Skylight Books Author Reading Series
By Skylight Books
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Podcast Description
We are a general bookstore serving such historic Los Angeles neighborhoods as Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, and Echo Park. Our eclectic clientele, including many local artists, musicians, writers, and scholars, challenges us to provide the cutting edge of culture including the best in literary fiction, books on music, art, film and theater, Los Angeles regional culture and history, graphic literature, children’s books, political theory and more.
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ExplicitUSC - Master of Professional Writing Program | Students in the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing program will read from their work. The theme will be "Gluttony and Temperance." The student readers will be Josh Jackson, Breene Murphy, Bryce Glen, Barrington Smith Seetachitt, and Michael Du Plessis. USC faculty member and screenwriting guru Syd Field will also read! THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS, NOVEMBER 18, 2011. | 2/20/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDavid Graeber | Debt: The First 5,000 Years (Melville House) Acclaimed anthropologist and author David Graeber Direct Action) visits Skylight Books to discuss and sign his fascinating new book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, a timely study of the ancient origins of our system of credit and debt. Praise for David Graeber: "I consider him the best anthropological theorist of his generation from anywhere in the world." —Maurice Bloch, professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics "A scholar whose books and articles are used in college classrooms around the world and an anarchist who is a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World." —The New York Times Praise for Debt: The First 5,000 Years: "[A]n engaging book. Part anthropological history and part provocative political argument, it's a useful corrective to what passes for contemporary conversation about debt and the economy." —Jesse Singal, Boston Globe "Graeber's book is not just thought-provoking, but also exceedingly timely." — Financial Times (London) David Graeber teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People, and Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire. He has written for Harper's, The Nation, Mute, and The New Left Review. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 2, 2012. | 2/20/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDennis Cooper | The Marbled Swarm (HarperCollins) Cult-favorite writer Dennis Cooper (Ugly Man; God, Jr.) returns to Skylight to read and sign his new novel, The Marbled Swarm! "Disquieting, humbling, and sadly beautiful in the way only Dennis Cooper can be, The Marbled Swarm is a mystifying and courageous novel that represents his finest work to date." —Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers and Ablutions "The Marbled Swarm is a mindbending masterpiece from one of my all-time favorite writers. It is vivid, slippery, ferocious, and rich with secrets. Nobody else could have written this novel and nothing else like it exists." —Justin Taylor, author of The Gospel of Anarchy and Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever Dennis Cooper is the author of the George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels: Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period. His other works include My Loose Thread; The S**ts, winner of France’s Prix Sade and the Lambda Literary Award; God, Jr.; Wrong; The Dream Police; Ugly Man; and Smothered in Hugs. His plays “Jerk” and “Them” are performed all over Europe and the United States. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Paris. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 17, 2011. Photo of the author by Yuri Smirnov. | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitKatherine Karlin | Send Me Work: Stories (Triquarterly Books) Katerine Karlin will read and sign her new collection, Send Me Work: Stories (Triquarterly Books). Karlin has worked in oil refineries in Pennsylvania and Texas, a New Orleans shipyard, and a New York printshop, and she draws on her experiences to give voice to the unique experiences of women in the trades. Her narrators, who must daily negotiate the "man's world" of blue collar work, are keenly observant and attuned to the humor that arises when life doesn't turn out as planned. But even more remarkable is the fullness with which she renders characters who make us wonder how they've escaped the notice of other writers. In unadorned prose that evokes complete worlds with deceptive ease, Karlin shows us people immersed in the negotiations of survival, just at the edge of being able to make sense of their lives. "Karlin's stories are rich and deep, so fully lived you would think that each of her characters walks and breathes among us. A truly remarkable achievement." --T. C. Boyle "These are such beautifully crafted stories, so satisfyingly nailed to time and place they begin to form like memories to a reader; Karlin's prose has hints of Philip Roth and Grace Paley, but the ringing specificity is all her own." --Aimee Bender Katherine Karlin's stories have appeared in One Story, North American Review, ZYZZYVA, Alaska Quarterly Review, L.A. Weekly, and elsewhere. Her work has been selected for the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South. Her short story "Muscle Memory" was read as part of the "Stories on Stage" series at the Denver Performing Arts Center, and her essay "Corn" appears in One Word from Sarabande Press. Karlin currently lives in Manhattan, Kansas, with her dog, Rusty, and her husband, Chris. She teaches creative writing and literature at Kansas State University. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 16, 2011. | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJohn Jeremiah Sullivan in conversation with Mark Richard | Pulphead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Sullivan; House of Prayer No. 2 (Nan A. Talese) by Richard Fans of kick-ass, can't-put-it-down nonfiction, take note: This event combines the funny, probing, insightful cultural musings of John Jeremiah Sullivan with the riveting Gothic-styled memoir of Mark Richard. "Pulphead is upsettingly good. It’s the most inspired book of essays since David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. John Jeremiah Sullivan perceives the world with so much original wit and energy that when I put this book down, the roll of duct tape on my desk suddenly seemed like it might be full of funny secrets. I'm grateful that Sullivan is doing such outlandishly brilliant, enlivening stuff." —Wells Tower "Read Richard's amazing memoir House of Prayer No. 2 -- read it as soon as you can, you'll barrel through it -- and you'll know after just two pages of his effortlessly killer prose that he's special all right ... Narrating, mostly, through the best use of second-person urgency since Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, he describes being a disc jockey, a deckhand, a private eye, a ditchdigger. The man can tell a full story in the flick of a phrase ... Hallelujah. A" —Entertainment Weekly John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the southern editor of The Paris Review. He has written for GQ, Harper’s Magazine, and Oxford American, and is the author of Blood Horses. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, two National Magazine Awards for feature writing, and a Pushcart Prize. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he currently lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife and two daughters and, most weeks, his wife’s entire family. Mark Richard is the author of two award-winning short story collections, The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Charity, and the novel Fishboy. His short stories and journalism have appeared in a number of publications, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, Vogue, GQ, the Paris Review, Vogue, and The Oxford American. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He has been visiting writer in residence at Texas Tech University, the University of California Irvine, Arizona State University, the University of Mississippi, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, and the Writer’s Voice in New York. His television credits include Party of Five, Chicago Hope, and Huff, and movies for CBS, Showtime, and Turner Network Television. He is the screenwriter of the film Stop-Loss. Richard is a lecturer at the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Jennifer Allen and their three sons. Photo of Sullivan (left) by John Taylor. Photo of Richard by Jeff Vespa. | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitAutumn De Wilde | Beck (Chronicle Books) Photographer Autumn de Wilde (Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie) will discuss and sign her brand-new collection of photographs of Beck, based on a 15-year collaboration between the two, and including portraits, photo sessions, and images from recording sessions and live performances. Autumn de Wilde is a photographer and a director best known for her portrait and documentary work in music, fashion and film. Some of her album covers include The White Stripes, Elliott Smith, Beck, Wilco, Norah Jones, and The Decemberists. Documenting the life and work of Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte has been an ongoing project since the designer's explosive beginning. Her portraits of actors, directors, designers, musicians and artists have been featured in Vogue, L'Uomo Vogue, Lula, Zoetrope All-Story, Interview, Elle, Flash-Art, Purple, Paper, Nylon, Black Book, Tar, The Lab, Spin, and Rolling Stone. She lives in Los Angeles. See more of her work at autumndewilde.tumblr.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 11, 2011. | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRy Cooder in conversation with David L. Ulin | Los Angeles Stories (City Lights Books) Musician Ry Cooder will discuss and sign his new short story collection, Los Angeles Stories, in a conversation with Los Angeles Times book reviewer and author David L. Ulin! Los Angeles Stories is a collection of loosely linked tales that evoke a bygone era in one of America's most iconic cities. In post-World War II Los Angeles, as power was concentrating and fortunes were being made, a do-it-yourself culture of cool cats, outsiders and oddballs populated the old downtown neighborhoods of Bunker Hill and Chavez Ravine. Ordinary working folks rubbed elbows with petty criminals, grifters and all sorts of women at foggy end-of-the-line outposts in Venice Beach and Santa Monica. Rich with the essence and character of the times, suffused with patois of the city's underclass, these are stories about the common people of Los Angeles, "a sunny place for shady people," and the strange things that happen to them. Ry Cooder is a world-famous guitarist, singer and composer, known for his slide guitar work, interest in roots music, and more recently for his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries, including The Buena Vista Social Club. He has composed soundtracks for more than twenty films, including Paris, Texas. In September, Nonesuch Records will release his latest album Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. Two recent albums were accompanied by stories Cooder wrote to accompany the music. And, in October, City Lights will publish his first book, Los Angeles Stories, a collection of loosely linked tales that evoke a bygone era in one of America's most iconic cities. Photo of Ry Cooder by Vincent Valdez. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 6, 2011. | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitKate Zambreno and Kate Durbin | Green Girl (Emergency Press) by Zambreno; E! Entertianment (Insert Press) by Durbin Kate Zambreno and Kate Durbin join forces for an event launching Zambreno's new novel Green Girl and Durbin's new chapbook, E! Entertainment. Kate Zambreno's novel O Fallen Angel won Chiasmus Press' "Undoing the Novel" contest. Her novel Green Girl was published by Emergency Press in October 2011. A book of essays called Heroines, revolving around and obsessing over the wives and mistresses of modernism, will be published by Semiotext(e)'s Active Agents series in Fall 2012. She is an editor at Nightboat Books. Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer and artist. She is author of The Ravenous Audience (Akashic Books, 2009), E! Entertainment (Blanc Press, diamond edition, forthcoming), ABRA (Zg Press, forthcoming w/ Amarant Borsuk), as well as the conceptual fashion magazine The Fashion Issue (Zg Press, forthcoming), and five chapbooks: Fragments Found in a 1937 Aviator's Boot (Dancing Girl Press, 2009), FASHIONWHORE (Legacy Pictures, 2010), The Polished You, as part of Vanessa Place's Factory Series (oodpress, 2010), and Kept Women (Insert Press, forthcoming). She is founding editor of Gaga Stigmata, which will be published as a book from Zg Press in 2012. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 5, 2011. | 1/30/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDavid Scott Milton | Iron City (White Whisker Books) Join L.A. novelist David Scott Milton for the launch of his new novel, Iron City! About Iron City: Frank Kalinyak, disgraced ex-cop, returns to Pittsburgh, Pa., “Iron City”, his hometown, from Tucson where he has been living a desperate existence since the death of his young daughter. He has been summoned home by Bobby Mack, an Assistant D.A., to find out who murdered an old high school friend. Kalinyak is swept into a whirlpool of bizarre killings, religious fanaticism, church duplicity, hustlers, cops, junkies, old friends gone bad. Amid the fractured landscape of Iron City, rusting mills, rotting industry, he struggles to find sense in his life. Ultimately he must ask: who is he and can he survive? David Scott Milton started as an actor in New York, learning acting and playwriting at Theatre Genesis alongside Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, and Murray Mednick. Milton’s first play, Bread, appeared at the American Place theatre, and he had a half-dozen more plays appear Off-Broadway. Duet premiered on Broadway, starring Ben Gazzara. Milton’s play Skin won the Neil Simon Playwriting Award. When Milton moved to Los Angeles in the seventies, he fell into film writing and fiction writing. Ivan Passer directed his first screenplay, Born to Win, starring George Segal and Karen Black. Iron City is his sixth novel. He taught playwriting at USC starting in 1977, and for thirteen years, he also taught creative writing to men at the maximum security prison in Tehachapi. He wrote an article about the the prison for the Los Angeles Times (click here) and he created a one-man show, Murderers Are My Life, which was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 4, 2011. | 12/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitPaul La Farge | Luminous Airplanes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Novelist Paul La Farge (Haussmann, or the Distinction) visits Skylight for a reading and signing of his latest, Luminous Airplanes, a novel that was 10 years in the making. "This is one of the best works of fiction to come my way in a long time. Paul La Farge writes beautifully, with wit, humor and passion. He has created as thoroughly imagined a world as you would expect from Chekhov or Flaubert, and has bestowed upon two fictional families enough sympathy and care to rank himself among the best of parents. Luminous Airplanes is a quiet triumph of a book." --Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story “Remarkable . . . brilliantly imagined . . . La Farge spins his tale with the grace of an acrobat and creates the thrill of watching a high-wire act when digressions begin to converge into a coherent story.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A page-turning pleasure . . . Where so much experimental fiction seems pessimistic or even cynical about its possibilities, this novel sustains a spirit of innocence and wonder.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Paul La Farge is the author of two previous novels: The Artist of the Missing (FSG,1999) and Haussmann, or the Distinction (FSG, 2001); and a book of imaginary dreams, The Facts of Winter. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Harper’s Magazine, Fence, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. His nonfiction has appeared in The Believer, Bookforum, Playboy, and Cabinet. He teaches at Bard College. Photo of the author by Carol Shadford. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 28, 2011. | 12/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitIsmet Prcic | Shards (Grove Press) Debut novelist Ismet Prcic will read and sign Shards, based on his experiences leaving war-torn Bosnia. "Ismet Prcic has taken apart the complexities of war, love, family and home and scattered them across a novel that is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful. Shards is an original work of art, brutal and honest, and absolutely unforgettable." --Dinaw Mengestu, author of How to Read the Air "Ismet Prcic's prose is a gleaming pinball kept in inexhaustible play, kinetically suspended in time and space, endlessly flung away from its inevitable ending, colliding with memory and invention. This is writing fed by skill, inertia, horror, and sorrow, a survivor's story of triumph and guilt. Yet Prcic's sensibility is at once brutally and tenderly comic. Humanity seems to run deepest among those who have survived its near-absence in the world." --Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury and Aliens in the Prime of their Lives Ismet Prcic (ISS-met PER-sick) was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1977 and immigrated to America in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was the recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction. He is also a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 27, 2011. | 11/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitCecil Castelucci | First Day on Earth (Scholastic) Young adult author (and Skylight favorite!) Cecil Castellucci returns to Skylight Books to launch her new young adult novel First Day on Earth. This isn't just a launch party -- it's also Cecil's birthday, so expect a party! "A simple, tender work that speaks to the alien in all of us." --Kirkus Reviews Mal lives on the fringes of high school. Angry. Misunderstood. Quiet, but with a lot of words underneath. Seven years ago, Mal disappeared for three days. Everyone tells him it was a breakdown, a seizure, something medical. He thinks it was something different. An alien abduction. But there's no way for him to know for sure. Then, at an abductee support group, he meets Hooper, who has some otherworldly secrets of his own. And suddenly the truth is closer than Mal ever imagined it could be. Cecil Castellucci grew up in New York City and is the author of the young adult novels Rose Sees Red, Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool, and Beige, the children's picture book Grandma's Gloves, and the comic books The Plain Janes and Janes in Love. Currently, Cecil Castellucci lives in Los Angeles. You can learn more about her at www.misscecil.com and via her blog, castellucci.livejournal.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 25M 2011. | 11/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitThad Nodine and Andrea Portes | Touch and Go by Nodine Hick by Portes (both books published by Unbridled Books) Thad Nodine will read and sign his debut novel, Touch and Go, joined by special guest Andrea Portes, whose novel Hick has just been adapted into a film, appearing at the Toronto International Film Festival! "Nodine’s cinematic novel deserves to be hailed as one of the year’s finest fiction debuts." -- Publisher's Weekly “Touch and Go is a strong debut—a high-velocity vision quest that keeps surprising and surprising.” — Jonathan Franzen Thad Nodine is a novelist and writer who grew up in Florida and now lives in California, in a brown house with a red door not far from the Pacific. He has written for a living since graduating from college -- as a legislative correspondent, speech writer, journalist, publishing director, writing instructor, university lecturer, grant writer, editor, communications director, researcher, vice president, and education policy specialist. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and UC Santa Cruz. Touch and Go is his first novel. Andrea Portes grew up in rural Nebraska, later shuffling between Illinois, Texas, Brazil, North Dakota and North Carolina before attending Bryn Mawr College. She received her MFA from UC San Diego and became a script reader for Paramount Pictures. She now lives in Los Angeles and is a nightlife columnist for several websites. Hick is her first novel. A film version of Hick was shot in early 2011, staring Chloe Grave Moritz, Blake Lively, Alec Baldwin, Juliette Lewis and Eddie Redmayne. Directed by Derek Martini and adapted by Martini and Andea Portes, the film debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 21, 2011. | 11/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJon Reiner | The Man Who Couldn't Eat - Gallery Books Award-winning magazine writer Jon Reiner will discuss and sign his book The Man Who Couldn't Eat, about the illness, infection, and doctor's orders that prevented him from eating or drinking anything at all for months. "An engrossing and candid memoir. As a piece of writing, it's fearless and singular." --Publishers Weekly Jon Reiner won the 2010 James Beard Foundation Award for Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes for the collaborative Esquire article “How Men Eat.” His memoir, The Man Who Couldn’t Eat, is based on an acclaimed article of the same name that he wrote for Esquire in 2009. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 18, 2011. | 11/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitArthur Phillips | The Tragedy of Arthur (Random House) We're thrilled to welcome back bestselling novelist Arthur Philips for his acclaimed latest, The Tragedy of Arthur! This virtuosic novel (masquerading as a memoir) includes an entire five-act "lost" William Shakespeare play! "A long-lost Shakespeare play surfaces in Phillips's wily fifth novel, a sublime faux memoir framed as the introduction to the play's first printing—a Modern Library edition, of course… The play itself . . . reads not unlike something written by the man from Stratford-upon-Avon. It's a tricky project, funny and brazen, smart and playful.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speech writer, and a five-time Jeopardy! champion. His first novel, Prague, was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and received the Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for best first novel. He is also the bestselling author of The Egyptologist, Angelica, and The Song is You. His novels have published in over two dozen countries. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons. Photo of the author by Barbi Reed. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 18, 2011. | 11/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBen Ehrenreich | Ether (City Lights) Ben Ehrenreich (The Suitors) returns to Skylight to read and sign his acclaimed second novel, Ether. "Ether is a dark and powerful work, with disturbing metaphysical overtones. Ben Ehrenreich is a gathering power in the literary land." --John Banville, author of The Infinities and The Sea Praise for The Suitors: "Smart and postmodern in a puckish, Calvino-like sense. . . . Ehrenreich writes with an ease and pure line-by-line skill that's rare." — New York Times Book Review Ben Ehrenreich is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer. His fiction has been published in McSweeney's, Bomb, and Black Clock, among other publications. His novel, The Suitors, was published by Counterpoint in 2006 and received widespread critical attention. This is his second novel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 16, 2011. | 11/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJeanne Darst | Fiction Ruined My Family (Riverhead Books) A launch party for local author Jeanne Darst and her debut book, the memoir Fiction Ruined My Family. "Fiction Ruined My Family had me laughing out loud, which I almost never do, with one jaw-dropping scene after another. On nearly every page there's some sentence that's so perfect, in an old-school Oscar Wilde/Dorothy Parker sort of way, that it made everything I've ever written or said seem like dull, drunken mumbling." --Ira Glass, host of "This American Life" "Dazzlingly funny, gut wrenching and infested with writing that will absolutely floor you. Fiction Ruined My Family has ruined me--how will I ever be able to use those adjectives again and mean them as much as I do now?" --Sloane Crosley, author of How Did You Get This Number Jeanne Darst is a writer/performer who has written for The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, and has performed her solo plays in bars, barns, and living rooms across the United States. An excerpt from Fiction Ruined My Family aired on This American Life. She lives in Los Angeles. Photo of the author by Cory Lashever. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 14, 2011. | 11/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJeffrey Eugenides | The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus, 8 Giroux) We're thrilled to announce that Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides, will be coming to Skylight to read and sign his new novel, The Marriage Plot! Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit and attended Brown and Stanford Universities. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published by FSG to great acclaim in 1993, and he has received numerous awards for his work. In 2003, Eugenides received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (FSG, 2002), which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and France’s Prix Médicis. Photo of the author by Karen Yamauchi. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 13, 2011. | 11/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitLuis J. Rodriguez | It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone) Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running and Republic of East L.A., launches his new book It Calls You Back! "Rodriguez’s life story is astonishing . . . It takes a heart broken open by a lifetime of sorrows to write with this wisdom and compassion. It takes a visionary to use this knowledge in service to those the world despises—troubled youth, the homeless, the incarcerated, the poor, the migrant—to be called back for those you love." —Sandra Cisneros, author of Caramelo and The House on Mango Street The son of Mexican immigrants, Luis Rodriguez began writing in his early teens and has won national recognition as a poet, journalist, fiction writer, children’s book writer, and critic. He has emerged as one of the leading Chicano writers in the country with fourteen published books. Luis is best known for the 1993 memoir of gang life, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Now selling more than 300,000 copies, this book garnered a Carl Sandburg Literary Award, a Chicago Sun-Times Book Award, and was designated a New York Times Notable Book. Rodriguez co-founded Tia Chucha Press and Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural 8 Bookstore, a cultural center in Northeast San Fernando Valley. He is currently working as a peacemaker among gangs on a national and international level. Photo of the author by D. Zapa Media. