It’s possible to fight complacency and become bold, or at least bold-ish, a little at a time.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Monday the 17th

Time: 7 pm

Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: http://www.booksoup.com/event/courtenay-hameister-discusses-and-signs-okay-fine-whatever-year-i-went-being-afraid-everything

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The Passing of Larry Colker

by Brian Dunlap

downloadNOTE: Initially I didn’t post anything on Los Angeles Literature about Larry Colker’s passing last month from cancer because I never met him and I didn’t know him as a writer. However, seeing that Beyond Baroque is celebrating his life, the life of an L.A. poet and friend, on Saturday, and the fact that Los Angeles Literature is a news, history and information site covering the Los Angeles literary community, I feel obligated to post a brief article about him.

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Mary Torregossa Interview

by Brian Dunlap L.A. poet Mary Torregossa was featured recently on KPFK’s “Poets Cafe” to discuss her writing and her book My Zocalo Heart, published earlier this year by Finishing Line Press. These poems are about family photos, and the people next door and someone looking for work. Their basically about collecting everyday moments. Click below to listen. Continue reading Mary Torregossa Interview

Irene Monica Sanchez Wins Poetry Award

By Brian Dunlap

logowithtextLos Ángeles poet Irene Monica Sanchez has won the 2018 Joe Hill Labor Poetry Award.

As stated on the Labor Heritage website the “Joe Hill Award honors leaders and artists who have contributed to the successful integration of arts and culture in the labor movement, given every year at the Great Labor Arts Exchange is awarded to persons based on their dedication, participation, and promotion of labor, labor arts, culture, organizing, and/or history.” Joe Hill Labor Poetry Award

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On the Books: Brian Dunlap

by Jefferson Beavers
From: Fresno State MFA Blog

Photo Taken By Scott Dunlap 2When did you attend the Fresno State MFA program, and what genre did you study?

I attended Fresno State from 2010-2013 to study fiction.

What were your first thoughts when you learned that your poetry chapbook, Concrete Paradise, would be published?

Surprise and disbelief, because I’d only sent my manuscript out to four or five publishers in the six months since I began the submissions process. Plus, I thought it was ironic that my first book was a book of poems, considering I always wrote fiction and dreamed of publishing novels, and for most of my life had avoided poetry altogether.

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