By Inside CSUSB
Through various events, journals and workshops, the creative writing team in the Cal State San Bernardino Department of English works hard to highlight and celebrate the diverse voices of the campus community.
Continue reading “CSUSB Creative Writing Team Explores Unique, Diverse Voices”
Amazon and rising rents killed the old Bohemia of the Beach Cities, but the spirit of the old Santa Monica survives at Angel City Books.
BY MAX BELL FROM: TheLAnd
If you want to understand the ceaseless gentrification of Santa Monica, just walk down Main Street.
By Megan McNaughton
FROM: The Corsair
With her long purple dress, aqua hair, and strong spirit, Professor Bridgette Robinson walks into Santa Monica College’s (SMC) Drescher Hall 212, greets her English 1 class, and begins to read along to Asha Bandele and Patrisse Cullors’ novel “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.” She easily commands the attention of the room; her students sit on the edge of their seats listening.
Continue reading “Fingers Crossed for the Endangered Literature Class”
by ASTRID
FROM: LA Taco
Mangoes fill Yesika Salgado’s poetry in the same way Jacaranda trees blossom throughout her hometown in Silver Lake. She is a poet and activist emerging as the Sentimental Boss Bitch many have come to know and adore for gaslighting toxic masculinity on Instagram with heartfelt poems and screenshots.
Continue reading “Fall In Love With Yesika Salgado: Silver Lake’s Fat, Fly, Salvadoran Poet”
The band’s founding member reflects on growing up Chicano & being an artist.
by Catalina Maria Johnson
From: Billboard
About 40 years ago, four musicians in a high school rock band decided to learn the Mexican standard “Las Mañanitas” to regale one of the band member’s moms on her birthday. Daunted by how difficult that proved to be — they had underestimated the complexity of their musical culture — the young East LA born-and-bred Chicanos decided to frame their Mexican roots music in rock ‘n’ roll and R&B grooves. And so, the iconic, multi-Grammy-winning band Los Lobos was born.
Continue reading “Los Lobos’ Louie Perez Talks Musical Memoir ‘Good Morning Aztlan’: Exclusive”
By Lovia Gyarkye
From: New York Times
When Kima Jones, an independent publicist based in Los Angeles, agreed to help the poet Tyehimba Jess with his publicity campaign for his second collection, “Olio,” she knew it would be a breakout work.
“I was still a baby publicist. I did not have a long list of clients. I didn’t have a long list of contacts,” Jones said. “But I believed in the book from the beginning and what I really believed in was that it was genre-defying poetry.” In 2017, “Olio” won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
By Jason Toney
From: misterjt.com
I CAN’T TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE LOS ANGELES.
— JONATHAN GOLD
We were standing in the non-fiction, cultural studies aisle of Book Star on Ventura Boulevard when a woman came around the corner and sternly said, “No laughing!” We blushed and then, she smiled.
“Sometimes when I do that, it’s to teenage couples that are smooching in the stacks,” she explained. I revealed that just before we had been looking at “adult books” like 101 Sex Positions and, yes, laughing like school children that were getting away with something.
THE BELOVED WRITER ON DEFYING EXPECTATIONS AND TRYING NEW THINGS
By Zan Romanoff
From: Lithub
I can’t help myself: I dress up to go see her. It’s 9 am on a Thursday morning when I leave my house, 50-some degrees in Los Angeles and so windy that palm trees are curved and swaying, my car trembling with exertion on the freeway.
Continue reading “Francesca Lia Block Is A Lot More Than Weetzie Bat”
This year Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice celebrates 50 years of promoting and developing local poets and beyond. It’s the oldest literary arts oragnization in the Greater Los Angeles literary community. Check out its rich history. Continue reading Fifty Years of Beyond Baroque: 1968–2018
From: Treehouse Arts
I first came across John Brantingham’s work when he sent in a poetry submission to TreeHouse Arts, which I quickly accepted (you can view that publication here). Obviously, I liked his work, but what truly caught my attention was that in his bio he mentioned that he spends summers “living off the grid in a tent in the High Sierra, teaching poetry and writing for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.”
Continue reading “Artist Interview with Poet Laureate John Brantingham”
Los Angeles Literature 