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 11, 2011. | 11/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitHector Tobar | The Barbarian Nurseries (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) Los Angeles Times columnist, Pulitzer-winning journalist, and acclaimed novelist Hector Tobar will read and sign his highly-anticipated new novel, The Barbarian Nurseries. "Tobar is both inventive and relentless in pricking the pretentious social consciences of his entitled Americans, though he also casts a sober look on the foibles of the Mexicans who serve them. His sharp eye for Southern California culture, spiraling plot twists, ecological awareness, and ample willingness to dole out come-uppance to the nauseatingly privileged may put readers in mind of T.C. Boyle." --Publishers Weekly Hector Tobar, now a weekly columnist for the "Los Angeles Times", is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of "Translation Nation" and "The Tattooed Soldier". The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of the city of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children. Photo of the author by Doug Knutson. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 4, 2011. | 11/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBen Markovits | Childish Loves (W. W. Norton) Novelist Ben Markovits will read and sign the third and final entry is his critically acclaimed trilogy of novels surrounding the life of Lord Byron. "This story-within-a-story-within-a-story poses questions about the very nature of fiction." --Booklist "I've been a keen reader of this unfolding trilogy, in its totality a work of high intelligence and canny storytelling. . . . With Childish Loves, his concluding novel, Markovits reaches well beyond the usual confines of historical fiction, breaking the boundaries of the genre, in a moving finale that raises this trilogy to a level of artfulness that deserves a wide audience and deep appreciation." --Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M. Benjamin Markovits grew up in Texas, London and Berlin. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics. Since then he has taught high-school English, edited a left-wing cultural magazine, and written essays, stories and reviews for, among other publications, the New York Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books and the Paris Review. His novels include The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter, Imposture, and A Quiet Adjustment. Markovits has lived in London since 2000 and is married with a daughter and a son. He teaches creative writing at the Royal Holloway, University of London. | 11/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSusanne Kippenberger | Kippenberger: The Artist and His Families (J8L Books) Kippenberger. Der Künstler und seine Familien (Berlin Verlag) Skylight Books and Villa Aurora present Susanne Kippenberger, discussing her biography of her late brother, the artist Martin Kippenberger. The event will feature film clips, images, and audio from Martin's career, and should not be missed! Susanne's book will become available in English in December, but we didn't want to miss the chance to have this fascinating presentation in our store while the author is in the country. We're hoping to have copies of the German edition of her book available for sale, and will take preorders of the English edition. Over the course of his 20-year career, Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) cast himself alternately as hard-drinking carouser and confrontational art-world jester, thrusting these personae to the forefront of his prodigious creativity. He was also very much a player in the international art world of the 1970s right up until his death in 1997, commissioning work from artists such as Jeff Koons and Mike Kelley, and acting as unofficial ringleader to a generation of German artists. Written by the artist's sister, Susanne Kippenberger, this first English-language biography draws both from personal memories of their shared childhood and exhaustive interviews with Kippenberger's extended family of friends and colleagues in the art world. Kippenberger gives insight into the psychology and drive behind this playful and provocative artist. Susanne Kippenberger, editor at Tagesspiegel Berlin and author of Kippenberger: Der Künstler und seine Familien and Am Tisch, is an accomplished journalist who has been awarded a number of prestigious journalistic awards. She studied German, English, and American literature in Tübingen and at the Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and film at NYU. She is currently working on a biography of Jessica Mitford, daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, who, unlike the rest of her family, developed left-wing political opinions, became involved in the struggle against the British Union of Fascists and moved to the United States in 1939 where she joined the American Communist Party and was active in the Civil Rights movement. Kippenberger is currently a writer in residence at Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 24,2011. | 10/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChristopher Bollen | Lightning People (Soft Skull Press) Christopher Bollen, former editor-in-chief and current editor-at-large at Interview magazine, will read and sign his acclaimed debut novel, Lightning People. "Bollen's intricate, humid Lightning People deftly combines paranoia and high drama with the mundane ache of real relationships, real weather, and a very real New York City. He delves into the the haunting mythologies we truly can't escape, while somehow capturing the sweetness of why we come together anyway." --Miranda July "Smart and rich with the spirit of our age, with keen insight into human emotions and why we do the things we do. So readable." -Douglas Coupland THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 19, 2011. | 10/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSusan Patron | Lucky for Good (Atheneum Books) Newbery Award–winning middle readers author Susan Patron launches her latest (and the last) book in her excellent Hard Pan trilogy. "A terrific read and a lovely completion to the trilogy." --School Library Journal "The biggest treat is ever-hopeful Lucky, who ends her adventures on a high note." --Publishers Weekly Susan Patron is the Newbery Award–winning author of The Higher Power of Lucky, among many other books for children, including Maybe Yes, Maybe No, Maybe Maybe, which was an ALA Notable Book, and two sequels to The Higher Power of Lucky: Lucky Breaks and Lucky for Good. She was a children's librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library for thirty-five years before retiring in 2007 and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, René. Photo of the author by Sonya Sones. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 18, 2011. | 10/17/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitTerry Wolverton | Stealing Angel (Spinsters Ink) Acclaimed local novelist and poet Terry Wolverton will read and sign her new novel, Stealing Angel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS, SEPTEMBER 17, 2011. | 10/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBrendan Constantine, Paul Suntup, Daniel McGinn | Birthday Girl with Possum by Constantine Sunset at the Temple of Olives by Suntup 1000 Black Umbrellas by McGinn (all books published by Write Bloody Publishing) Brendan Constantine, Paul Suntup, and Daniel McGinn kick off their Three Horsemen of the Apostrophe tour with an event at Skylight Books! Brendan Constantine A poet based in L.A., he is currently poet-in-residence at The Windward School and Loyola Marymount University Extension. In 2002 he was a nominee for Poet Laureate for California. Paul Suntup has edited three books of poetry and his work has appeared in numerous publications, including Rattle, Spillway, Artlife, Cider Press Review, ISM and the anthology 180 More: Exraordinary Poems. Daniel McGinn is an old school poet based in Orange County, CA. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including So Luminous the Wildflowers, Aim for the Head and Beyond the Valley of the Contemporary Poets. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 14, 2011. | 10/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJanet Reitman | Inside Scientology (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Journalist Janet Reitman will discuss and sign her new book Inside Scientology, the first full, journalistic history of the Church of Scientology, based on the article Reitman wrote for Rolling Stone in 2007, which was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. "Inside Scientology is an engrossing, groundbreaking work that brings a welcome sense of fair-mindedness to a subject that is, for many journalists and scholars, too hot to touch. Reitman has accomplished the miracle of adding light without heat."--Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 Janet Reitman was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2007 for the Rolling Stone story “Inside Scientology,” from which this book grew. She is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. Her work has appeared in GQ, Men’s Journal, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, and the Washington Post, among other publications. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 16, 2011. | 10/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJosh Rolnick and Edan Lepucki | Pulp and Paper (University of Iowa Press) by Rolnick If You're Not Yet Like Me (Flatmancrooked) by Lepucki Josh Rolnick, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, will read and sign his new short story collection Pulp and Paper, joined by Edan Lepucki, a staff writer for The Millions, reading and signing her novella-with-stories collection If You're Not Yet Like Me. “Josh Rolnick is a wonderful observer and a beautiful storyteller. Each story in Pulp and Paper is a path to the hearts of Rolnick’s characters, who, like you and me, strive to be their true, honest selves despite follies and weaknesses. A truly compassionate collection.” --Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants "If You're Not Like Yet Like Me tells quite a few damn good jokes before it decides to twist your heart apart. Gracefully written, barbed and biting; a touching meditation on the mistakes we make before meeting the ones who truly deserve our love." --Victor LaValle, author of Big Machine Josh Rolnick’s short stories have won the Arts 8 Letters Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize. They have also been published in Harvard Review, Western Humanities Review, Bellingham Review, and Gulf Coast, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. A reporter, editor, and journal publisher, he grew up in New Jersey, spent summers camping his way through Upstate New York, and has lived in Jerusalem, London, Philadelphia, Iowa City, Washington, D.C., and Menlo Park, California. He currently lives with his wife and three sons in Akron, Ohio. Edan Lepucki is a staff writer for The Millions. She is a fiction writer and instructor living in Los Angeles, and her stories have been published in McSweeney's, Narrative Magazine, Meridian, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, among others. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and an excerpt of her recently-completed novel, The Book of Deeds, won the 2009 James D. Phelan Award. Her novella, If You're Not Yet Like Me, was published last fall. Learn more about her writing classes at writingworkshopsla.com. Photo of Rolnick by Nancy Williams. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 13, 2011. | 10/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBookstore Pop-Ups | Bookstore Pop-ups, Hybrids, and Rebels: Why Indie booksellers are leading the movement to support and foster local businesses A panel discussion with maverick booksellers David Kipen, Andrew Laties, and Josh Spencer on why there is no better time to be in the book business. “For a while I was really interested in the future of books. Now I’m interested in the present of books.” – Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-founder, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn (founded 2009) For the past decade, the book business has been dominated by conversations about chain stores, online retailers, and the e-book market, all of which pointed to the perennial uncertainty about the future of books generally. And yet from coast to coast a new wave of independent booksellers is staking a claim and embracing uncertainty to make the point: books are still here, and the future is now. Skylight books is pleased to welcome David Kipen (Libros Schmibros), Andrew Laties (Rebel Bookseller) and Josh Spencer (The Last Bookstore) for a panel discussion on why and how: Even in a treacherous economy, independent bookshops like Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore are opening and succeeding; Pop-up stores, like the current Libros Schmibros partnership with the Hammer Museum, are becoming the norm Independent bookstores are leading the movement to support locally owned businesses. David Kippen is the founder of Libros Schmibros, a hybrid lending library and used book shop in Boyle Heights. He is the former director of the National Endowment for the Arts' National Reading Initiatives, and past book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, established Libros Schmibros in July 2010 Andy Laties is the author of Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Business Represent Everything You Want to Fight For—From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities. Laties co-founded Children's Bookstore, Children’s Bookfair Company, Children’s Museum Store, and Povertyfighters.com, and created the film Art of Selling Children’s Books. He co-founded and still manages the museum shop at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, which Parents Choice called “the very best bookstore for picture books in the entire world.” Josh Spencer is the founder of The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA. After selling books online for a decade, Spencer decided to go backwards in time and open up a physical used bookstore in 2009. With his neighborhood of downtown LA experiencing its own rebirth it seemed like the logical place to try retail time travel. The Last Bookstore did well enough for him to move into a new location 10 times as big less than two years later, and the rest is history in the making (as we speak). Moderated by Emily Pullen from Skylight Books. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 11, 2011. | 10/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDavid Calonne | More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights) Editor David Calonne will discuss and sign the new anthology of Charles Bukowski's previously uncollected columns. After toiling in obscurity for years, Charles Bukowski suddenly found fame in 1967 with his autobiographical newspaper column, "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," and a book of that name in 1969. He continued writing this column, in one form or another, through the mid-1980s. "More Notes of a Dirty Old Man" gathers many uncollected gems from the column's twenty-year run. Drawn from ephemeral underground publications, these stories and essays haven't been seen in decades, making "More" a valuable addition to Bukowski's oeuvre. Filled with his usual obsessions--sex, booze, gambling--"More" features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, his tortured, violent relationships with women, and his lurid escapades on the poetry reading circuit. Highlighting his versatility, the book ranges from thinly veiled autobiography to purely fictional tales of dysfunctional suburbanites, disgraced politicians, and down-and-out sports promoters, climaxing with a long, hilarious adventure among French filmmakers, "My Friend the Gambler," based on his experiences making the movie "Barfly." From his lowly days at the post office through his later literary fame, "More" follows the entire arc of Bukowski's colorful career. Edited by Bukowski scholar David Stephen Calonne, "More Notes of a Dirty Old Man" features an afterword outlining the history of the column and its effect on the author's creative development. David Stephen Calonne is the author of Charles Bukowski: Sunlight Here I Am, Interviews and Encounters 1963-1993, and most recently, Bebop Buddhist Ecstasy: Saroyan's Influence on Kerouac and the Beats, with an Introduction by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He has edited two Bukowski volumes for City Lights, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook (2008) and Absence of the Hero (2010). Calonne has lectured in Paris and was invited by the Bukowski Gesellschaft to lecture the past two summers in Andernach, Germany. He presently teaches at Eastern Michigan University. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 10, 2011. | 10/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJeffrey McDaniel, Stacy Gnall, Amber Tamblyn | The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press) by McDaniel Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books) by Gnall Bang Ditto (Manic D) by Tamblyn Poets Jeffrey McDaniel, Stacy Gnall, and Amber Tamblyn will read and sign their respective poetry collections. Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of four books, most recently The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry 1994 and 2010. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York. Stacy Gnall is from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA at the University of Alabama, and she is currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her first collection of poetry, Heart First into the Forest, was published by Alice James Books. She lives in Los Angeles. Amber Tamblyn is a Venice, California native. She has been a writer and actress since the age of nine. She was nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award for her work in television and film. In 2005 Simon 8 Schuster published her debut collection of poetry Free Stallion. She is the producer of "The Drums Inside Your Chest," an annual poetry concert (thedrumsinsideyourchest.com) and the nonprofit, Write Now Poetry Society (writenowpoets.org). Her second book of poetry and prose Bang Ditto (Manic D. Press) was released last Fall. She writes for The Poetry Foundation and lives in NYC. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 9, 2011. | 10/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRobert S. Levinson | A Rhumba in Waltz Time (Five Star) Mystery novelist Robert S. Levinson (The Traitor in Us All) returns to Skylight to launch his latest novel, A Rhumba in Waltz Time, set in Depression-era Hollywood. "Sharp-edged noir... Blanchard [is] a character Chandler would recognize." --Publishers Weekly "More fun than peeking through keyholes in the Golden Age of Hollywood before World War II. . . a nostalgic, wisecracking, action-packed romp." --Joseph Wambaugh THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 8, 2011. | 9/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitCarol Muske-Dukes | Twin Cities (Penguin) California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes returns to Skylight to read and sign her new poetry collection, Twin Cities. Carol Muske-Dukes is the current Poet Laureate of California and a professor at the University of Southern California. She is also a co-editor of two anthologies and an author of eight books of poetry, four novels, and two essay collections. She is a regular critic for the New York Times Book Review and the LA Times Book Review. Her work appears everywhere from the New Yorker to L.A. Magazine and she is anthologized widely, including in Best American Poems, 100 Great Poems by Women and many others. She is professor of English and Creative Writing and founding Director of the new PhD Program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. She has received many awards and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, an Ingram-Merrill, the Witter Bynner award from the Library of Congress, the Castagnola award from the Poetry Society of America and several Pushcart Prizes. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 7, 2011. | 9/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDan Fante | Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving (HarperCollins) Novelist and poet Dan Fante will discuss and sign his new family memoir Fante, covering the lives of his Italian-born grandfather, his famous-writer father John Fante (Ask the Dust), and his own life, writing, and personal struggles. "If writing is fighting, then Dan Fante goes fifteen rounds and stays standing. This is a fascinating story about two hard-edged men, survival and the passion to live and to write."--Michael Connelly Dan Fante is the son of novelist John Fante. He was born and raised in Los Angeles. At nineteen he hitchhiked across the country, eventually ending up in New York City where he was a cab driver for seven years and held a hundred other jobs in order to survive. Fante battled with alcoholism for many years and was arrested many times for his numerous stupidities. After getting sober, and in hope of remaining permanently indignant, Fante took up writing novels in his mid-forties. Today Dan Fante is sober and lives in Los Angeles with his wife Ayrin and his six-year old son Michelangelo Giovanni Fante. Fante is the author of the novels 86’d, Chump Change, Mooch, Spitting Off Tall Buildings, the short story collection Short Dog; two books of poetry, and the plays “The Boiler Room” and “Don Giovanni.” He continues to write every day. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 2, 2011. | 9/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitFIRE IN MOONLIGHT: STORIES FROM THE RADICAL FAERIES | The Fire in Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries (White Crane Books) Selected contributors will read from their pieces in the important new anthology The Fire in Moonlight, including anthology editor Mark Thompson, Stuart Timmons, associate editor Richard Neely, Allen Page, David Cohen, Trebor Healey, Michael David, and Ian MacKinnon (schedule permitting). The most valuable possession a people have is their story...their history. Many years in the making, with over fifty contributors from around the world, Fire in the Moonlight is the first anthology of its kind. Beginning with Walt Whitman and Edward Carpenter in the nineteenth century and moving through the liberation movements of the late twentieth, Fire in the Moonlight speculates far into the twenty-first. It offers a timely compendium of culture wisdom, provocative wit and challenging sensuality. This collection gives witness to a groundbreaking movement that painstakingly emerged from the Gay Liberation era. Rooted in the history of radical visionaries, this little known, essential community informs the modern world with new meaning, offering fresh definitions of faith, identity, purpose and gender. Fire in the Moonlight is a series of personal reflections on who the Radical Faeries are, where they've been and where they are going: Radical Faeries in their own words. It is about how a movement has changed lives--and how Radical Faeries contribute to healing a fractured Earth. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS AUGUST 13, 2011. | 9/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSimon Reynolds | Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past (Faber 8 Faber) Simon Reynolds, one of Skylight's favorite music critics (and the author of Rip It Up and Start Again), will discuss and sign his new book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. "Peering deeply into pop’s ever-expanding history and the technology that makes every part of it eternally accessible all at the same time, Reynolds wonders if culture can survive in conditions of limitlessness. . . . A restless, omnivorous intellectual, Reynolds roams far and wide. . . . His book is crammed with entertaining arguments." --The Telegraph (UK) "Retromania deserves to be very widely read." --The Observer (UK) Simon Reynolds is the author of seven books including Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 and Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture (a/k/a Generation Ecstasy). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, The Wire, and Slate, among other publications. Born in London, Reynolds now lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 31, 2011. | 8/10/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitWriting Panel | Memoirists and novelists James Brown (This River), Seth Greenland (Shining City), Diana Wagman (Skin Deep), and Leslie Schwartz (Angels Crest) will discuss the art and craft of fiction versus narrative nonfiction, in a panel discussion moderated by Meghan Daum (Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House). This is sure to be a fascinating discussion among terrific local writers, and should not be missed! James Brown is the author of several novels, including Lucky Town, and the memoirs, The Los Angeles Diaries, and This River. He received a Nelson Algren Award in Short Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and The Los Angeles Times Magazine. Brown teaches in the MFA Program at Cal State San Bernardino. Seth Greenland is the author of the novels The Bones, Shining City, and The Angry Buddhist (Spring 2012). He was one of the original bloggers on the Huffington Post. www.sethgreenland.com Leslie Schwartz is the author of two novels, Jumping the Green, which won the James Jones Award for best first novel, and Angel’s Crest which was an L.A. Times Bestseller, a Book Sense 76 pick and was translated into 13 languages. She is the founder of a literary magazine: Charlotte: A Journal of Poetry, Prose and Art. Her second novel, Angel’s Crest has been adapted for the screen and debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. She is currently at work on her third book, a collection of personal essays. Diana Wagman is the author of three novels. Her second, Spontaneous, won the PEN West Award for Fiction. Her short stories have been published in Black Clock, Electric Literature and elsewhere. She has a personal essay in this summer's Colorado Review and often writes opinion pieces for the Los Angeles Times. Meghan Daum is a columnist for The Los Angeles Times and the author, most recently, of the memoir Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House. She has contributed to numerous magazines and to public radio programs such as Marketplace and Morning Edition. She is also the author of the novel The Quality of Life Report and the essay collection My Misspent Youth. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 6, 2011. | 7/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSlake Issue 3 | Slake Issue #3 Contributors to the third issue of this great Los Angeles literary journal will read from their selected pieces! We're pleased to welcome the following readers, who will be reading their work: Hillel Aron Lucy Engleman Jim Greer Ernest Hardy Paul Sbrizzi John Waldman THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 21, 2011. | 7/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEmma Straub | Other People We Married (FiveChapters Books) Brooklyn-based author Emma Straub will read and sign her much buzzed-about short story collection, Other People We Married. “It is rare that I will love every story in a collection but I did love each of the twelve stories in this collection both individually and also as a whole collection with a distinctive shape. Each story was intimate and engaging and really, really clean. I never found a word or idea out of place, nothing that pulled me from the stories or the people and places borne of Straub’s imagination.”–Roxane Gay, HTMLGIANT “These quiet epiphanies in Straub’s stories place her in the company of Beattie and Moore, and the voices she creates are contemporary. When I finished reading this exquisite collection, I flipped back to the beginning of the book and stared at the table of contents. The book was suddenly heavier in my hands—suddenly filled with the weight of all these character’s silent fantasies, side-thoughts and careful revelations. Other People We Married is a captivating first collection of short stories for this writer; I look forward to her future work.” –Bracha Goykadosh, The Rumpus Emma Straub is the author of the short story collection Other People We Married and the forthcoming novel Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Slate, and Tin House, among many other journals. She lives in New York City and on Twitter @emmastraub. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 27, 2011. | 7/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitWill Alexander | Compression 8 Purity (City Lights Books) Poet Will Alexander returns to Skylight Books to read and sign his new poetry collection, Compression 8 Purity. "Born in South Central Los Angeles, and a lifelong resident of Los Angeles, Alexander, who got his start publishing in Clayton Eshleman's groundbreaking journal "Sulfur" in 1981, is vastly under-appreciated--an important avant-garde poet, who deserves a wider audience." -- Huffington Post "Compression 8 Purity works well as an introduction to Alexander's black surrealist oeuvre while still engaging and challenging his longtime readers. Though emotionally cold and detached, the poems more than make up for it with a genuine love of language and its power to effect change." --The San Francisco Bay Guardian Born in 1948, Will Alexander is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, visual artist and pianist. He was the recipient of a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry in 2001 and a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002. He was also the subject of a colloquium published in the prestigious African American cultural journal Callaloo in 1999. Author of ten books (including ABOVE THE HUMAN NERVE DOMAIN, COMPRESSION 8 PURITY, EXOBIOLOGY AS GODDESS, and TOWARDS THE PRIMEVAL LIGHTNING FIELD), Alexander has taught at various colleges including University of California, San Diego, New College (San Francisco, CA), Hofstra University, and Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, in addition to being associated with the nonprofit organization Theatre of Hearts/Youth First, serving at-risk youth. He is a lifelong resident of Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 25, 2011. | 7/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRattling Wall | The Rattling Wall Contributors to this exciting new literary journal will read from their included work! Readers and authors include: James Greer Lou Mathews Jessica Garrison Kathleen Tyler Lisa Giaffo Find out more about this new Los Angeles based journal at: http://therattlingwall.com/ THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 23, 2011. | 7/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEleanor Henderson | Ten Thousand Saints (Ecco) Debut novelist Eleanor Henderson will read and sign her highly acclaimed novel, Ten Thousand Saints. "Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time." —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder "Ten Thousand Saints is funny, touching, artistic, surprising, lovely, eye-opening, and very, very wise.” —Arthur Phillips, bestselling author of Prague and The Tragedy of Arthur THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 16, 2011. | 7/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSanjiv Bhattacharya | Secrets and Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy (Soft Skull Press) A launch party for journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya, who will discuss and sign his new book, based on unprecedented access to fundamentalist Mormon polygamist families. "From his telling beginning, a quote from Bob Dylan, Bhattacharya is amusingly off and running, and readers will want to follow his punchy, magazine-trained voice wherever it may lead." --Publishers Weekly "Bhattacharya gained impressive access inside the polygamist compounds, weaving a fascinating and entertaining tale." --Huffington Post Sanjiv Bhattacharya has written for Details, Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Maxim. He has appeared as an expert on polygamy, discussing his Channel Four documentary, The Man with 80 Wives, on MSNBC Live, Montel Williams, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles. | 7/1/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitHelene Hegemann | Axolotl Roadkill The Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and Skylight Books present German writer Helene Hegemann, discussing her book Axolotl Roadkill. We'll also be screening a scene from Hegemann's film Torpedo. Refreshments will be provided by the Goethe-Institut. Helene Hegemann was born in February of 1992 in Freiburg and is considered to be a German wunderkind. She grew up with her divorced mother until age 13, and after her death moved to Berlin to be with her father. It was during that time that she started writing. In 2007, Helene’s drama Ariel 15 premiered in Berlin and was later turned into a radio play. Her screenplay Torpedo was turned into a movie in 2008. Hegemann directed it herself and won the Max-Orphühls-Prize. In 2010 her first novel Axolotl Roadkill was published in Germany and instantly received a lot of praise by literary critics. But Hegemann was faced with accusations of plagiarism and eventually admitted to have copied some passages of her book from an online log. Her confession sparked a controversy about the issue of intertextuality and copyrights. Nevertheless, Axolotl Roadkill has been translated into 15 languages and made into a drama that had its premiere in November of 2010 in Hamburg. Hegemann is the artist-in-residence at the Villa Aurora. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 15, 2011 | 6/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSteve Almond | Steve Almond reads and signs his self published books, This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey; Bad Poetry; and Letters from People Who Hate Me, all of which will be available for purchase at Skylight Books during the reading. Steve Almond is the author of nine books, three of which he published himself.This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey is composed of 30 very brief stories, and 30 very brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing. Bad Poetry and Letters from People Who Hate Me are just plum crazy. All are available at readings. In October, Lookout Press will publish his story collection, God Bless America. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 12, 2011. | 6/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMeredith Baxter | Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering (Crown Archetype) Meredith Baxter has been an actor for 40 years and has five children. She achieved early success in the comedy Bridget Loves Bernie; the acclaimed ABC drama Family and the popular NBC sitcom Family Ties. Baxter makes appearances speaking no breast cancer, domestic violence, alcoholism and general life experiences. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her partner, Nancy Locke. Untied is her first book. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 9, 2011 | 6/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBret Easton Ellis | Imperial Bedrooms (Vintage) The iconic novelist Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less Than Zero) returns to Skylight Books to read and sign his latest book, Imperial Bedrooms, just out in paperback! “Brutally conceived, and effectively done. . . . There is no doubt that Ellis retains the ability to startle and disquiet.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London) "Enough talk of [Ellis's] literary genius, let's call him what he really is: a terrific horror writer. . . . An absolute creepfest [and] a festival of panting paranoia." --Chicago Sun-Times Bret Easton Ellis is also the author of American Psycho, Glamorama, The Informers, Less Than Zero, Lunar Park, and The Rules of Attraction. His work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. He lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 19, 2011. | 6/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSMART GALS’ 6th ANNUAL DEAD POETS SLAM: MONARCHS vs. MINIONS | Smart Gals' 6th Annual Dead Poets Slam: Monarchs vs. Minions 8 Dead Poets, 3 Judges, and 1 winner! How do poems from monarchies fare against poems by the oppressed? Can royal stanzas stand up to the power of the people? Will the crown be plow-shared into submission by her former subjects? Find out April 9th, at Smart Gals 6th annual Dead Poets Slam (held at Skylight Books for the first time!), when a team of anonymously performed, deceased, monarchial poets face off against poetic minions of colonized countries. Hosted by Christine Louise Berry (Smart Gals), and featuring Noël Alumit, Daniel Bess, Jerrod Cardwell, T.K. Carr, Kathleen Coyne, Juli Crockett, Imani Tolliver, Steve Tom, and Lori Yeghiayan. Our esteemed judges will include writer and poetry professor Chris Davidson, playwright Katy Hickman, and well-read physicist Clifford Johnson. The behind-the-scenes team includes poetry seekers Tori Patterson and Laura Louden, who is also a baker of delicious things for the slam. Smart Gals is a nonprofit, public benefit organization dedicated to developing the greater arts community in Los Angeles, by constructing original events in unlikely places and creating transformative social gatherings through The Reading Preserve™, our site-specific performance series Are You Interested?™ and the recently-deceased semi-literary salon, The Speakeasy™. Now in its 11th year, Smart Gals has been featured in the LA Weekly, Los Angeles City Beat, LA Alternative Press, The Los Angeles Times, Bitch, Los Angeles Magazine and on KPFK radio. Smart Gals’ visionary approach to collaborative work has introduced audiences and artists to a wide array of alternative venues, from a local church basement, to a machine shop in El Segundo, to Cleveland High in Reseda, to the land and sites along the Metro Gold Line. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 9, 2011 | 6/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitNancy Rommelmann | The Bad Mother (Dymaxicon) Award-winning journalist Nancy Rommelmann launches her first novel here at Skylight Books! Nancy Rommelmann's first novel, The Bad Mother (Dymaxicon, 2011), is set among Hollywood's transient population of street kids. The idea for this book grew out of Rommelmann's experiences chronicling the under-told stories of Hollywood's various underground populations for the LA Weekly and the LA Times: a crew of Mexican gardeners working the Hollywood Hills; the "cop groupies" who hang out at the LAPD's favorite bar, and the dream-broke residents of Sunset Boulevard's transient hotels. Hollywood is hard on everyone, from aspiring actors and actresses to those on the way back down, but it is particularly indifferent to the children who ghost along the boulevard, unseen by the tourists squatting over Marilyn Monroe's hand prints in front of Grauman's Chinese. As Rommelmann explains, "Hollywood herself is the bad mother of the title." Nancy Rommelmann's articles and profiles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Reason, and other publications. Her Op-Ed pieces and book reviews appear in the Oregonian. She is also a contributor to the media website LA Observed. Rommelmann received Best Arts Feature 2009 from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), as well as Best Entertainment Arts Feature 2009 from the Los Angeles Press Club. An LA Weekly feature about the actress Jena Malone's bid for emancipation from her mother received the identical awards in 2001. Rommelmann's food writing appears in Bon Appetit magazine. She has worked as a restaurant reviewer for the LA Weekly and Willamette Week. In 2002, she shared an AAN award, for food coverage, with Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold. Rommelmann has published three books, including The Real Real World (with Hillary Johnson), which spent fourteen weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and Everything You Pretend to Know about Food. | 6/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJULIA STEIN, LEE BOEK, and LYNNE BRONSTEIN | Walking Through a River of Fire: 100 Years of Triangle Fire Poetry On March 25, 1911, a fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. The owners had locked the doors. Within the hour 146 immigrant workers—mostly women--were dead. The Triangle fire galvanized a national social justice movement to protect workers’ health and to build unions. The poetry in this anthology have already won major American poetry prizes: Chris Llewellyn’s book on the Whitman Award for Poetry, Mary Fell’s won the National Poetry Series. These poems brilliantly capture this major turning point in 20th century American history. These poets recapture the lives of immigrant women and of women workers and inscribe an American tragedy into literature. Over the last 100 years a huge literature of poems, dramas, and fiction has been written about the Triangle factory fire tragedy. This book is the first anthology ever of this important literature. This event features Julia Stein, editor/poet/anti-sweatshop activist; Lee Boek, writer, actor, activist, and artistic director of Public Works Improvisational Theatre project, and Lynne Bronstein, who has written four books of poetry--Astray From Normalcy, Roughage, Thirsty in the Ocean, and Border Crossing. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 18, 2011 | 6/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMARIO T. GARCIA and SAL CASTRO | Blowout!: Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice (University of North Carolina Press) Mario T. Garcia and Sal Castro will discuss and sign this fascinating oral history transcribed and presented in Castro's voice by historian Garcia, about Castro's historic leadership in the school walk-outs of 1968, the largest civil rights protests by Mexican Americans in U.S. history. Mario T. García was born in El Paso Texas. He has taught at San Jose State University, San Diego State University, Yale University, and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright teaching Fellowship and is the author of numerous books in Chicano history. Los Angeles native Sal Castro is an American educator and activist. In 1968 he was the leader of a series of school walkouts in East Los Angeles protesting years of inferior and discriminatory education for Mexican Americans. These "blowouts," as they were called, are the largest and most widespread civil rights protests by Mexican Americans in U.S. history, and the beginning of the urban Chicano Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 23, 2011 | 6/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJames Brown and Victoria Patterson | This River: A Memoir by Brown; This Vacant Paradise: A Novel by Patterson (both books published by Counterpoint) James Brown and Victoria Patterson visit Skylight to read and sign their new books: Brown's memoir (This River) about his struggle with sobriety and Patterson's novel (This Vacant Paradise) about the upwardly mobile in Newport Beach in the '90s. Light snacks and drinks will be served. All attendees will automatically be entered into a raffle for a chance to take home a free copy of each author's book! James Brown is the author of several contemporary novels and the memoir The Los Angeles Diaries which garnered numerous "Best Books" awards in 2006. James Brown's work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Ploughshares. For more info, please visit: www.jamesbrownauthor.com. Victoria Patterson is also the author of Drift. A collection of interlinked short stories, Drift was a finalist for the California Book Award, the 2009 Story Prize and has been selected as one of the "Best Books of 2009" by The San Francisco Chronicle. Victoria Patterson's work has appeared in various publications and journals, including the Los Angeles Times, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Southern Review. For more info, please visit: www.victoriapatterson.net. | 5/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitANDREW FOSTER ALTSCHUL | Deus Ex Machina (Counterponit) Andrew Foster Altschul will read and sign his new, highly acclaimed novel about a reality show gone awry, Deus Ex Machina. "Brilliant... one of the best novels about American culture in years." --NPR "Deus Ex Machina was a book waiting for someone to write it, and luckily Andrew Foster Altschul took on the job... this is a heady, fast-paced novel." --The Wall Street Journal Andrew Foster Altschul is the author of the novel Lady Lazarus and an O. Henry Prize-winning short story writer. A former music journalist and rock DJ, he is the Books Editor of The Rumpus and director of the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University. He lives in San Francisco. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 17, 2011. | 5/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMICHELLE LATIOLAIS | Widow: Stories (Bellevue Literary Press) A new book of stories from the author of A Proper Knowledge. Widow bravely explores the physiology of grief through a masterful interweaving of tender insight and unflinching detail. Among these stories of loss are interwoven other tales, creating a bridge to the pleasures and follies of life before the catastrophe. Throughout, Latiolais captures the longing, humor, and strange grace that accompanies life’s most transformative chapters. “Bracing, exposed, ruthlessly mercurial . . . The writing thrums with aggression and a lush, rooted sensuality . . . the rewards here are enormous.” —The New York Times Book Review Michelle Latiolais, the author of two previous novels, is an English professor and co-director of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS, APRIL 4, 2011 | 5/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitUSC MASTER OF PROFESSIONAL WRITING students | Students from the Master of Professional Writing graduate program at USC will read their work, joined by USC faculty member and acclaimed poet Amy Gerstler! This reading's theme is "Road Trip--Get Me Outta Here!" and the student readers are: Erin La Rosa, Sarah Lowe, Justin McFarr, Breene Murphy, and Russell Nakamura. Amy Gerstler is a writer of nonfiction, poetry, and journalism whose work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including the Paris Review, New Yorker, and Best American Poetry. Her book Bitter Angel won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her most recent book is Dearest Creature (Penguin); she also edited the anthology The Best American Poetry 2010 (Scribner). THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 25, 2011. | 5/25/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMeg Howrey | Blind Sight (Pantheon) Los Angeles-based author Meg Howrey comes to Skylight to read and sign her debut novel, Blind Sight. "An engaging first novel filled with the nuance and yearnings of adolescence." --Marisha Pessl, author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics Meg Howrey is a classically trained dancer who has performed with the Joffrey, Los Angeles Opera, and City Balley of Los Angeles. She made her theatrical debut at Lincoln Center, and toured with the Broadway production of Contact, for which she won the 2001 Ovation Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She currently lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 29, 2011 | 5/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJim Krusoe | Toward You (Tin House) The wonderful storyteller and local favorite Jim Krusoe returns with a new book! Toward You completes Jim Krusoe’s bittersweet trilogy about the relationship between this world and the next. Bob has spent several years trying to build a machine that will communicate with the dead. He’s gotten more or less nowhere, but then two surprising things happen: he receives an important message from a dead dog, and a former girlfriend, Yvonne, reenters his life. These events make Bob even more determined to perfect the Communicator, as he calls his invention, in the belief that it will change his friendless, humdrum life for the better. In the meantime, Yvonne’s young daughter inhabits an afterlife she is trying to escape and would give anything to be reunited with her mom. Toward You is a poignant story of longing, mistakes, regret, disaster, and, above all, hope. "Krusoe's surrealistically skewed, oddly affecting novel blurs the borders between life and the afterlife, what's real and what's imagined, to highly entertaining effect. . .A seriously strange, funny and affecting novel about imagining another life while being stuck in this one." —Kirkus Reviews Jim Krusoe is the author of the novels Erased, Girl Factory, and Iceland. His stories and poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, Bomb, the Chicago Review, the Denver Quarterly, the American Poetry Review, and other publications. He teaches at Santa Monica College and lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 5, 2011. | 5/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitAMBER BENSON and PATRICK ROTHFUSS | Serpant's Storm (Ace) by Benson; The Wise Man's Fear (Daw) by Rothfuss Authors Patrick Rothfuss and Amber Benson will be vigorously debating urban fantasy vs epic fantasy, as well at taking questions and chatting about whatever else comes to mind. We're excited to have these two creative folks here at Skylight Books to do one of our rare Speculative Fiction events. Patrick Rothfuss burst onto the fantasy literature scene with the 2007 publication of his debut novel The Name of the Wind. This first book of a planned three-book epic fantasy series called The Kingkiller Chronicle drew comparisons to the works of several of the top modern writers in the genre as well as the groundbreaking classic The Lord of the Rings. Readers quickly caught on to Rothfuss and as word of The Name of the Wind spread, he developed a cult-like following, attracting big crowds at bookstores and convention appearances. The paperback edition of The Name of the Wind debuted on the New York Times Mass Market Paperback Bestseller List and has been consistently selling ever since. At 700 pages, The Name of the Wind took Rothfuss seven years to write, and readers have been waiting to enjoy its highly anticipated sequel for four long years. The Wise Man’s Fear: The Kingkiller Chronicle, Day Two (DAW) was published on March 1st, 2011 and debuted at #1 on the New York Times Hardcover bestseller list. Patrick Rothfuss teaches at the college he grew to love as a student, and acts as advisor for the College Feminists and the local Fencing Club. When not reading and writing, Pat wastes his time playing video games, holds symposia at his house, and dabbles with alchemy in his basement. Amber Benson's Calliope Reaper Jones series published by Ace Books is an action-packed adventure that demonstrates Benson’s colorful imagination and wit. Not only is she a talented actress and a wonderful writer, she also produces and directs her own work! She co-created, co-wrote, and directed the animated supernatural web-series Ghosts of Albion with Christopher Golden, followed by a series of novels including Witchery and Accursed, and the novella Astray. Benson and Golden also co-authored the novella The Seven Whistlers. As an actress, she has appeared in dozens of roles in feature films, TV movies, and television series, including the fan favorite role of Tara Maclay on three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Benson wrote, produced, and directed the feature films Chance and Lovers, Liars, and Lunatics. Photo of Patrick Rothfuss by Jamie Rothfuss. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 8, 2011. | 5/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMike Young and Jamie Iredell | Look! Look! Feathers by Young (Word Riot Press); The Book of Freaks by Iredell (Future Tense Books) These two authors make the last stop on their West Coast tour here at Skylight to read, discuss, and sign their latest books, out now from the awesome indie presses Word Riot and Future Tense! Mike Young is the author of We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (Publishing Genius (2010) and Look! Look! Feathers (Word Riot Press 2010). He co-edits NOÖ Journal, runs Magic Helicopter Press, and writes for HTMLGIANT. Find him online at http://mikeayoung.blogspot.com. Jamie Iredell is the author of The Book of Freaks (Future Tense Books 2011) and Prose. Poems. A Novel. (Orange Alert Press 2009). He lives in Atlanta, where he co-curates the Solar Anus Reading Series. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 12, 2011. | 3/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMonte Schulz | The Last Rose of Summer (Fantagraphics) Monte Schulz, author of This Side of Jordan, returns to Skylight to read and sign his follow-up novel The Last Rose of Summer! Praise for This Side of Jordan: "Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, a veritable time-machine that whirled me through time to the dirty back roads of the American midwest in the year before the Depression. ... Did I mention how good the writing is? The writing is excellent… a masterpiece of setting and storytelling." –Cory Doctorow Monte Schulz, the eldest son of Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, received his M.A. in American Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he continues to reside. His latest novel, The Last Rose of Summer, is his third. His first, Down by the River, was published by Viking in 1991. Library Journal raved that it compared to Stand by Me and Twin Peaks, and seemed "ready-made for Hollywood." He spent ten years writing Crossing Eden, from which The Last Rose of Summer is drawn as the second of three interconnected novels; the first, This Side of Jordan, was published in 2009 by Fantagraphics and won the 2010 USA Book News Award for fiction, and the third, The Big Town, will be published in 2012. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 6, 2011. | 3/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJonathan Evison | West of Here (Algonquin) We're thrilled to have Jonathan Evison (All About Lulu) back to Skylight to read from and sign his highly anticipated new novel West of Here! We're big fans of this book, which has been getting great early buzz. First printings are already selling out at some stores, but we're still stocked up on them for the event, so be sure to get your copy here! "A big novel about the discovery and rediscovery of nature, starting over, and the sometimes piercing reverberations of history, this is a damn fine book." --Publishers Weekly "'Epic' is yet another one of those words that's been stripped of its meaning from overuse, but no other word can properly describe this novel. I'm in awe. You will be, too." -Ron Currie, Jr., author of Everything Matters! Jonathan Evison is the author of All About Lulu, which won the Washington State Book Award. In 2009, he was the recipient of a Richard Buckley Fellowship from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. He lives on an island in Western Washington. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 24, 2011. | 3/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitLos Angeles Poets | Modest Aspirations - Poems and Stories (by Locklin); Hard Landing (by Smith); E/OR - Living Amongst the Mangled (by Armstrong; all books published by Lummox Press) Three poets published by local poetry publisher Lummox Press will read from their recently published collections! Come and hear the latest from Gerald Locklin, Rick Smith, and Lummox founder RD Armstrong. Gerald Locklin is now a Professor Emeritus of English at California State University, Long Beach, where he taught from 1965 through 2007, and continues as an occasional part-time lecturer there and in the Master of Professional Program at the University of Southern California. He is the author of over 125 books, chapbooks, and broadsides of poetry, fiction, and criticism, with over 3000 poems, stories, articles, reviews, and interviews published in periodicals. His most recent books include The Plot of Il Trovatore (Kamini Press, Sweden); Gerald Locklin: New and Selected Poems, and The Cezanne/Pissarro Poems, both from World Parade Books; and Modest Aspirations - Poems 8 Stories (Lummox Press). Rick Smith is a clinical psychologist, in Rancho Cucamonga, California where he specializes in brain damage and domestic violence. He studied with Anthony Hecht at Bard College, George Starbuck and Frank Polite at the University of Iowa and Sam Eisenstein at Los Angeles City College. During the 70's, he joined Dan Ilves to co-edit the literary journal, Stonecloud. He has been published widely in anthologies and in small press publications such as New Letters, Onthebus, Blueline, Hanging Loose, Pinyon, Eclipse, Paper Street, Lummox Journal, Rattle, Rhino and Main Street Rag. He has three books including his latest title: Hard Landing (Lummox Press). RD Armstrong never went to college or took a workshop on writing, publishing or any of the myriad of things that people go to a workshop for...except to find a screwdriver or some other tool. He fell into publishing in the mid-nineties when he discovered the poetry scene while washing dishes at a coffee house in San Pedro. Since then he has been published in over 300 mags, zines, anthologies etc. He has a number of books to his name, mostly published by his own Lummox Press, including his latest title: E/OR - Living Amongst the Mangled. Lummox Press has published an ongoing chapbook series since 1998 (the Little Red Books) with 60 + titles; the Lummox Journal (1995 - 2006), a monthly; and a number of perfect bound books (20), most recently the Respect Series. Visit the website for more details: www.lummoxpress.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 19, 2011. | 3/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBlack Clock 13 | Black Clock 13 An amazing lineup of writers -- Aimee Bender, Janet Fitch, Jonathan Lethem, Susan Straight, and Lisa Teasley -- will read from their pieces in Black Clock 13, the latest issue of this great literary journal. Author Steve Erickson, Black Clock's editor, will moderate. Aimee Bender is the author of four books; the most recent is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, winner of the SCIBA award. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, Harper's, The Paris Review, Tin House, Black Clock and more, as well as heard on "This American Life" and "Selected Shorts." Janet Fitch is the author of Paint it Black and White Oleander, an Oprah's Book Club selection from which a 2002 motion picture was made starring Michelle Pfeiffer. Her fourth novel will be published next year. Fitch teaches writing at the University of Southern California. Jonathan Lethem has written eight novels, including Girl in Landscape and Chronic City, and four collections of stories and essays, including the forthcoming The Ecstacy of Influence. His monograph on John Carpenter's They Live was published in November last year. He's lived in New York, Vermont, Oakland, Toronto, and now Los Angeles. Susan Straight’s new novel is Take One Candle Light a Room, named one of the best novels of 2010 by The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and Kirkus. Highwire Moon was a Finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, and A Million Nightingales was a 2006 Finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Her short story "The Golden Gopher," a chapter in the novel, won the 2008 Edgar Award for best Mystery Story. She has published stories and essays in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Harpers, Salon, Zoetrope, McSweeneys, The Believer, Black Clock, and elsewhere. She was born in Riverside, California, where she lives with her family, whose history is featured on susanstraight.com. Lisa Teasley is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Heat Signature and Dive, and the award-winning story collection, Glow in the Dark, all published by Bloomsbury. Lisa Teasley is writer and presenter of the BBC television documentary "High School Prom," and currently teaches poetry and fiction at UC Riverside. Steve Erickson is the Editor of Black Clock. He is the author of eight novels, receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. In 2010 he was nominated for the National Magazine Award for his film criticism and was the recipient of one of seven awards in literature given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His novel novel These Dreams of You will be published in early 2012 by Europa. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 13, 2011. | 2/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDavid Vann | Caribou Island (Harper) David Vann, whose short story collection Legend of a Suicide is a staff favorite, returns to Skylight to read from and sign his debut novel, Caribou Island. "Vann . . . renders luminous prose in this haunting tale of hardened hearts and broken dreams." --Booklist "Vann delivers an authentic story, even lyrical at times. He is a writer headed for notable accomplishments. Enthusiastically recommended." --Library Journal David Vann, 43, is a professor at the University of San Francisco. He is a contributor to Esquire, The Atlantic, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, The Sunday Times (London), and Outside, and the author of the bestselling memoir A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea and Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter, Steve Kazmierczak, winner of the AWP Nonfiction Prize. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and Wallace Stegner Fellowship. His website is www.davidvann.com. Photo of the author by Diana Matar. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 11, 2011. | 2/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJoyce Farmer | Special Exits (Fantagraphics) Joyce Farmer discusses and signs her graphic novel Special Exits, a memoir in the vein of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, and Frank Stack’s Our Cancer Year, about caring for her dying father and stepmother. "One of the best long-narrative comics I've ever read, right up there with Maus... I actually found myself moved to tears." –R. Crumb One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Graphic Novels and Comics of 2010 Named one of "The Most Memorable Comics 8 Graphic Novels of 2010" by NPR's Glen Weldon Joyce Farmer, together with Lyn Chevely, was the creator of T**s 8 C***s Comix in 1975. They had formed their own publishing company, Nanny Goat Productions, to counter the sexism they saw in male-produced underground comix of that time. Apart from T**s 'n C***s, they also produced a comic about abortion, 'Abortion Eve', in 1973. Joyce also contributed to the other all-woman comix publication, Wimmen's Comix. In 2000, Joyce Farmer published her work in magazine Zero-Zero. For the last decade-plus, Joyce has been working on her first long-form work, SPECIAL EXITS, a graphic memoir chronicling the decline of the author’s elderly parents’ health, their relationship with one another and with their their daughter, and how they cope with the day-to-day fragility of the most taxing time of their lives. She lives in Laguna Beach, CA. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 5, 2011. | 2/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMillicent Borges Accardi | Injuring Eternity (World Nouveau) Millicent Borges Accardi will read and sign her most recent poetry collection, Injuring Eternity. Millicent Borges Accardi, a Portuguese-American poet, is the author of two books: Woman on a Shaky Bridge (Finishing Line Press chapbook) and Injuring Eternity (World Nouveau). She has received literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the California Arts Council, Barbara Deming Foundation, and was a Formby Fellow at Texas Tech, researching the work of writer-activist Kay Boyle. Millicent’s work has appeared in Nimrod, Tampa Review, New Letters, and Wallace Stevens Journal, as well as in Boomer Girls (Iowa Press) and Chopin with Cherries (Moonrise Press) anthologies. Residencies include Yaddo, Jentel, Vermont Studio, Fundación Valparaíso in Mojacar, and Milkwood in Cesky Krumlov. She received degrees in English and writing from CSULB, holds an MPW (1993) from USC and works as a freelance writer (theater reviews, grants and instructional design). THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 10, 2011. | 2/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitPatton Oswalt | Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (Scribner) We're thrilled to announce that comedian Patton Oswalt will discuss and sign his brand-new and very funny book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland here at Skylight Books! "Patton Oswalt is a brilliant rarity; a relentlessly creative and original comic who is also a superb writer. If you don’t buy this book you are a fool and I will, I swear, fight you." —Conan O'Brien "Patton Oswalt is among the funniest on-stage talking humans I am aware of, so it annoys me deeply that he's also an incredibly talented writer. It annoys me, but it does not surprise me. Every sentence in this book is funny (except for the sad ones), but it also brims with Oswalt-ian smarts and surprising poignancy." —John Hodgman Patton Oswalt has released three TV specials and three critically acclaimed comedy albums, including the Grammy-nominated My Weakness Is Strong. He put together the Comedians of Comedy tour and television series. Oswalt has also appeared on many television shows as a recurring character and in more than twenty films. He lives in Los Angeles. Photo of the author by Ryan Russell. | 1/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRobert Scheer | The Great American Stick-Up (Nation Books) Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of Truthdig.com and co-host of "Left, Right, and Center" on KCRW, will discuss and sign his new book, The Great American Stick-Up. "One of the best reporters of our time." ―Joan Didion Robert Scheer, former national affairs correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, is the Editor-in-Chief of the Webby Award-winning Internet magazine Truthdig and a professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Scheer also is a co-host of the syndicated weekly radio program "Left, Right and Center" on KCRW, the National Public Radio affiliate in Santa Monica, CA. He is the author, most recently, of The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America. He lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 22, 2010. | 11/30/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitReaders from USC’s Master of Professional Writing Program | Students in USC's Master of Professional Writing Program will read from their work. Student readers CJ Francis, Hayley Huntley, Allison Gibson, and Amie Longmire will be joined by faculty member Gina B. Nahai (author of Caspian Rain). THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 20, 2010. | 11/30/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEdan Lepucki | If You're Not Yet Like Me (Flatmancrooked) Edan Lepucki, a writer for book blog The Millions (and a former Skylight staffer!) presents her acclaimed debut novella. "Edan Lepucki's sly, smart novella is never quite a love story—in fact, rarely has the edict 'only connect' seemed more difficult to enact than among her small tribe of underachievers. Sex, however, retains its reliable consequences. And therein lies the beauty and the gut punch of this sneaky, deft book. " --Michelle Huneven, author of Blame "If You’re Not Like Yet Like Me tells quite a few damn good jokes before it decides to twist your heart apart. Gracefully written, barbed and biting; a touching meditation on the mistakes we make before meeting the ones who truly deserve our love. --Victor LaValle, author of Big Machine Edan Lepucki is a staff writer for The Millions. She is a fiction writer and instructor living in Los Angeles, and her stories have been published in Narrative Magazine, Meridian, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, among others. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and an excerpt of her recently-completed novel, The Book of Deeds, won the 2009 James D. Phelan Award. Her novella, If You're Not Yet Like Me, is newly published by Flatmancrooked. Learn more about her writing classes at writingworkshopsla.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 20, 2010. | 11/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitErika Lopez | Girl Must Die: A Monster Girl Memoir (Monster Girl Media) A launch party for this new book -- "a love letter to those who've hit the skids but clawed back to kick the world in the crotch . . . tenderly" -- from self-proclaimed monster girl Erika Lopez. Erika Lopez lives a much too happy life in San Francisco being the sidekick to her two best friends, Mark and Mary. They all live on the same block. They walk big, leaky dogs and forget to whisper when they talk about other people's butts. Previously she launched "Lap Dancing for Mommy" into the world and her new book is "They Call Me Mad Dog!: A Story for Bitter, Lonely People, " but that won't be all. She's got plans. Big plans for big girls in little clothes. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 18, 2010. | 11/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitComedy By The Numbers | Comedy by the Numbers (McSweeney's) On the ocassion of the new edition of this instructive (and hilarious) book on comedy, we present "What if a book could make COMEDY as easy as MATH?!" featuring Professor Eric Hoffman, Lecturer Bob Odenkirk, Expert Andy Kindler, and Q8A Man Bill Chott! Followed by a Grand re-signing! This new printing comes with a spiffy new cover, so be sure to buy a copy (even if you already have one) and get it signed! THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 17, 2010. | 11/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitArmistead Maupin | Mary Ann in Autumn: A Tales of the City Novel (Harper) Armistead Maupin, author of the Tales of the City novels, returns to Skylight to read from and sign his latest, Mary Ann in Autumn! "Perhaps the most sublime piece of popular literature America has ever produced … As with the Beatles, everyone seems to like Maupin's Tales – and, really, why would you want to find someone who didn't?" --Laura Miller, The Salon.com Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Authors Armistead Maupin is the author of the Tales of the City series, of which Mary Ann in Autumn is the eighth book and which includes Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You and Michael Tolliver Lives. Three television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney were made from the first three Tales novels. Maupin is also the author of Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener, the latter of which became a feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. A stage musical version of Tales of the City will have its world premiere at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater in May 2011. Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner. Photo of the author by Christopher Turner. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 11, 2010. | 11/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitKim Gottlieb-Walker | Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae (Titan Books) A launch party for the new photo book by Kim Gottlieb-Walker! The photographer will discuss and sign her book of rare and never-before-seen photos of Bob Marley and other reggae musicians and producers. Kim Gottlieb-Walker’s incredibly varied career has covered everything from classic rock and roll, reggae and politics in the 60’s and 70’s to working on major motion pictures and television shows. While still at UCLA (where she received a BA in Motion Picture production) and shortly thereafter, she shot for underground LA newspapers and magazines like Crawdaddy and Music World. Her classic portrait of Jimi Hendrix was shot when she was only 20 and her High Times cover of Bob Marley remains their most popular cover ever. She also shot the stills for John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Fog, Christine and Escape from New York and worked at Paramount for nine years as the production photographer for Cheers and five years for Family Ties. In 1975 and 1976 she covered Bob Marley both in California (behind the scenes, in interviews and performances) and at his home in Jamaica as well as traveling all over Jamaica to document reggae musicians and producers. Those rarely and never-before-seen photos appear in her new book Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae which includes commentary by writer/director Cameron Crowe, her husband Jeff Walker (who was the national director of publicity for Island Records in the USA in the '70s) and reggae historian Roger Steffens. She has served as one of the elected representatives for still photographers on the National Executive Board of IATSE Local 600, the International Cinematographers Guild for over two decades. Her website is www.Lenswoman.com THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 7, 2010. | 11/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitGary Phillips and Michael Harris | The Underbelly by Phillips; The Chieu Hoi Saloon by Harris (both published by PM Press) Two writers on PM Press's hardboiled fiction imprint Switchblade will read from and sign their new novels. Gary Phillips (The Jook) returns with The Underbelly, and Michael Harris presents his debut novel, The Chieu Hoi Saloon. A noirish good time! Gary Phillips writes tales of mayhem and menace. In other pursuits he's been a union rep, run a nonprofit begun as a response to the '92 L.A. riots, taught incarcerated youth, was a community organizer in South Central Los Angeles where he was born and raised, toiled as a printer, worked for one of those shadowy 527s, and delivered dog cages. Michael Harris grew up in a little railroad town in Northern California, in the loom of Mt. Shasta, whose mystic influence shadowed him from the University of Oregon to Harvard to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. An Army veteran of Vietnam, he has worked as a Forest Service aide, a janitor and an English conversation teacher in Tokyo. For 30 years, he was a reporter, editor and book reviewer for West Coast newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. Like his alter ego, Harry Hudson, he stutters and is a gloomy cuss. He lives with his wife in Long Beach; they have a grown son. The Chieu Hoi Saloon is his first novel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 5, 2010. | 11/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMiles Corwin | Kind of Blue (Oceanview Publishing) Miles Corwin returns to Skylight to read from and sign his fourth book (and his first novel) Kind of Blue. Special guest Marcella Winn, the LAPD detective Corwin wrote about in The Killing Season, will give the introduction! Miles Corwin spent the first years of his life living with his family in the Rosslyn Hotel, which his grandfather owned, located at 5th and Main streets in downtown Los Angeles, at the edge of Skid Row. He graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara and received an M.A. at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He spent more than 5 years as a Los Angeles County beach lifeguard. Corwin, a former crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, is the author of three non-fiction books: The Killing Season, a national bestseller; And Still We Rise, the winner of the PEN West award for nonfiction and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; and Homicide Special, a Los Angeles Times bestseller. Kind of Blue is his first novel. Corwin lives in Altadena with his family and teaches at the University of California, Irvine. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 4, 2010. | 11/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitKim Dower | Air Kissing on Mars (Red Hen Press) Local poet Kim Dower will read and sign her new collection, Air Kissing on Mars. "Kim Dower writes jazzy, sassy, sexy poems that move fast, are full of surprise and tweak the heartstrings like Arkhipovsky tweaks the balalaika.: --Stephen Dobyns "Kim Dower's poetry is absolutely charming and compelling. She combines humor and heartbreak, while exploring the personal and universal. Her poems are both accessible and profound. What I love most is that the poet herself is so present in her images and emotions. What a big, beautiful, generous, and funny heart she has!" --Lisa See Kim Dower grew up in New York on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston. Upon graduating, Kim stayed at Emerson where she taught Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry for two years before moving to Los Angeles where she pursued other writing projects and began her own literary publicity company called Kim-from-L.A., the name for which she has become famous in the world of book publishing. Kim’s poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Seneca Review, and in the on-line video magazine, Guerilla Reads. She lives with her family in West Hollywood, California. | 11/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDavid L. Ulin | The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Are So Important in a Distracted Time (Sasquatch Books) Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin will discuss and sign his new boook on the importance of reading in a digital culture, The Lost Art of Reading. Reading is a revolutionary act, an act of engagement in a culture that wants us to disengage. In The Lost Art of Reading, David L. Ulin asks a number of timely questions — why is literature important? What does it offer, especially now? Blending commentary with memoir, Ulin addresses the importance of the simple act of reading in an increasingly digital culture. Reading a book, flipping through hard pages, or shuffling them on screen — it doesn’t matter. The key is the act of reading, the seriousness and depth. Ulin emphasizes the importance of reflection and pause allowed by stopping to read a book, and the focus required to let the mind run free in a world that is not one's own. Far from preaching to the choir, The Lost Art of Reading is a call to arms, or rather, pages. David L. Ulin was book editor of the Los Angeles Times from 2005–2010. He is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith (Viking, 2004; Penguin, 2005), selected as a Best Book of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. He has edited two anthologies of Southern California literature: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles (City Lights, 2001), a Los Angeles Times Book Review Best Book of 2001; and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology (Library of America, 2002), which received a California Book Award from the Commonwealth Club of California, and was selected by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as a Best of the Best for 2002. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, LA Weekly, Los Angeles, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered; his essay "The Half-Birthday of the Apocalypse" was nominated for a 2004 Pushcart Prize. For the 2008–2009 academic year, he was a visiting professor in the MFA in creative writing program at the California Institute of the Arts. Currently, he teaches in USC's Masters of Professional Writing program, and in the low residency MFA in creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside's Palm Desert Graduate Center. Photo of the author by Noah Ulin. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 27, 2010. | 11/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitHarry Hamlin | Full Frontal Nudity: The Making of an Accidental Actor (Scribner) Actor Harry Hamlin (LA Law) will discuss and sign his highly entertaining new memoir Full Frontal Nudity. "Hamlin’s life has been filled with drama in more ways than one, and his skill at colorful, vibrant storytelling makes this a rewarding read." —Publishers Weekly Harry Hamlin is an American film and television actor. Born in Pasadena, California, he attended the University of California at Berkeley, Yale University, and the American Conservatory Theater. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Lisa Rinna, and their children, all of whom appear in the new reality show Harry Loves Lisa, which debuts on TV Land in October 2010. Photo of the author by Dana Patrick. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 24, 2010. | 11/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMichael Connelly | The Reversal (Little, Brown 8 Co.) Michael Connelly returns to Skylight to read from and sign his new novel The Reversal, in which lawyer Mickey Haller and LAPD detective Harry Bosch reunite for another case! Michael Connelly is the bestselling author of the Harry Bosch mystery novels as well as the recent #1 bestsellers The Lincoln Lawyer, The Brass Verdict, and The Scarecrow. He is a former newspaper reporter who has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels. He divides his time between California and Florida. Photo of the author by Miriam Berkley. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 18, 2010. | 11/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitLaunch Party for What Books Press | By Wronsky: So Quick Bright Things; A Giant Claw (foreword) By Rosenthal: Coyote O'Donohughe's History of Texas By Partnoy: So Quick Bright Things (translator), A Giant Claw (translator) By Garcia: Other Countries By Gronk: A Giant Claw (All books published by What Books Press) A launch party for four new titles from What Books Press' fall list! Gail Wronsky, Chuck Rosenthal, Alicia Partnoy, Ramon Garcia, and Gronk will all read from and discuss their recent publications. Gail Wronsky is the author of Poems for Infidels (Red Hen Press); Dying for Beauty (Copper Canyon), a finalist for the Western Arts Federation Poetry Award; The Love-talkers (Hollyridge Press); Again the Gemini are in the Orchard (New Poets Series); and Dogland (Alderman Press, University of Virginia). Her translation of Alicia Partnoy's poems Volando Bajito has been published by Red Hen, and she is the coauthor with Molly Bendall of two books of "cowgirl" poetry: Calamity and Belle, A Cowgirl Correspondence and Dear Calamity, Love Belle. Blue Shadow Behind Everything Dazzling, a chapbook of poems about India where she lived for several months in 2006, has been published recently by Hollyridge Press. She is Director of Creative Writing and Syntext (Synthesizing Textualities) at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She lives in Topanga, California. Chuck Rosenthal was born in Erie, Pennsylvania and has lived in the western U.S. since 1979. He's the author of seven published novels and a memoir. The novels: Loop's Progress, Experiments with Life and Deaf, Loop's End (the Loop Trilogy), Elena of the Stars, Avatar Angel: The Last Novel of Jack Kerouac, My Mistress Humanity, and The Heart of Mars. The memoir: Never Let Me Go. His work has been nominated for The National Book Award, The PEN West Award for Fiction, the PEN International Award for Fiction, the Critics Book Circle Award for Fiction, the American Library Association Most Notable Book Award, and for Best American Creative Non-fiction. He is a three time winner of the Utah Arts Council Award for Fiction. Rosenthal recently lived for four months in the Himalayas of northeast India, the setting for his new book: Are We Not There Yet? Travels in Nepal, North India, and Bhutan. He lives in Topanga Canyon, California, where he owns a horse and rides daily. He teaches at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Alicia Partnoy is a survivor from the secret detention camps where about 30,000 people "disappeared" in her country, Argentina. She is best known as the author of The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival. A poet, translator, and scholar, Alicia Partnoy has published the poetry collection Little Low Flying/Volando bajito, translated by Gail Wronsky and illustrated by Raquel Partnoy. Poems from her Revenge of the Apple/Venganza de la manzana rode the metro in New York, Dallas, and Washington D.C., and have been set to music by Sweet Honey in the Rock. Partnoy edited You Can't Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile, and from 2003 to 2006, she was the co-editor of Chicana/Latina Studies: the journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Her work has been twice a Pushcart Foundation Writer's Choice Selection (Tobias Wolff and Bobbie Ann Mason). Partnoy served on the boards of directors of PEN, Roadwork, and Amnesty International U.S.A. She is an associate professor at Loyola Marymount University. Ramón García was born in Colima and grew up in Modesto, California. He has a B.A. in Spanish Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Master's and Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts residency fellowship from the MacDowell Colony and fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ragdale Foundation. He is a recipient of a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and | 11/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitVanessa Davis | Make Me a Woman (Drawn 8 Quarterly) Vanessa Davis will discuss and sign her new graphic novel, Make Me a Woman. "In fact, if you don’t like [Vanessa Davis], you don’t like anything good." —Vice "What distinguishes Davis's take is a reflective hunger for meaning and connection in the very mundane." —Bust "Vanessa Davis’s autobiographical slice-of-life drawings are both totally relatable and sweetly surreal." —Bitch Vanessa Davis is the award-winning cartoonist of the graphic novel and minicomic, Spaniel Rage. Her new Drawn 8 Quarterly book Make Me A Woman was serialized online for Tablet Magazine and will confirm Vanessa's spot as one of the leading cartoonist and humorists of her generation. Using beautiful watercolors, refreshing honesty and humor, her comics made an immediate impression and have appeared in such anthologies as Kramers Ergot, Best American Comics, Stuck in the Middle, Papercutter and An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 13, 2010. | 11/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSusan Straight | Take One Candle Light a Room (Pantheon) Novelist Susan Straight (A Million Nightingales) returns to Skylight to read and sign her latest novel, Take One Candle Light a Room! "A searing, ultimately redemptive novel about America’s legacy of racial violence and a woman’s struggle to forge her own identity. . . . Deeply rooted in the African-American experience, yet filled with insights that resonate for anyone seeking to make a better life without disowning the past. Straight writes about the thorny subject of race with sensitivity and nuance." --Kirkus Reviews Susan Straight is the author of six novels, including A Million Nightingales and the National Book Award finalist Highwire Moon. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Magazine, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Her short stories have won an Edgar Award and an O. Henry Award. She teaches at the University of California, Riverside. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 12, 2010. | 11/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitLauren Strasnick | Her and Me and You (Simon Pulse) A launch party for local young adult author Lauren Strasnick and her second YA novel, Her and Me and You! Lauren Strasnick grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, now lives in Los Angeles, and is a graduate of Emerson College and the California Institute of the Arts MFA Writing Program. She wrote her first short story, “Yours Truly, The Girls from Bunk Six,” in a cloth-bound 5x4 journal, in the fifth grade. Simon Pulse published her first novel, Nothing Like You, in October 2009. Find out more at www.laurenstrasnick.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 9, 2010. | 11/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBrian Leung | Take Me Home (Harper) Brian Leung, author of Lost Men and World Famous Love Acts will return to Skylight to read and sign his latest novel, Take Me Home. Praise for Lost Men: "This is a novel of enormous wisdom and emotional weight." --Dan Chaon Praise for World Famous Love Acts: "If it's possible to be dubbed a "master storyteller" this early in one's career, then Leung's enchanting debut short story collection most assuredly has earned him the title." --Booklist Brian Leung is the author of the novel Lost Men and the collection World Famous Love Acts. He was born and raised in San Diego County, and currently lives in Louisville, KY, where he is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Louisville. Photo of the author by John Nation. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 7, 2010. | 11/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDarin Strauss and Adam Levin | Half a Life by Strauss; The Instructions by Levin (both books published by McSweeney's) Darin Strauss, author of More Than It Hurts You, will discuss and sign his heartbreaking memoir about how one outing in his father's Oldsmobile during his last month of high school resulted in the death of a classmate and the beginning of a different, darker life for the author. Joining him, Adam Levin will read and sign his new novel, The Instructions, which begins with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ends, four days and 900 pages later, with the Events of November 17; this is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Advance praise for Half a Life: “Half a Life is the best anything I’ve read—novel, memoir, story—in a very long time. Incredibly, it’s also the most moving." —David Lipsky, author of Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself “This book will break your heart. It’s a great and moving book about a boy becoming a man, and it belongs on the shelf with just a precious few others—The Catcher in the Rye, The Moviegoer, Joe Gould’s Secret. It should be read and re-read. It’s a treasure.” —Rich Cohen, author of Tough Jews and Sweet and Low Advance praise for The Instructions: "A great big novel, shaggy and undisciplined, but with moments of brilliance." —Publishers Weekly "The Instructions is a sizzling fire-cracker of a book. Readers beware: you will not be able to put this book down, you will not be able to get ten-year old Gurion Maccabee's fevered voice out of your head, and you will not be able to read anything else for like six months without thinking back to this book. The Instructions is a thrilling hurricane of an epic—1,000 pages that takes places over a mere four days—and it will chew you up and spit you out and you will be better for it." —Rachel Meier, Booksmith (San Francisco, CA) Darin Strauss is the best-selling author of Chang 8 Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You. The recipient of a 2006 Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction writing and -numerous other awards, Strauss’s work has been translated into fourteen langauges, and published in over twenty countries. He is a Clinical Associate professor of Writing at New York University. Adam Levin's stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney's, and Esquire. Winner of the 2003 Tin House/Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, Levin holds an MA in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. His collection of short stories, Hot Pink, will be published by McSweeney's in 2011. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches writing at Columbia College and The School of the Art Institute. | 10/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRob Roberge | Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life (Red Hen Press) Local author Rob Roberge will read from and sign his short story collection Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life. Rob Roberge is the author of the story collection Working Backwards From the Worst Moment of My Life and the novels More Than They Could Chew and Drive. He teaches writing at the Antioch University Los Angeles, MFA in Creative Writing, UC-Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA program and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where he received the Outstanding Instructor Award in Creative Writing in 2003. His stories have been featured in ZYZZYVA, Chelsea, Black Clock, Other Voices, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Ten Writers Worth Knowing Issue of The Literary Review. His work has also been anthologized in Another City (City Lights, 2001), It’s All Good (Manic D Press, 2004) SANTI: Lives of the Modern Saints (Black Arrow Press, 2007) and Orange County Noir (Akashic, 2010). Non-fiction appears, or has appeared, in The Nervous Breakdown and Penthouse. He plays guitar and sings with several LA bands, including, among others, the punk pioneers, The Urinals. In his spare time, he restores and rebuilds vintage amplifiers and quack medical devices. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 2, 2010. | 10/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitTao Lin | Richard Yates (Melville House) We're thrilled to have Tao Lin here for the first time, to read and sign his new novel, Richard Yates (yes, named after the famous author of Revolutionary Road). Several of his books have staff recommendations here, and we're really looking forward to this new one! Tao Lin was born in 1983, and raised in Orlando, Florida. In 2007 Melville House published his first two works of fiction, the short story collection Bed, and the novel Eeeee Eee Eeee, simultaneously. And in 2008, published his poetry collection, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. It has been assigned as a text book in several college-level psychology courses. In 2009, Melville House published his novella Shoplifting From American Apparel. His books have been translated into German, Spanish, Japanese, Norwegian, and Serbian. He lives in Brooklyn. Photo of the author by Noah Kalina. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 30 ,2010. | 10/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDanbert Nobacon | 3 Dead Princes: An Anarchist Fairy Tale (Exterminating Angel Press) Musician Danbert Nobacon (Chumbawamba) will discuss and sign their for-adults illustrated fairy tale book 3 Dead Princes! "This is a beautiful book. The illustrations are wonderful. It definitely rocks! I ought to know." —Iggy Pop Danbert Nobacon, singer, songwriter, comedian, and “freak music legend” (sepiachord, Nov 2009), was a founding member of the anarchist punk rock band Chumbawamba. His career has been long (thirty years), wild, and always imaginative. Not to mention mischievous and political—he famously dumped a bucket of ice water over John Prescott, the British deputy prime minister, at an awards ceremony in London in 1998, to protest the Blair government’s treatment of striking dockworkers. He loves children and animals. This is his first book. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 25, 2010. | 10/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJames Ellroy | The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women (Knopf) James Ellroy returns to Skylight to discuss and sign his new memoir, The Hilliker Curse! James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. quartet -- The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz -- were international bestsellers. American Tabloid was Time's Novel of the Year in 1995; his memoir My Dark Places was Time's Best Book and a New York Times Notable book for 1996. His novel The Cold Six Thousand was a New York Times Notable Book and Los Angeles Times Best Book for 2001. He lives on the coast of California. Photo of the author by Marion Ettlinger. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 24, 2010. | 10/25/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDave Tompkins | How to Wreck a Nice Beach: The Vocodor from World War II to Hip Hop, the Machine Speaks (Stop Smiling Books) Dave Tompkins will discuss and sign his fascinating history of the vocodor! The vocoder, invented by Bell Labs in 1928, once guarded phones from codebreakers during World War II; by the Vietnam War, it had been repurposed as a voice-altering tool for musicians and soon became the ubiquitous voice of popular music. "How to Wreck a Nice Beach is much more than a labor of love: It’s an intergalactic vision quest fueled by several thousand gallons of high-octane spiritual-intellectual lust. ... [Tompkin's] biggest and most perilous adventure in How to Wreck a Nice Beach is the plunge deep into the throbbing radioactive heart of his own prose—a hallucinatory stew of Rimbaud, Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs, and Bootsy Collins." — New York Magazine "Achieves what the best music writing does—it opens doors, tears off tarps and digs in the dirt to reveal the stunning variety and potential in popular music." — The Nation Dave Tompkins, a former columnist for The Wire, writes frequently about hip-hop and popular music. His work has appeared in Vibe, The Village Voice, The Believer and Wax Poetics. As a child growing up in North Carolina, he wrote stories about Mud Men, shot football cards with his dad’s .38, and was forced into speech therapy. His grandfather ate the microfilm, somewhere over Moscow. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 22, 2010. | 10/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitGordon Edgar | Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge (Chelsea Green Publishing) Gordon Edgar will discuss life as a cheesemonger in San Francisco's Rainbow Grocery Cooperative and sign copies of his new irreverant and funny book Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge. Plus, there will be a cheese tasting! Gordon Edgar loves cheese and worker-owned co-ops, and has been combining both of these infatuations as a cheesemonger at Rainbow Grocery Cooperative in San Francisco for more than 15 years. Edgar has been a judge at cheese competitions, a board member for the California Artisan Cheese Guild, and, since 2002, has blogged at www.gordonzola.net. Surrounded by his vast and decaying collection of zines and obscure punk 7-inches, he lives in San Francisco with his girlfriend and their imaginary white miniature schnauzer. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 18, 2010. | 10/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitContributors to Black Clock 12 | Black Clock 12 Richard Rayner, Nina Revoyr, Samantha Dunn, Tod Goldberg, Paul Cullum, and Skylight's own Monica Carter -- six contributors to the latest issue of this great literary journal -- will read from their selected pieces. Born in England, Richard Rayner now lives in Los Angeles. His books include the nonfiction book A Bright and Guilty Place, the memoir The Blue Suit and the novels The Cloud Sketcher, L.A. Without a Map, and Murder Book. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and many other publications. Nina Revoyr is the author of three novels, including Southland, a Los Angeles Times "Best Book of 2003," and The Age of Dreaming, a finalist for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her new novel, Wingshooters, will be published in 2011. Samantha Dunn is the author of several books, including the novel Failing Paris and the memoir Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life. She teaches in the UCLA Writers Program. Tod Goldberg is the author of seven books of fiction, including the novels Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat, and the popular Burn Notice series, as well as the short story collections Simplify and, most recently, Other Resort Cities. He lives in La Quinta, CA, where he directs UC-Riverside's low residency MFA program in Creative Writing 8 Writing for the Performing Arts. Paul Cullum is a freelance writer living in the Silver Lake region of Los Angeles. He has written extensively for the L.A. Weekly, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, Stop Smiling, Arthur, and hundreds of tiny magazines that pay comically little. His Los Angeles Times West Magazine story on the Mexican Midget Rodeo was anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing 2007, published by Houghton Mifflin. His essay "Why I Hate Sports" is his first for Black Clock. Monica Carter, a 2010 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow and 2010 Lambda Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow, has also been published in Pale Fire. She is working on her novel, Eating the Apple, set in 1930s Manhattan, which tells the story of an aging, alcoholic lesbian writer caught in a love triangle. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 19, 2010. | 10/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDaniel Tiffany | The Dandelion Clock (Tinfish Press) Acclaimed Los Angeles poet Daniel Tiffany will read from and sign his latest collection, The Dandelion Clock. "Each of the poems in The Dandelion Clock is a pearl strung together with music from the origin of human sounds. This book has the stillness of haiku and the raw power of Beowulf. Daniel Tiffany is a revolutionary poet." —Wang Ping "Daniel Tiffany’s 'pocket rhapsodies' are gorgeously spring-loaded, micro-tuned, and aching with time, time lost, syllabic time, dreamtime, time the conqueror. The Dandelion Clock is a burning fuse and a wonderful book." —Peter Gizzi Daniel Tiffany has published translations of Sophocles, Georges Bataille, and the Italian poet, Cesare Pavese. His critical works include Toy Medium: Materialism and Modern Lyric (University of California Press, 2000), named one of the "Best Books of 2000" by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and Infidel Poetics: Riddles, Nightlife, Substance (University of Chicago Press, 2009). His first volume of poetry, Puppet Wardrobe, was published in 2006 by Parlor Press; a second book of poems, The Dandelion Clock, appeared from Tinfish Pess in 2010. His poems, which have won the Chicago Review Annual Poetry Prize, as well as the John Billings Fiske Prize, appear in journals including Tin House, Boston Review, and the Paris Review. His third book of poetry, Privado, is due to be published in 2011 by Action Books. He teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. | 10/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitContributors to the PEN Emerging Voices Anthology hosted by Janet Fitch | Strange Cargo Nine alumni of the PEN Center USA's Emerging Voices fellowship who have been published in the Emerging Voices anthology Strange Cargo will read from their selected pieces. Janet Fitch (White Oleander), who wrote the anthology's introduction, will introduce the event! PEN Center USA's Emerging Voices is a literary fellowship program that aims to provide new writers, who lack access, with the tools they will need to launch a professional writing career. Over the course of the year, each Emerging Voices fellow participates in a professional mentorship hosted Q8A evenings with prominent local authors, a series of Master classes focused on genre, and two public readings. Janet Fitch is the author of the novels White Oleander and Paint It Black. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Los Angeles Noir, Black Clock, Room of One's Own, and Black Warrior Review. She teaches creative writing in the MPW program at USC, and is writing a novel set during the Russian Revolution. Natashia Deón is a 2010 Bread Loaf Scholarship recipient, PEN Emerging Voice Fellow, Highlights Foundation Scholarship recipient, and award-winning screenwriter. She is penning her debut novel, The Spinning Wheel, a dark journey of three outcast women who, on the eve of the Civil War, are fighting the battle of their lives. Deón is a California native, practicing attorney and the first generation of her family to be born outside of East Tallassee, Alabama, since American slavery. Cara Chow was a 2001 Emerging Voices Fellow. "Fall Dance" will appear in the novel Bitter Melon in Spring 2011, published by Egmont USA. A native of Hong Kong, Cara grew up in the Richmond District of San Francisco, where this story is set. She currently resides in the Los Angeles area with her husband and son. Davin Malasarn is a writer and microbiologist from Sherman Oaks, California. In 2008, he was an Emerging Voices Fellow, a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest, and first runner-up in Opium Magazine’s 500-Word Memoir Contest. Two of his stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. His fiction has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Rosebud, Night Train and other literary journals, and he is a staff editor at SmokeLong Quarterly. Pireeni Sundaralingam was born in Sri Lanka and is co-editor of Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry (U. Arkansas Press, 2010). Her own poetry has appeared in journals such as Ploughshares, World Literature Today and The Progressive, as well as anthologies such as W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (2008). It has been translated into 5 languages and been published in Sweden, Ireland, England, and the U.S. A cognitive scientist, Pireeni has given papers on the connections between the human brain and poetry at MOMA (New York), the Exploratorium (San Francisco) and Studio Olafur Eliasson (Berlin). She was a PEN Emerging Voice Fellow in 2003. Monica Carter lives in Los Angeles, California, and is a 2010 Emerging Voices Fellow. Her work will appear in the forthcoming issue of Pale House II. She is the owner and curator of her own website dedicated to international literature, Salonica World Lit. Ms. Carter is working on Eating the Apple, a psychological novel set in Manhattan in the 1930s. Marytza Rubio is a writer from Santa Ana, California. She was a 2008 Emerging Voices Fellow and received a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in 2010. She writes about Latinas, voodoo and animals. http://www.marytzakrubio.com/ Sylvia Sukop writes about art, faith, community and other good causes. Her memoir, Difficult Light, is framed by the death of her youngest brother, Alex, within an intentional community of organic farmers in eastern Washington. The memoir grew out of an extensive series of photographs documenting Alex’s life and is in part | 9/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJames Riley | Half Upon a Time (Aladdin) A launch party for local author James Riley and his first book, a middle readers fairy tale mash-up called Half Upon a Time! Life's no fairy tale for Jack. After all, his father's been missing ever since that incident with the beanstalk and the giant, and his grandfather keeps pushing him to get out and find a princess to rescue. Who'd want to rescue a snobby, entitled princess anyway? Especially one that falls out of the sky wearing a shirt that says "Punk Princess," and still denies she's royalty. In fact, May doesn't even believe in magic. Yeah, what's that about? May does need help though -- a huntsman is chasing her, her grandmother has been kidnapped, and Jack thinks it's all because of the Wicked Queen . . . mostly because May's grandmother might just be the long-lost Snow White. Jack and May's thrillingly hilarious adventure combines all the classic stories -- fractured as a broken magic mirror -- into one epic novel for the ages. Photo of the author by Maarten de Boer. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 11, 2010, | 9/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitCarol Moldaw | So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems by Moldaw (Etruscan Press); Masque by Byrne (Tupelo Press) Poet Carol Moldaw will read and sign her recent poetry collection Carol Moldaw’s most recent book, So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems was published in the spring of 2010 by Etruscan Press. She is the author of four other books of poetry, The Lightning Field, which won the 2002 FIELD Poetry Prize, Through the Window, Chalkmarks on Stone, and Taken from the River, as well as a novel, The Widening. Her work is published widely in journals, including AGNI, Antioch Review, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, FIELD, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus, Threepenny Review, and Triquarterly. It has also been anthologized in many venues, including Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, and Under 35: A New Generation of American Poets. A recipient of a Lannan Foundation Marfa Writer’s Residency, an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize, Moldaw lives outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband and daughter. In the spring of 2011 she will be the Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 10, 2010. | 9/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJoshua Mohr and Grace Krilanovich | Termite Parade by Mohr; The Orange Eats Creeps by Krilanovich (both published by Two Dollar Radio) Joshua Mohr, whose last novel (Some Things That Meant the World to Me) was a staff favorite, and Grace Krilanovich, whose debut novel (The Orange Eats Creeps) is the only one to be excerpted twice in Black Clock, will read from and sign their new novels! Praise for Termite Parade: "The book is similar to Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment': the most crucial action serves as a portal to and wellspring for the various psychologies of its characters. But Mohr's storytelling is so absorbing that Termite Parade does not read like an analytical rumination; if he is examining the very nature of these characters under a microscope, he at least lets the specimens speak for themselves." --San Francisco Chronicle Praise for The Orange Eats Creeps: "A 'vampire' novel as Celine might have written, with dashes of Blake and Burroughs: hallucinatory, poetic, passionate, excessive, sexually charged, hardcore in all the best senses of the word. Twilight this is not." --Steve Erickson Grace Krilanovich has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a finalist for the Starcherone Prize. Her first book, The Orange Eats Creeps, is the only novel to be excerpted twice in Black Clock. Joshua Mohr is the author of the novel Some Things that Meant the World to Me, which was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and one of Oprah Magazine's Top 10 reads of 2009. His second novel, the newly released Termite Parade, has been called "No small achievement" by The New York Times Book Review. He has an MFA from the University of San Francisco and has published numerous short stories and essays in publications such as 7×7, the Bay Guardian, Zyzzyva, The Rumpus, Other Voices, the Cimarron Review, Gulf Coast and Pleiades, among many others. He lives in San Francisco and teaches fiction writing. Please visit him at joshuamohr.net. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 9, 2010. | 9/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJohn Brandon and Salvador Plascencia | Citrus County (McSweeney's) by Brandon; The People of Paper (McSweeney's hardcover, Houghton Mifflin paperback) by Plascencia John Brandon will read from and sign his acclaimed new novel, Citrus County, with special guest Salvador Plascencia, author of The People of Paper! "With Citrus County John Brandon joins the ranks of writers like Denis Johnson, Joy Williams, Mary Robison and Tom Drury, writers whose wild flights feel more likely than a heap of what we’ve come to expect from literature, by calmly reminding us that the world is far more startling than most fiction is.” —New York Times Book Review (cover review) John Brandon was raised on the Gulf Coast of Florida. During the writing of this book he worked at a Frito-Lay warehouse and a Sysco warehouse. During the revising he was the John 8 Renee Grisham Fellow in Creative Writing at University of Mississippi. His favorite recreational activity is watching college football. His first book was Arkansas, a novel. Salvador Plascencia is the author of the novel The People of Paper, which was named a best book of the year by San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, and Boldtype. The novel has been translated into a dozen languages. His fiction and reviews have appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, and The Los Angeles Times. In 2010, Poets and Writers named Plascencia one of the Fifty of the Most Inspiring Authors in the World. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 8, 2010. | 9/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitNeal Pollack | Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude (Harper Perennial) Neal Pollack, author of Never Mind the Pollacks and Alternadad, will discuss and sign his new memoir, Stretch. "Neal Pollack has a well documented history of putting himself into ridiculous positions, but never so literally… If Eat, Pray, Love had been written by a sweaty, aging, male smartass, then that book might be called Stretch, and Elizabeth Gilbert would be named Neal Pollack." —John Hodgman Neal Pollack is the author of the bestselling memoir Alternadad and several acclaimed books of satirical fiction, including the cult classic The Neal Pollack Anthology Of American Literature and the rock-n-roll novel Never Mind The Pollacks. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, GQ, Details, Men’s Journal, Maxim, Salon.com, Slate.com, and many other magazines and websites. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 7, 2010. | 9/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMona Simpson | My Hollywood (Knopf) Acclaimed Los Angeles novelist Mona Simpson (Anywhere But Here) will read from and sign her long-awaited novel My Hollywood -- her first in ten years! "Funny, smart, and filled with razor sharp observations about life and parenthood, Simpson's latest is well worth the wait." --Publishers Weekly Mona Simpson is the author of Anywhere But Here, The Lost Father, A Regular Guy, and Off Keck Road, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and won the Heartland Prize of the Chicago Tribune. She has received a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim grant, a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, and, recently, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Santa Monica, California. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 2, 2010. | 9/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRick Moody | The Four Fingers of Death (Little, Brown 8 Co.) Rick Moody (The Diviners) will read and sign his sprawling new novel -- an "adaptation" of a (fictional) 1960s pulp horror movie. This one's for readers of Vonnegut and Pynchon, and we know there are a lot of you out there! "The book is entertaining and often poignant, probing the limits of technology, consciousness, and language in the face of grief." --The New Yorker "The Four Fingers of Death reads [...] like a 700-page Kurt Vonnegut book." --Time Out New York Rick Moody is the award-winning author of Black Veil, Demonology, The Diviners, Garden State, The Ice Storm, Purple America, and Right Livelihoods. Photo of the author by Thatcher Keats. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 1, 2010. | 9/4/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitHoward Altmann | In This House (Turtle Point Press) Poet Howard Altmann will read and sign his new poetry collection, In This House. "Howard Altmann interrogates the sky, the light, the world, about their intentions. If he seldom finds reassuring answers, he finds something better: 'When all that consoled consoles no longer / loneliness finds a room inside the one it knows.' These poems are as essential as a glass of water." --John Ashbery Howard Altmann's work has appeared in many journals including most recently the New England Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. In This House is his second book of poems. He is also the author of The Johnsons 8 The Thompsons (Playscripts 2008). Born and raised in Montreal, he has earned degrees from McGill and Stanford. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 30, 2010. | 8/16/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitVendela Vida | The Lovers (Ecco) Vendela Vida returns to Skylight Books to read from and sign her new novel, The Lovers. Vendela Vida is the author of Girls on the Verge, a non-fiction investigation of the rituals that help American girls develop their adult identities, and two novels, the New York Times Notable Book Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and And Now You Can Go. She is co-editor of The Believer magazine, and lives in Northern California with her husband and children. Photo of the author by Chloe Aftel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 29,2010. | 8/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitTony O’Neil with Dan Fante | Sick City (Harper Perennial) Tony O'Neill will return to Skylight Books to read from and sign his newest novel, Sick City! "Sick City is fun, twisted and brutal. One of the best books written about LA in a long time. O’Neill could be our generation’s Jim Thompson." --James Frey (A Million Little Pieces, Bright Shining Morning) "Fans of Chuck Palahniuk and Warren Ellis will cherish this twisted tale." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Tony O'Neill writes about the Hollywood I know as well as any writer alive. His characters are a punch in the face, scorchingly real. His dialogue is note-perfect and could only have been lived in the moment-by-moment life of one who has sat on a curb and pondered his next jive and shuck while searching for cigarette butts." --Dan Fante (Chump Change, Mooch, Spitting Off Tall Buildings) Tony O'Neill’s books include Digging the Vein, Down and Out on Murder Mile, and the New York Times bestselling Hero of the Underground (which he co-authored). He is also the co-author of Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, by Cherie Currie. O'Neill's essays, poems, and short stories have appeared extensively online and in print. He is a survivor of heroin addiction, crack abuse, rehab, fatherhood, and stints in the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Kenickie, and Marc Almond's band. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter. THIS EVENT TOOK PLACE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS ON JULY 28, 2010. | 8/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitAlex Cohen and Jenny Barbee | Down and Derby: The Insider's Guide to Roller Derby (Soft Skull Press) Meet two of L.A.'s own Derby Dolls, Alex Cohen a.k.a. Axles of Evil (also of KPCC renown) and Jenny Barbee a.k.a Kasey Bomber, as they discuss and sign their new book on roller derby, Down and Derby! Alex “Axles of Evil” Cohen is the host of "All Things Considered" on KPCC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to National Public Radio. Jennifer “Kasey Bomber” Barbee writes for Blood and Thunder magazine and is a longtime staffer of the WGA. Both authors have skated with the L.A. Derby Dolls since 2003 and live in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 26, 2010. | 8/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitAram Saroyan with David Godine | Door to the River: Essays and Reviews from the 1960s into the Digital Age (Black Sparrow Books) On the occasion of the release of this new book of nonfiction by the acclaimed writer Aram Saroyan, and the fortieth anniversary of Black Sparrow Press, we're pleased to present Aram Saroyan in conversation with Black Sparrow publisher David Godine. Aram Saroyan is an internationally known poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright. The recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts poetry awards (one of them for his controversial one-word poem "lighght"). Saroyan is a past president of PEN USA West and a current faculty member of the Masters of Professional Writing Program at USC. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the painter Gailyn Saroyan. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 22, 2010. | 8/9/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitKalee Thompson | Deadliest Sea: The Untold Story Behind the Greatest Rescue in Coast Guard History (William Morrow) A launch party for local author Kalee Thompson and her new nonfiction book Deadliest Sea, about the tragic sinking of the Alaska Ranger, and one of the most remarkable rescue missions in maritime history. Kalee Thompson is a freelance writer who covers science, the environment, and the outdoors. She was formerly an editor at Popular Science and National Geographic Adventure, and her work has appeared in Women’s Health, Wired, and Popular Mechanics. She lives in Los Angeles, CA. Visit www.deadliestsea.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 20, 2010. | 8/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEli Horowitz and Mac Barnett | The Clock Without a Face (McSweeney's) An event for this new eye-catching, pentagonal mystery/puzzle/board book, featuring Eli Horowitz and Mac Barnett, two of the book's authors. Twelve emerald-studded numbers, each handmade and one of a kind, have been buried in 12 holes across the land. These treasures will belong to whoever digs them up first. The question: Where to dig? The only path to the answer: solve the riddle of the book. Eli Horowitz has edited and designed books and journals for McSweeney's for the past eight years. Before McSweeney's, Eli was employed as a carpenter and wrote science trivia questions tenuously linked to popular films. He was born in Virginia and now lives in San Francisco. Mac Barnett: Born to non-farmers in a California farming community, Mac now lives near San Francisco. He's on the board of directors of 826LA, a nonprofit writing center for students in Los Angeles, and he founded the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, a convenience store for time travelers. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 14, 2010. | 7/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDavid Mitchell | The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House) "Mitchell is, clearly, a genius." --The New York Times Book Review (review of Cloud Atlas) "Mitchell really is his generation's Pynchon." --Kirkus Reviews (review of Cloud Atlas) "Brilliant…Mitchell creates an evocative yet authentically adolescent voice, an achievement even more impressive than the ventriloquism of his earlier books." --The New York Times Book Review (review of Black Swan Green) David Mitchell is an internationally bestselling two-time Booker Prize finalist, a Time magazine 100 Most Influential People, and a Granta Best Young British Novelist. His first novel, Ghostwritten, was awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best book by a writer under 35 and a Guardian First Book Award finalist. His second novel, Number9Dream, was a finalist for the Booker Prize finalist and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His third novel Cloud Atlas was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was an international bestseller. His most recent novel, Black Swan Green, was long-listed for the Booker Prize and named a Time Best Book of the Year. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS ON JULY 23, 2010. | 7/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJustin Halpern | Sh*t My Dad Says (It Books) The author of this very popular book, based on the also very popular Twitter feed, will be here to discuss and sign his book! Justin Halpern, 29, is the founding editor of the comedy website HolyTaco.com and a senior writer at Maxim.com. Halpern created the Twitter page "S**t My Dad Says," which boasts more than a million followers, and is co-writing and co-executive producing a sitcom adaptation for Warner Bros and CBS. He splits his time between Los Angeles and his parents' home in San Diego. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 12, 2010. | 7/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSlake Magaine | Slake Magazine A launch party for the new Los Angeles-based literary magazine Slake, featuring writers and premiere-issue contributors Mark Z. Danielewski, Jonathan Gold, Michelle Huneven, and David Schneider! Slake is founded by former LA Weekly editors Joe Donnelly and Laurie Ochoa, who put together a 232-page first issue that's filled with substantive content from an impressive list of local writers, artists, and photographers. Want to learn more? The Los Angeles Times book blog Jacket Copy covered this new mag -- read about it here -- and Brand X has an interview with Slake's founders here. Mark Z. Danielewski was born in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles. He is the best-selling author of the novels House of Leaves and Only Revolutions, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction. Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic for the L.A. Weekly and author of Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles, is the first food writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. In addition to his writing for Gourmet, Saveur, and other national food and travel magazines, Gold has a shady past as a composer and performance artist, spent time as the rap and heavy-metal correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was the L.A. Weekly's music editor, and wrote about music and popular culture for Spin, Rolling Stone, and Details. Michelle Huneven's most recent novel, Blame, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and named a finalist for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her first and second novels, Round Rock and Jamesland,, were New York Times notable books and finalists for Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. She has received the Southern California Booksellers Award for Fiction, a G. E. Younger Writers Award, and a Whiting Award. She teaches creative writing at UCLA and lives with her husband in the town where she was born, Altadena, California. David Schneider was born and raised in San Francisco. He has worked in commercials, film, television, and theater since moving to Los Angeles in 2002. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 11, 2010. | 7/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEsther Pearl Watson | Unlovable Vol. 2 (Fantagraphics) Esther Watson, co-author of Whatcha Mean, What's a Zine? and author of Unlovable will discuss and sign the second volume in her hilarious and heartbreaking series that's loosely based on the 1980s-era diary of a high school girl that she found in a gas station bathroom. "Watson's graphic style and messily scrawled confessions read like a genuine diary, filled with humor and despair. Unlovable makes me grateful to be past that painful stage." --The Seattle Weekly Esther Pearl Watson lives in Los Angeles, CA with her husband and fellow artist, Mark Todd. Together they authored the influential D.I.Y. tome, Whatcha Mean, What's A Zine? Learn more at funchicken.com. | 7/19/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMichele Dominguez Greene | Keep Sweet (Simon Pulse) Michele Dominguez Greene will read from and sign her powerful new young adult novel about a Mormon fundamentalist girl's struggle to escape a forced polygamist marriage. Michele Dominguez Greene has had a long-standing successful career as an actress, appearing in television, film, and theater. She received an Emmy nomination for her role as Abigail Perkins on the NBC series, “L.A. Law”, and she is currently recurring in HBO's “Big Love” and ABC's “Brothers and Sisters.” Greene’s debut novel, Chasing the Jaguar is included on reading lists around the country. She lives with her family in Los Angeles. Visit her at michelegreene.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 6, 2010. | 7/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJames Kaelan | We're Getting On (Flatmancrooked) A launch party for the new novel by James Kaelan, We're Getting On! This is the kickoff for a "zero-emissions book tour," on which the author will be touring from Los Angeles to Vancouver, all on bicycle. The book is also biodegradable, and the cover is made out of a specialty paper that contains spruce tree seeds. You can plant the book and it becomes, literally, the very thing books are made of. "James Kaelan is a fine, intelligent writer. We’re Getting On is so elegantly and imaginatively written that it should be a significant debut.” --Ha Jin James Kaelan is the author of the novel We're Getting On, which grows into a tree, and which he's touring this summer by bicycle. When he isn't writing or training, he teaches at Pepperdine University and writes criticism for TheMillions.com. His short fiction has appeared in Best New Writing, Monkeybicycle, Avery, and Opium, amongst others. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 2, 2010. | 7/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitShane Jones | Light Boxes (Penguin) Shane Jones will be here to read from and sign his book Light Boxes! This debut novel was a staff favorite when it came out from a small press last year; now that it's been optioned by Spike Jonze, it's getting a new release from Penguin! Shane Jones was born in February of 1980. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Typo, and Pindeldyboz. He lives in upstate New York with two cats and one wife. This is his first novel. Director Spike Jonze (Where The Wild Things Are, Being John Malkovich) purchased the film option for Light Boxes in July 2009. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 30, 2010. | 7/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRich Fulcher | Tiny Acts of Rebellion: 97 Almost-Legal Ways to Stick It to the Man (Michael O'Mara Books) Rich Fulcher of the British TV hit The Might Boosh will be here to discuss and sign his new book, Tiny Acts of Rebellion! Rich Fulcher is an American comedian, writer and improviser. He is best known for smash-hit The Mighty Boosh, with whom he has toured and taken many roles in their BBC3 series. Most recently he has been seen as his alter-ego, Eleanor – aka "the world’s greatest groupie," playing sell-out seasons in Australia before heading up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August. Rich released his book Tiny Acts of Rebellion in 2009 and is also known for his performances in the award-winning and subsequently televised Modern Problems in Science (BBC3), Snuff Box (BBC3), and Skins (E4). THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 7, 2010. | 7/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitCambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles | The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles (Cambridge University Press) Editor Kevin McNamara and contributors William Mohr, Scott Bryson, and Eric Avila will read from their selected pieces in this great new anthology of local literature! William Alexander McClung and Mark Shiel, who were originally scheduled to appear, will be unable to make it. Kevin McNamara writes on cities and their cultures. A professor of literature and American studies at the University of Houston–Clear Lake, he received his Ph.D. from UC Irvine and has also taught in Turkey and the Czech Republic. William Mohr is a poet who teaches literature and creative writing at CSU Long Beach. His longstanding project, Backlit Renaissance: Los Angeles Poets during the Cold War will be published by the University of Iowa Press in early 2011. (Photo of William Mohr by Linda Fry.) Scott Bryson is a professor of English at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. He is the author of The West Side of Any Mountain: Place, Space, and Ecopoetry (University of Iowa Press, 2005) and has edited several collections of literary criticism. His current scholarship focuses on urban theory and culture, primarily as it relates to the phenomenon of Los Angeles literature. Eric Avila is the author of Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (University of California Press, (2004) and is currently working on second book project that considers the cultural history of urban highway construction in postwar America. He is a professor of History, Chicano Studies and Urban Planning at UCLA. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 24, 2010. | 7/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJohn Marshall High School with 826LA | You Never Forget How to Ride a Bike: Lessons Learned by the Students of John Marshall High School (826LA) 826LA is releasing its newest book, You Never Forget How to Ride a Bike: Lessons Learned by the Students of John Marshall High School. The young authors lead us through the moments that have shaped their lives— among them encounters with Def Leppard albums, wormy peaches, campus police, and Mara Salvatrucha—and share with us the things they've learned about the kindness of strangers, letting go of love, resolve in the presence of naysayers, and the value of a dollar. 826LA is a writing and tutoring nonprofit, with centers in Echo Park and Venice, that provides after-school tutoring, evening and weekend workshops, in-school tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 23, 2010. | 7/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJenny Hollowell | Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (Holt McDougal) A launch party for the debut novel by Los Angeles author Jenny Hollowell! "Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe tells us in quick witty scenes and sharp psychological details what it's like to be a needy spirit in a beautiful body, yearning for success. This novel is smart, spare, comic and sad. It rings beautifully true." --John Casey, National Book Award-winning author of Spartina Jenny Hollowell's short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Scheherezade, and the anthology New Sudden Fiction, and was named a distinguished story by Best American Short Stories. She received an MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction and recipient of the Balch Short Story Award. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. This is her first novel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 21, 2010 | 7/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitLit Thing Book Bash | Our second in a series of rant/rave nights featuring local authors talking about books that they love or love to hate! This time, our ranters and ravers are Mark Haskell Smith (Moist), Amy Spalding, Amy Goldman Koss (The Girls), Justine Musk (Uninvited) and host Cecil Castellucci (Beige). THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 16, 2010. | 7/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitCatherine Kirkwood | Cut Away (Arktoi Books) Writer Catherine Kirkwood will read from and sign her first novel, Cut Away. Catherine Kirkwood holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard University, a PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of York, England, and a BS in psychobiology. Her work has appeared in the Pitkin Review, and in the fiction anthology Under the Flesh of Oranges. Her acclaimed feminist work, Leaving Abusive Partners, has been translated and sold internationally. Cut Away is her debut novel. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up in a family that held science—physics and math—as the main form of faith, but her mother firmly believed in the power of wonder that resides in nature. She took her into the back-country as soon as she could walk and taught her never to be afraid of the urge to go deep into the wilderness, to always trust her instincts in finding her path. Catherine now lives in Seattle in a small, yellow cottage with her partner, a border collie mix, and two geriatric cats. When she’s not writing, she works as a systems analyst in cancer research. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 6, 2010. | 7/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJanelle Brown | This Is Where We Live (Spiegel 8 Grau) A launch party for the new novel by L.A. writer Janelle Brown (All We Ever Wanted Was Everything). Janelle Brown is a freelance journalist who writes for The New York Times, Vogue, Wired, Elle, and Self, among other publications, and was formerly a senior writer for Salon. She lives in Los Angeles. Praise for All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: "A razor-sharp critique of the absurd expectations that, these days, have come to stand for ambition, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is wrenching, riveting, and still manages to be great fun. This is a wise, intimate chronicle of one family's struggle to take off their masks and live in the place they most feared: the real, imperfect world." --Meghan Daum, author of The Quality of Life Report "A withering Silicon Valley satire . . . From the ashes of their California dreams, the three [women] must learn to talk to each other instead of past each other, and build a new, slightly more realistic existence--but not without doses of revenge and hilarity. Brown's hip narrative reads like a sharp, contemporary twist on The Corrections." --Publishers Weekly THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 21, 2010. | 7/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMembers of the King Middle School Writers Club With Steve Abee | The students from the Thomas Starr King Middle School Writers Club will be sharing their work with the world with author/teacher Steve Abee. It is an inspiring evening of young poets and artists telling it like it is. Steve Abee was born in Santa Monica, California and began writing after high school when he held a job as an orderly at St. John’s Hospital. His mind started to unfold itself and he thought if he was going to save it he better start writing things down. “I saw the fragility and blessedness of lives and started to come apart in the wonderment of it all.” He is the author of the new poetry collection, Great Balls of Flowers out now with Write Bloody books, and the upcoming novel Johnny Future with MacAdam/Cage; also he authored the Los Angeles underground classic The Bus: Cosmic Ejaculations of the Daily Mind in Transit (Phony Lid Books), and the collection of short stories and poems King Planet (Incommunicado). He lives and teaches in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 9, 2010. | 7/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMichael Kearns and Andrea Richensin | What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding on to and Letting Go of Their Daughters (Harlequin) Editor Andrea Richesin and contributor Michael Kearns will read from and sign the new anthology What I Would Tell Her. Andrea N. Richesin is the editor of four anthologies, What I Would Tell Her, Because I Love Her, The May Queen, and Crush (forthcoming in summer 2011). Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and Parenting, among many other publications. She lives in the San Francisco bay area with her husband and daughter. For more information please visit www.nickirichesin.com. Michael Kearns is an award-winning writer-performer who lives in Los Angeles with his daughter, Tia. He is the author of six theatre books (all published by Heinemann), more than a dozen produced plays, numerous solo performance pieces, and his work is widely anthologized. As an actor-writer-director-producer-fundraiser-journalist-teacher, his work surrounding HIV/AIDS—spanning more than a quarter of a century—is encyclopedic in its comprehensiveness, including work as an actor in film and television. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 12, 2010. | 7/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSteve Almond | Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life (Random House) Steve Almond, whose book My Life in Heavy Metal is one of Skylight's all-time bestselling fiction titles, will be here to discuss and sign his new memoir, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life! "For some of us, music is true religion, and Catholic to boot. Steve Almond comes off as devout -- and divided -- as any altar boy. His strange and funny book should be required reading for all of us fans and musicians who belong to the Church of Rock and Roll." —Aimee Mann Steve Almond is the author of the essay collection (Not that You Asked), the story collections My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the nonfiction book Candyfreak, and the novel Which Brings Me to You, co-written with Julianna Baggott. He lives outside Boston with his wife and two children, and listens to rock and roll at all hours. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 7, 2010. | 6/19/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitKate Buckley and Lee Mallory | A Wild Region (Moon Tide Press) and Follow Me Down (Tebot Bach) by Buckley; Now and Then: Collected Poems of Lee Mallory (Moon Tide Press) Join us as two poets published by the local Moon Tide Press read from their recent work! Kate Buckley, a ninth-generation Kentuckian, will earn her MFA from Spalding University in May 2010. She has been widely published and anthologized, her poems most recently appearing in Bellingham Review, North American Review and Shenandoah. She is the author of A Wild Region (Moon Tide Press, 2008) and Follow Me Down (Tebot Bach, 2009). Her recent honors and awards include the Gabehart Prize for Imaginative Writing and the North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Prize, selected by Molly Peacock. Two poems from Kate's second book are currently under consideration for the Pushcart Prize. A professor at Santa Ana College, Lee Mallory co-produces the Factory Readings in Santa Ana and Poetry at Alta in Newport Beach, where he has lived most of his life. He was an acquaintance of the late Charles Bukowski and Kenneth Rexroth, and shared time with poet and pop novelist Richard Brautigan. In addition to his eight volumes of poetry and performance features at almost 100 poetry events, Lee has written over 125 poems which have appeared in such magazines as Konglomerati, Mojo Navigator(e), Invisible City, Wisconsin Review, Beyond Baroque and The Smith. He has also been covered frequently in newspapers and is a marathon runner. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 5, 2010. | 6/19/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Explicit“REBEL NUNS” from the Immaculate Heart community discuss the art and legacy of SISTER CORITA | Learning By Heart (Allworth Press) Witness to Integrity (Liturgical Press) A Place at the Table (Elevated Lab) Come Alive! (Four Corners) Join us for a fascinating panel discussion about artist, educator, and "rebel nun" Sister Corita! Hear from Corita’s students and former sisters who defied the Cardinal, renounced their vows, and redefined themselves as an independent ecumenical community – dedicated to those radical ideals of peace and justice! This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the independent Immaculate Heart community. This event is presented in conjunction with Artwalk, which will features Sister Corita's work on display at the Hollywood Lutheran Church (1733 N. New Hampshire Ave.) and other venues throughout Los Feliz. Four books related to the Sister Corita and the Immaculate Heart community will be available for purchase. Liz Mahoney, IHM, has been a member of the Immaculate Heart Community for 65 years and was present at the chapter that made the decision to update the Community following Vatican II. Helen Kelley, IHM, is the former president of Immaculate Heart College and former president of Immaculate Heart Community. Lenore N. Dowling, IHM, is a former faculty member of the IHC Art Department and current chair of the Immaculate Heart Community Board. Nan Cano is an Immaculate Heart College alumna, former teacher at Immaculate Heart High School, and author of Acts of Light: Martha Graham in the 21st Century. Jan Steward, a distinguished graphic designer and photographer, lives in Los Angeles. She is the co-author of Learning By Heart. Richard Crawford was a friend and student of Sister Corita's. He's only interested in painting, movies, gardening, politics, and Plant Spirit Medicine. Read that book. Corita chose David Mekelburg to teach all of her classes at Immaculate Heart when she moved to Boston. Donald Jackson, scribe to England's Royal Family, said, "Mekelburg it the finest calligrapher in the States." Aaron Rose will moderate tonight's panel. Aaron is a film director, curator and writer currently living in Los Angeles. He was co-curator of the Beautiful Losers touring exhibition (2003-2009), edited the collected book, and is also the director of the documentary film of the same title (2008). In 2009, he completed the short film Become A Microscope based on the life and art of Sister Corita. His publishing imprint, Alleged Press releases hardcover books by contemporary artists. He is also co-editor (along with Ed Templeton and Brendan Fowler) of ANP Quarterly magazine. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 4, 2010. | 6/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitNeil Landau and Screenwriting Workshop | 101 Things I Learned in Film School (Grand Central Publishing) Join us for a fascinating discussion and a screenwriting workshop with the author of 101 Things I Learned in Film School. Neil Landau is a screenwriter whose television and film credits include Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Melrose Place, Doogie Howser, M.D., The Magnificent Seven, and Twice in a Lifetime. He has developed feature films for 20th Century Fox, Disney, Universal, and Columbia Pictures, and television pilots for Warner Bros., Touchstone, Lifetime, and CBS. He works internationally as a script consultant and teaches at UCLA's School of Film, Television, and Digital Media, as well as at USC Film School, and Goddard College in Vermont. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 3, 2010. | 6/11/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMichael Sledge | The More I Owe You (Counterpoint) Michael Sledge, author of the acclaimed memoir Mother and Son, will present his debut novel, about the relationship between poet Elizabeth Bishop and architect Lota de Macedo Soares. "A novel of extraordinary beauty, intimacy, and such consummate tenderness for its complex Elizabeth that one wonders how Sledge managed to slide so close to her soul. A gorgeous meditation on enduring love, damage, and what it can be to be happy, for however brief a moment. Bravo, bravo, bravo." —Stacey D'Erasmo, author of The Sky Below "A beautiful dream of a book. Sumptuously detailed, deeply felt, it is as if Sledge slipped back in time and walked every step with Elizabeth Bishop, breathed every breath with her." —Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals "Sensitive and engrossing." --Publishers Weekly Michael Sledge is the author of a memoir, Mother and Son, and has contributed to a number of literary journals. He is cofounder of the Oaxifornia arts studio in Oaxaca, Mexico, and lives with his partner in both Mexico and Oakland, California. This is his first novel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 2, 2010. | 6/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitAimee Bender | The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Doubleday) We're delighted to have Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, back at Skylight to present her new novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake! "[Aimee Bender] makes you grateful for the very existence of language." —San Francisco Chronicle (review of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt) "To curl up with an Aimee Bender story is to thank heaven you ever learned to read in the first place" —Entertainment Weekly (review of Willful Creatures) Aimee Bender is the author of the novel An Invisible Sign of My Own and the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. She has received two Pushcart prizes and was nominated for the Tiptree Award in 2005. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 1, 2010. | 6/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitCharles Fleming | Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles (Santa Monica Press) Join us for a fascinating look at our very own corner of L.A.! Author Charles Fleming will present and sign his walking guide—chock full of local history—about the historic staircases of Los Angeles. Charles Fleming is the author of the novels The Ivory Coast and After Havana and the respected Hollywood "how-not-to" book High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess, and co-author of the recent non-fiction bestseller My Lobotomy. A veteran reporter for Variety, Newsweek, the LA Weekly and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, Fleming teaches entertainment reporting at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. He lives in Silver Lake with his wife and two daughters. Secret Stairs is his first walking guide. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 30, 2010. | 6/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBest American Comics Criticism | Best American Comics Criticism (Fantagraphics) Ben Schwartz, editor of the new anthology Best American Comics Criticism, will discuss comics and comics criticism with Kramers Ergot editor Sammy Harkham, graphic novelist Joe Matt (Spent), and comics critics Robert Fiore and Brian Doherty Ben Schwartz lives in Los Angeles. Besides editing The Best American Comics Criticism for Fantagraphics, he works as a journalist and screenwriter and is currently writing The Lost Laugh, a history of American humor set between the two world wars. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Suck.com, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic on-line. The screenplays he has sold collect dust on A-list shelves all over town. Sammy Harkham is an Award winning cartoonist behind Crickets (Drawn 8 Quarterly) and the editor of Kramers Ergot. His work has been published in Vice, Arthur, numerous Best American Comics volumes, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Recently, he guest edited the annual Holloween comic, The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror. He lives in Los Angeles. Robert Fiore writes the long-running column Funnybook Roulette for The Comics Journal. At Fantagraphics Books he edited a number of anthologies of underground cartoonists such as Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Spain Rodriguez and Vaughn Bode. Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine, author of the books This is Burning Man and Radicals for Capitalism, and a lifelong Friend of Comics. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 27, 2010. | 6/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSteven Reigns | Inheritance (Lethe Press) A launch party for the latest poetry collection by this acclaimed local poet! "Steven Reigns explores the inexhaustible power of family to affect our lives and loves, and does so in a candid yet passionate manner remarkable for its evocative and wounding moments." --Wanda Coleman, author of Heavy Daughter Blues and Mercurochrome: New Poems "This is such a naked book. It falls neatly into no school of poetry, nor does 'gay poetry' sum it up. I turned the pages of Inheritance pretty hungrily, glad to encounter such honesty about a gay life lived with pleasure and bitterness and companionability." --Eileen Myles, author of Sorry, Tree and Skies Steven Reigns is a Los Angeles-based poet and educator. His newest collection, Inheritance, came out in 2010 by Lethe Press. After earning a degree in Creative Writing at the University of South Florida, he published his début poetry collection, Your Dead Body is My Welcome Mat, in 2001. Since then, Reigns has published four chapbooks: Ignited, Cartography, In the Room, and As if Memories Were Not Enough. A two-time recipient of The Los Angeles County’s Department of Cultural Affairs' Artist in Residency Grant, Reigns organized and taught the first-ever autobiography poetry workshop for GLBT seniors and edited an anthology of their writings, My Life is Poetry. He has taught writing workshop around the country to GLBT youth and people living with HIV and recently received his Masters in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University. Currently he is involved with S(t)even Years, a 7-year endurance performance under the mentorship of performance artist Linda Montano. Visit him at www.stevenreigns.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 23, 2010. | 5/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitEmily Gould | And the Heart Says... Whatever (Free Press) Emily Gould will discuss and sign her new humorous essay collection And the Heart Says Whatever. "This is not a 'nice' book, but it comes by its anger and melancholy honestly, and it makes sense of much that is puzzling about our cultural moment." —Jonathan Franzen Emily Gould has written for The New York Times, the New York Observer, and Jezebel.com, among other publications. Before becoming editor of Gawker.com, a job she quit and then described in a cover story for The New York Times Magazine in 2008, she was an associate editor at Hyperion. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 20, 2010. | 5/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDeanne Stillman, Rebecca K. O’Connor and Ruth Nolan | No Place for a Puritan: The Literature of California's Deserts (Heyday Books)+ Deanne Stillman, Rebecca K. O'Connor, and Ruth Nolan will read from their included pieces in No Place for a Puritan, a new anthology of California desert literature, edited by Nolan. "You could argue that the great California desert is such an idiosyncratic landscape that stories of lives spent there are too regional to have universal meaning. But, as this thrilling and necessary collection attests, you'd be wrong. A landscape that captivates writers as diverse as Joan Didion and John Steinbeck, that provokes unexpected works of literary beauty from obscure Spanish missionaries and Chemehuevi Indians must be a place that reflects somethingdeep and true about us all." --Marisa Silver, author of God of War Ruth Nolan, a former Bureau of Land Management California Desert District helicopter hotshot firefighter and inner-city high school teacher, is the editor of No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California’s Deserts (2009) and a contributor to Inlandia: a literary journey through Southern California’s Inland Empire (2006.) Both books were published by Heyday Books. She is a poet and writer whose subjects range from desert noir to motherhood, and her writing has been published in numerous literary journals. She recently collaborated with the UCR-California Museum of Photography on a film, Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps, and is also an avid photographer. She and has published three collections of poetry: Wild Wash Road, Dry Waterfall and Lava Flow Petroglyphs. Rebecca K. O’Connor, a professional animal trainer and falconer, is the author of Lift, a memoir published by Red Hen Press (2009), and was a Pushcart Nominee for the 2008 Prize. Her novel, Falcon’s Return was a Holt Medallion Finalist for best first novel and she has published numerous reference books on the natural world. As a professional animal trainer, O’Connor has worked with a variety of exotic animals in zoos and private facilities around the United States and abroad. She has been a falconer for fifteen years and is a nationally known parrot behaviorist. Her book A Parrot for Life: Raising and Training the Perfect Parrot Companion was published in 2007 by TFH and is required reading for those adopting parrots are several rescue facilities. She is also a nationally sought-after lecturer at parrot clubs and parrot festivals. Deanne Stillman brakes for sand. A widely published, critically acclaimed writer, she is the author of Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), which was named a "Best Book of 2008" by the Los Angeles Times and won a California Book Award silver medal for nonfiction. Deanne is also the author of the bestseller Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave, a Los Angeles Times "Best Book of 2001" which Hunter Thompson called "a strange and brilliant story by an important American writer." It was recently published in a new, updated edition by Angel City Press. She is also the author of Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango, a tribute to Joshua Tree National Park, published by the University of Arizona Press. She is currently writing Mojave Manhunt for Nation Books, based on her Rolling Stone piece of the same name, which was a finalist for a PEN journalism award. She is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Creative Writing Program. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 18, 2010. | 5/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitUC Irvine MFA Students | Students from the University of California, Irvine MFA program will read from their work. Reading this evening will be Greg McClure (poetry), Zana Previti (fiction), Rachel Hinton (poetry), and Ryan Hume (fiction). | 5/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDaniel Clowes and Dana Gould | Wilson (Drawn 8 Quarterly) Daniel Clowes, the acclaimed cartoonist behind Ghost World (the graphic novel and the Oscar-nominated screenplay), the minicomic (turned movie) Art School Confidential, and the Eightball comic series will be here to discuss and sign Wilson, his new first all-new graphic novel! After a slideshow presentation, Clowes will be joined by comedian and tonight's special guest moderator Dana Gould for a discussion and Q8A! THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 14, 2010. | 5/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitPete Nelson | I Thought You Were Dead (Algonquin) Novelist Pete Nelson will read from and sign his latest book, about the heart-wrenching and hilarious relationship between a down-on-his-luck man and his talking dog. Pete Nelson is the author of several books, including Left for Dead. He is also a singer-songwriter with a select but devoted following. He is not, however, the Pete Nelson who writes books about tree houses, although he has nothing against them. He lives in WesTchester County, New York. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 13, 2010. | 5/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitGeoff Johns | Absolute Green Lantern: Rebirth (DC Comics) The popular and prolific comic book writer Geoff Johns will be here to discuss and sign Absolute Green Lantern: Rebirth, the deluxe edition of the series that relaunched one of DC Comics' greatest heroes. Johns will be signing other books in addition to Absolute Green Lantern: Rebirth, but if you choose to bring something from home for him to sign, we request that you also purchase a book here. There will be a large selection of Johns' work to choose from! Geoff Johns has written highly acclaimed stories starring Superman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Teen Titans, and Justice Society of America. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling graphic novels Green Lantern: Rage of the Red Lanterns, Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War, Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come, and Superman: Braniac. He is currently working on the story for The Flash feature film, which he will also co-produce. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 8, 2010. | 5/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitGreil Marcus | When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison (PublicAffairs) We're thrilled to announce that Greil Marcus, music and culture critic, Believer columnist, and author or editor of many Skylight staff and customer favorites (Lipstick Traces, A New Literary History of America, and others) will be here to discuss and sign his new book of criticism on another Skylight favorite person: Van Morrison. Greil Marcus is the author of The Shape of Things to Come, Like a Rolling Stone, and The Old Weird America; a twentieth anniversary edition of his book Lipstick Traces was published in 2009. With Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America, published last year by Harvard University Press. Since 2000 he has taught at Princeton, Berkeley, Minnesota, and the New School in New York; his column “Real Life Rock Top 10” appears regularly in The Believer. He lives in Berkeley. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 7, 2010. | 5/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitContributors from Los Angeles Review Issue 7 | Los Angeles Review, Issue 7 (Red Hen Press) Join The Los Angeles Review, the literary journal of Red Hen Press, as they release their seventh issue. Dedicated to Judy Grahn, Issue 7 features some of the finest poetry and prose from the West Coast, the nation, and the world. Reading from featured Los Angeles Review Issue 7 contributors include: Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press) and is a fan of choreographed poetry and other "hijacked forms." Donna Emerson's second chapbook, Body Rhymes, was nominated by Finishing Line Press for a California Book Award and she's just won the 2010 Flashpoint Essay with Tiny Lights. Stephanie Barbé Hammer’s fiction, non-fiction and poetry have appeared in The Café Irreal, Square Lake, NYCBigCityLit, CRATE, The Red Rock Review, Hot Metal Bridge, Argestes, Soundings, The Bellevue Literary Review, and Hayden's Ferry Review. A two-time nominee for the Pushcart prize, she teaches comparative literature and creative writing at UC Riverside, and is a student in the MFA program at Whidbey Island, Washington. Since Tyke Johnson can't live up to the expectations of Christ, he does his best to live up to the expectations of his dentist. So far, no cavities. Howard Rappaport is a writer and teacher in San Francisco where he lives with his wife and two children. His work has appeared in the North American Review and the Madison Review. Ryan Ridge edits Faultline Journal of Art 8 Literature and has work in The Mississippi Review, PANK, Pindeldyboz, Salt Hill and others. Harry Thomas is a poet, critic, and translator, and editor-in-chief of Handsel Books, a literary imprint at Other Press/Random House. Kim Young is the author of Divided Highway (dancing girl press, 2008) and the editor of Chaparral. Bonnie ZoBell lives in a cute casita in San Diego where she’s planted all kinds of succulents and has published in lots of places. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 5, 2010. | 5/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitContributors from Make/Shift Magazine | Make/Shift Magazine Two editors and five contributors will be here to present the new issue of this great feminist culture magazine! Editor/publishers Jessica Hoffmann and Daria Yudacufski (pictured above), along with contributors Ruth Blandon, Emily Hobson, Erin Aubry Kaplan, James McKeever, and Christine Petit, will read. Jessica Hoffmann is a coeditor/copublisher of make/shift. Her writing has appeared in publications including ColorLines, AlterNet, and the anthologies We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists and Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. In 2008, Utne named her one of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." Daria Yudacufski is a coeditor/copublisher of make/shift. She received a master’s degree in art history from UCSB, focusing on issues of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary art and culture. She is the managing director of Visions and Voices, an arts and humanities initiative at USC. Ruth Blandón recently completed her PhD in English at USC, looking at transamerican modernisms. Emily Hobson is a lecturer in feminist studies at UC Santa Barbara. Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing editor to "Opinion" at the Los Angeles Times and a columnist at make/shift. James McKeever is an assistant professor of sociology at Pierce College. Christine Petit is the president of the union for academic student employees at the University of California, a blogger, and a frequent contributor to make/shift. Make/shift magazine creates and documents contemporary feminist culture and action by publishing journalism, critical analysis, fiction, poetry and visual art. Join coeditors/copublishers Jessica Hoffmann and Daria Yudacufski for an afternoon of readings featuring several make/shift contributors. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 2, 2010. | 5/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitBrad Watson | Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives (W.W. Norton) National Book Award finalist Brad Watson (for his first novel, The Heaven of Mercury)will be here to read from and sign his new short story collection, Aliens in the Prime of their Lives. "Brad Watson’s stories worm their way through you. Watson’s talent is singular, truly awesome; he reminds me of Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Conner, Chris Offutt in his bravery, his unflinching willingness to look at what might set others running. And yet these are not exactly dark stories—that is part of their magic, they are infused with an uncanny beauty in which even at the most god awful moments, something is salvaged." —A. M. Homes, author of This Book Will Save Your Life Brad Watson teaches creative writing at the University of Wyoming, Laramie. His first collection, Last Days of the Dog-Men, won the Sue Kauffman Award for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts 8 Letters. His first novel, The Heaven of Mercury, was a finalist for the National Book Award. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 3, 2010. | 5/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJoanna Smith Rakoff | A Fortunate Age (Scribner) Joanna Smith Rakoff will be here to read from and sign the new-in-paperback edition of her acclaimed debut novel, A Fortunate Age. "A wonderful, funny and spot-on portrait of my clumsy generation that brings to mind such hallmarks as Mary McCarthy's The Group, Jay McInerney's Brightness Falls, and Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children." -- Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook Joanna Smith Rakoff has written for The New York Times, Time Out New York, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Vogue, O, The Oprah Magazine, and other publications. She holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, an M.A. from University College, London, and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. She lives in New York with her husband, son and daughter. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 12, 2010. | 4/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJoyce Maynard and Dana Goodyear | Canteen Magazine Joyce Maynard and Dana Goodyear will read from their pieces in Canteen Magazine. While the reading takes place, aspiring writers will get to compete with an established writer as Dana Goodyear will face off against two audience members in a flash fiction writing contest, using an assigned topic. When the readings from Canteen are over, all three short pieces will be read out anonymously, and the audience will pick the winner. Prizes for all! Canteen redefines the literary magazine by asking accomplished writers to reveal their creative process, and pairing that insight with the best new work in fiction, poetry, art, and photography—all designed to look more like a fine art book than a dusty journal. Joyce Maynard is the author of many books, including the novel To Die For (look for her in the movie adaptation of this book, in which she plays the role of Nicole Kidman’s attorney) and the best-selling memoir, At Home in the World. Her novel, The Usual Rules — a story about surviving loss — has been a favorite of book club audiences of all ages, and was chosen one of the ten best books for young readers for 2003. Mother of three grown children, she spends half her time in Mill Valley, California, and the other half in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, where, in addition to pursuing her own work, she runs writing workshops. Dana Goodyear is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where she has worked since 1999, and the author of Honey and Junk (W. W. Norton), a collection of poems. Her work has appeared in many magaznies, journals, and periodicals, including The New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, the Yale Review, the Colorado Review, Open City, Slate, and Vogue. She lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 12, 2010. | 4/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMarisa Silver | Alone With You: Stories (Simon 8 Schuster) The acclaimed author of The God of War will be here to read from her new short story collection, Alone with You. Marisa Silver made her fiction debut in The New Yorker when she appeared in the inaugural “Debut Fiction” issue. Her collection of stories, Babes in Paradise, was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. She is also the author of the novels No Direction Home and The God of War, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the fiction category. She is the winner of the O. Henry Prize, and her work has been included in The Best American Short Stories as well as other anthologies. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons. Photo of Marisa Silver by Bader Howar. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 14, 2010. | 4/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitKim Noriega and Cecilia Woloch | Name Me (Fortunate Daughter Press) Join us for the launch of a new poetry chapbook by Kim Noriega and a party celebrating the recently established poetry press Fortunate Daughter, whose publisher and editor is Cecilia Woloch! This event will features readings by both Noriega and Woloch. Both chapbooks currently available from Fortunate Daughter (Noriega's just-published Name Me, as well as last year's An Urgent Request, by Sarah Luczaj) will be available for purchase. Kim Noriega teaches poetry to adults and teens in recovery homes and public libraries, and facilitates family literacy programs for low-literate adults with small children, to help them break the cycle of intergenerational low literacy. She reads her work locally and abroad. Her poem, "Heaven, 1963" was featured in Ted Kooser’s syndicated column, "American Life in Poetry." Her poem, "Name Me" was a finalist for the 2009 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Kim lives in San Diego with her husband, Ernie, and close to their daughter, Leiha. Cecilia Woloch is the author of four award-winning collections of poems, most recently Narcissus, winner of the Tupelo Press 2006 Snowbound Series Chapbook Award. Carpathia, newly available from BOA Editions Ltd., is her fifth book. She is currently a lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Southern California, as well as the founding director of The Paris Poetry Workshop. She spends a part of each year traveling, and in recent years has divided her time between Los Angeles, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Shepherdsville, Kentucky; Paris, France; and a small village in the Carpathian mountains of southeastern Poland. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 3, 2010. | 4/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitArthur Phillips | The Song Is You (Random House) We're thrilled to have Arthur Phillips here to read from and sign the new-in-paperback novel The Song Is You, one of our Staff Favorites from 2009! “One of the best writers in America.”—Washington Post Book World “Enthralling . . . brilliant . . . triumphant.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review Arthur Phillips is the internationally bestselling author of The Song is You, The Egyptologist, and Prague, which was a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. He lives in New York with his wife and two sons. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS ON MARCH 31, 2010. | 4/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMolly Wizenberg | A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table (Simon 8 Schuster) Creator of the popular and award-winning food blog Orangette, Molly Wizenberg will be here to discuss her new book, A Homemade Life. "Molly Wizenberg writes with wit, style, and heart. Her delicious recipes are a special gift to every reader—and home cook." --Barbara Fairchild, Editor-in-Chief, Bon Appétit Magazine Molly Wizenberg is a freelance food writer and the creator of Orangette. She writes the monthly column "Cooking Life" in Bon Appétit, and her writing has also been featured in Modern Bride, Town 8 Country, and on NPR.org. She has degrees in human biology, French, and cultural anthropology, but in 2005, she left the world of academia to write full time. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 30, 2010. | 4/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitLA and Orange County Noir | Los Angeles Noir 2, edited by Denise Hamilton (Akashic Books) Orange County Noir, edited by Gary Phillips (Akashic Books) Seven wonderful mystery writers will be here to present two new entrants in the very popular Akashic Noir anthology series: Los Angeles Noir 2 and Orange County Noir. Editors Denise Hamilton and Gary Phillips and contributors Susan Straight, Robert S. Levinson, Robert Ward, Jervey Tervalon, and Naomi Hirahara will read from their work. Denise Hamilton writes the Eve Diamond series and is editor of Los Angeles Noir, an anthology of new writing that spent two months on the best-seller lists, won the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, and won the Southern California Independent Booksellers’ award for Best Mystery of the Year. Her latest novel, Los Angeles Times best seller The Last Embrace, has been compared to James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler. Gary Phillips writes stories of chicanery and misadventure in various formats, including novels and short stories. He has contributed stories to several volumes in the Akashic Noir Series, including Los Angeles Noir, Dublin Noir, and Phoenix Noir. He recently published Freedom’s Fight, a novel set in World War II. Susan Straight is a native of Riverside, California, just over the Orange County border. She has published six novels, including Highwire Moon, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and A Million Nightingales, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her new novel, One Candle, will be published in 2010. Her short story “The Golden Gopher,” from Los Angeles Noir, won an Edgar Award in 2008. Robert S. Levinson is the author of the novels The Traitor in Us All, In the Key of Death, Where the Lies Begin, and Ask a Dead Man, as well as the Neil Gulliver and Stevie Marriner series of mystery-thrillers, which to date consist of The Elvis and Marilyn Affair, The James Dean Affair, The John Lennon Affair, and Hot Paint: The Andy Warhol Affair. The Derringer Award–winner’s short stories appear often in the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. Robert Ward’s 2006 novel Four Kinds of Rain was nominated for a Hammett Prize. He is a former writer-producer on TV shows New York Undercover, Hill Street Blues, and Miami Vice. His latest novel, Total Immunity, was published in 2009 by Harcourt. Jervey Tervalon lives in Altadena, California, with his two daughters. He teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California and is currently revising the manuscript of Hope Found Chauncey, a sequel of sorts to his best-selling novel Understand This. His essay “The Slow Death of a Chocolate City,” originally written for the LA Weekly, won a Los Angeles Press Club Award in 2008. Naomi Hirahara, born and raised in Southern California, won an Edgar Award for her third mystery in the Mas Arai series, Snakeskin Shamisen. She writes crime fiction and also novels for younger readers; her short story “Number 19” was published in the original Los Angeles Noir. She contributes a mystery serial for an English-language weekly in Japan and regularly leads writing workshops. Her fourth Mas Arai mystery, Blood Hina, is being published in 2010. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 27, 2010. | 3/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJeff Garlin | My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World (Simon Spotlight) Actor Jeff Garlin (Curb Your Enthusiasm) will be here to present his new book, in which he chronicles his year-long journey to reduce both his physical footprint (losing weight) and his carbon footprint (going green) in his laugh-out-loud self-experimental memoir. Jeff Garlin is best known for his work on Curb Your Enthusiasm. He also spent three seasons on NBC’s Mad About You and has appeared on Arrested Development, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Daily Show with John Stewart, and WALL-E. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 25, 2010. | 3/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRobbie Conal | Not Your Typical Political Animal (Art Attack Press) Political artist Robbie Conal will be here to present Not Your Typical Political Animal, a humorous and soulful collection of 20 years worth of writings, drawings, and paintings featuring his political animal muses. In the 1980s, Robbie Conal, angered by the extreme hubris of the Reagan Administration, began making satirical posters of politicians and bureaucrats who, by his personal standards, had abused their power in the name of representative democracy. He developed an irregular guerrilla army of volunteers, and started pasting up his political jabs in the form of posters, in all of the major cities across the country. Since 1986, when his first poster, “Men With No Lips,” anonymously appeared in the streets of Los Angeles, Robbie has made more than 60 posters satirizing politicians from both parties, televangelists, and global capitalists. He has gained national prominence as the country's premiere street poster artist. Conal’s work has been featured on CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose, and in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, People Magazine, Interview, and scores of daily newspapers around the country. The Washington Post named him "America’s foremost street artist" in 1988. His books include Art Attack: The Midnight Politics of a Guerrilla Poster Artist (HarperCollins, 1992), Artburn (Akashic Books, 2003), and Not Your Typical Political Animal (Art Attack Press, 2010). He continues to teach drawing, work on new posters and paintings, and live in Los Angeles with his wife and their two cats, Smilla and Bodhi. THIS EVENT WAS RECODED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 21, 2010. | 3/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDC Pierson | The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To (Vintage) A launch party for the debut novel from DC Pierson, about the typical high school experience: the homework, the awkwardness, and the mutant creatures from another galaxy. DC Pierson was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ. He graduated from NYU's Dramatic Writing Department in 2007 with a degree in writing for television. His comedy group DERRICK made a feature film called "Mystery Team." He publishes short stories and unsolicited opinions on his website, dcpierson.com. This is his first novel. THIS EVENT WAS RECODED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 20, 2010. | 3/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitRobert S. Levinson | The Traitor in All of Us (Five Star) A launch party for Los Angeles crime fiction author Robert Levinson and his new book The Traitor in Us All. The cover art of this new book is a detail from an oil painting by James Strombotne, whose work hangs in major museums and private collections. The author and artist will be signing "limited edition" reproductions of the cover suitable for framing, with complimentary copies offered to the first 12 who attend and purchase the book at the event. Robert S. Levinson is the best-selling author of seven previous mystery and thriller novels, In the Key of Death, Where the Lies Begin, Ask a Dead Men and four in the Neil Gulliver and Stevie Marriner "Affair" series. His short stories appear regularly in the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. He is a 2009 Derringer Award winner for "The Quick Brown Fox," which also appears in the new anthology, BETWEEN THE DARK AND THE DAYLIGHT. He won Ellery Queen Magazine Readers Award honors three consecutive years. His short stories have appeared in "year's best" anthologies five years running, while plays staged at RiverPark Center, Owensboro, KY, were nominated for "Angie" awards of the International Mystery Writers Festival two years running. THIS EVENT WAS RECODED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 16, 2010. | 3/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDouglas Kearney | The Black Automaton (Fence Books) Poet Douglas Kearney will be making his third appearance at Skylight Books, this time to present his new poetry collection The Black Automaton, which was selected for the National Poetry Series! Douglas Kearney’s work as a poet, performer and librettist has been featured in many fine publications and venues in print, in-the-flesh and in digital code. His first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 (Red Hen Press). His second manuscript, The Black Automaton, was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series and will be published by Fence Books in November 2009. In 2008, he was honored with a Whiting Writers’ Award. He lives in the Valley with his family and teaches courses in African American poetry, opera and myth at California Institute of the Arts. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 21, 2010. | 2/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitMichael Jaime-Becerra | This Time Tomorrow (St. Martin's Press) A launch party for the debut novel by Michael Jaime-Becerra, author of the acclaimed short story collection Every Night is Ladies' Night. Michael Jaime-Becerra grew up in El Monte, CA, a working-class suburb of Los Angeles. He received his MFA from the University of California, Irvine and currently teaches creative writing at University of California, Riverside. His short story collection, Every Night Is Ladies' Night, was named to lists of the years' best books by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. It was awarded a California Book Award, the Silver Medal for a First Work of Fiction. Michael lives in El Monte, CA. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 17, 2010. | 2/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitHeidi Durrow | The Girl Who Fell From Earth (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) A launch event for the debut novel by this award-winning local author! Heidi W. Durrow is the 2008 winner of the Bellwether Prize for the best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice. She has also won the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition and the Chapter One Fiction Contest. She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and the Lois Roth Endowment and a Fellowship for Emerging Writers from the Jerome Foundation. Her writing has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, the Literary Review, and others. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 16, 2010. | 2/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitPlanaria Price and Euphronia Awakuni | Life in the USA: An Immigrant's Guide to Understanding Americans (University of Michigan Press) A launch party for this new book by two local authors! Planaria J. Price and Euphronia Awakuni will discuss and sign Life in the USA, designed to help immigrants become more comfortable by gaining familiarity with the many the nuances of American culture. Euphronia Awakuni has lived and worked in Japan and traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia and Europe. She has a Master’s in TESOL and has taught at Glendale College, USC and LACC. She received a John Woods scholarship to attend the Prague Summer Program with the University of Western Michigan in 2005. She has taught English and ESL in Los Angeles at Evans Community Adult School for the last nine years. She is currently working on a new novel. Planaria Price has taught English as a Second Language to adults for 37 years in Los Angeles. She often lectures and is the author of five books on English and American culture: Competency in English, Open Sesame: Understanding American English and Culture Through Folktales and Stories; Eureka!: Discovering American English and Culture Through Proverbs, Fables, Myths, and Legends; Achieving Competency in English: A Life Skills Approach; Life in the USA: an Immigrants Guide to Understanding Americans. She is also the author of a pronunciation book: Realistically Speaking: a Practical Approach to the Basic Sounds and Rhythms of American English. She is currently working on a Holocaust memoir: A Witness Forever, the Barbara Reichmann story. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBURARY 13, 2010. | 2/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitAudrey Niffenegger | Her Fearful Symmetry (Scribner) The best-selling author of The Time Traveler's Wife reads from her newest novel. Audrey Niffenegger lives in Chicago, where she is a visual artist and writer. She is the founding member of Text 3, an artist and writer’s group that also performs and exhibits in Chicago. Her work is in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Newberry Library. She is the author of two visual novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. Her short story, The Night Bookmobile, was serialized as a graphic novel in the London Guardian last year. Her first novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, was published in 2003 and was a national bestseller. Her new book, Her Fearful Symmetry, is set in and around London’s historic Highgate Cemetery, where Niffenegger, a self-proclaimed “cemetery tourist,” is an occasional guide. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JANUARY 28, 2010. | 2/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJoe Sacco | Footnotes in Gaza (Metropolitan Books) From the great cartoonist-reporter, a sweeping, original investigation of a forgotten crime in the most vexed of places Rafah, a town at the bottommost tip of the Gaza Strip, is a squalid place. Raw concrete buildings front trash-strewn alleys. The narrow streets are crowded with young children and unemployed men. On the border with Egypt, swaths of Rafah have been bulldozed to rubble. Rafah is today and has always been a notorious flashpoint in this bitterest of conflicts. Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinians dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah--cold-blooded massacre or dreadful mistake--reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco immerses himself in daily life of Rafah and the neighboring town of Khan Younis, uncovering Gaza past and present. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, alive with the voices of fugitives and schoolchildren, widows and sheikhs, "Footnotes in Gaza" captures the essence of a tragedy. As in "Palestine" and "Safe Area Goražde," Sacco's unique visual journalism has rendered a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. "Footnotes in Gaza," his most ambitious work to date, transforms a critical conflict of our age into an intimate and immediate experience. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JANUARY 19, 2010. | 2/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitKevin Sampsell | A Common Pornography (HarperCollins) Kevin Sampsell has been the publisher of Future Tense Books since 1990. His fiction has been published widely in literary journals like LIT, McSweeney’s, Opium, and on popular sites like Nerve and Failbetter. His non-fiction essays and reviews have appeared in various newspapers and magazines. His books include Beautiful Blemish and Creamy Bullets. He works as Small Press Champion (his actual title) for Powell’s Books. He lives in Portland, Oregon. "This is a heartbreaking and magnificent book. I love its mosaic structure—a portrait of a family and a young man created out of jewel-like fragments of memory. In its depiction of small-town American life—the ennui and despair and beauty—I am reminded of Denis Johnson's Jesus’ Son. This is the kind of book where you want to thank the author for helping you feel less alone with being alive."—Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir! and The Double Life is Twice as Good THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 9, 2010. | 2/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitSean Carroll | From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time (Dutton Books) Physicist Sean Carroll, founder of the Cosmic Variance blog and dubbed the "great science communicator" by ted.com, will be here to present his new book, From Eternity to Here. "Sean Carroll is a sure-footed guide through some of the most perplexing and fascinating insights of modern physics. His delightful From Eternity to Here is an accessible and engaging exploration of the mysteries of time, deftly grappling with issues that will very likely play a critical role in the next major upheaval in our understanding of the cosmos.” --Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Sean Carroll, Ph.D. is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard university, he pursued his research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago. His technical papers on dark matter and dark energy, the physics of extra dimensions, and alternative theories of gravity as well as the graduate-level textbook Spacetime and Geometry have been widely praised by his academic peers. Sean Carroll is one of the founders of the group blog, cosmicvariance.com, named one of the top five science blogs by Nature. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 6, 2010. | 2/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitDavid Hamlin and Brett Arena | Los Angeles' Original Farmer's Market (Arcadia Publishing) The authors of a new book celebrating Los Angeles's original farmer's market (at 3rd and Fairfax) will be here to discuss the 75 year history of this historic landmark. The original Farmers Market at Third Street and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles has been at the center of its city's history for 75 years. Farmers Market led Los Angeles out of the Great Depression, drew tourists from around the world, and became the most popular attraction in Southern California. It is Los Angelesas beloved grocery store, its town square, its favorite dining room and den, Hollywood's best friend, and one of the city's most delightfully eccentric citizens. From its uniquely quirky beginnings to its contemporary stature as the coolest place in town, Farmers Market has a history rich in stories and is alive with character, integrity, and tradition. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 22, 2009. | 2/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitPatti Smith | Just Kids (Ecco) Music legend Patti Smith will discuss and sign her new book, Just Kids, the story of Smith's extraordinary relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. This is Smith's first book of prose. Patti Smith’s seminal album Horses was followed by nine releases, including Radio Ethiopia, Easter, Dream of Life, Gone Again and Trampin’. Her artwork was first exhibited at Gotham Book Mart in 1973, and she has been associated with the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Strange Messenger, a retrospective of three hundred works, made its debut at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and has been exhibited worldwide. Her books include Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Patti Smith Complete 1975 - 2006. In 2005, she received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest grade awarded by the French Republic to eminent artists and writers who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts throughout the world. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JANUARY 30, 2010. | 2/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitJoshua Ferris | The Unnamed (Little, Brown 8 Co.) National Book Award-nominated writer Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End) will read from his new novel, The Unnamed. Joshua Ferris's first novel, Then We Came to the End, has sold in 20 countries and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Granta, Tin House, New Stories From the South, Best New American Voices, The Guardian, The Iowa Review and Prairie Schooner. He attended the University of Iowa and the University of California, Irvine. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 4, 2010. | 2/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitNaseem Rakha | The Crying Tree (Broadway Books) Naseem Rakha will read and sign her debut novel, which Publishers Weekly called a "complex, layered story" that "comes together through spellbinding storytelling," and was "highly recommended" by Library Journal. Naseem is an award-winning journalist whose stories have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace Radio, Christian Science Monitor, and Living on Earth. She lives in Oregon with her husband, son, and many animals. When Naseem isn’t writing, she’s reading, knitting, hiking, gardening, or just watching the seasons roll in and out. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 4, 2009. | 2/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitThe Promising Series | New writing from LGBT writers, curated and hosted by our staffer Noel Alumit. This month, we're featuring D. Travers Scott, Myriam Gurba, and Ian MacKinnon. D. Travers Scott has worked as a writer, critic, and artist, appearing everywhere from underground 'zines to Harper's and This American Life. For the first time, the best of Scott's celebrated short fiction are gathered together in Love Hard: Stories 1989-2009, collecting work originally appearing in award-winning anthologies, queer media, erotica, and live performance, along with new stories never before published. Together, they offer the first comprehensive overview of Scott's ongoing explorations of masculinity, sexuality, urban environments, family, love, and the power of writing. Scott is also author of two novels: the internationally acclaimed Execution, Texas: 1987 and the Lambda Literary Award winner, One of these Things is Not Like the Other. He is currently completing a PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California in Los Angles, where he lives with his husband. Myriam Gurba is a teacher and writer. She lives in a small blue house in Long Beach with two rabbits and a Midwestern trannie. She is the author of Dahlia Season, a novella and short story collection which won the Edmund White Award. Ian MacKinnon is a gay centered performance artist and curator of queer theatre events in Los Angeles. He is a member of Queer Exchange, a group of LGBTQ multidisciplinary artists who perform, tour, and conduct workshops around California. In his solo work, Ian combines spoken text, gay centered Jungian psychological theory, digital video, and music to evoke issues central to the queer community and to Gay Liberation. He graduated with honors and a BFA in Acting from Meadow's School of the Arts at SMU. Ian was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for "Best Off Off Broadway Performance" for his piece, Spanked, performed at the New York International Fringe Festival, and toured to The New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 20, 2009. | 2/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitLauren Strasnick | Nothing Like You (Simon Pulse) A launch party for a debut novel by a local young adult author! Lauren Strasnick grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, now lives in Los Angeles, and is a graduate of Emerson College and the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) MFA Writing Program. NOTHING LIKE YOU (Simon Pulse) is her first book. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 24, 2009 | 1/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 169 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
this is pod-a-licious!
sounds great skylight. i love all the authors you have...by the way who does the intro. music?
Book readings for the rest of us
Living in Phoenix, AZ afforded me the opportunity to meet authors, see bands, and watch movies that weren't availabke in Oklahoma. Now, being back in OK, there are not very many authors coming down to read. It's great to have access to those authors through Skylight's recordings of their book readings. Sometimes the sound has been iffy, but the overall sound quality is good. A very relaxed atmosphere that always features a great writer small (Tao Lin) or big (Joshua Ferris). Crowd usually seems to be intelligent and I've heard very few groan worthy questions to the authors. Podcasts are typically 30-50 minutes featuring a reading followed by a question and answer with one or two authors per reading. Great podcast!
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