Podcast appearances and mentions of David L Ulin

In this week's episode, we are talking about the wildfires that have ravaged L.A. Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak to author David L. Ulin about Los Angeles as a place forged in precarity and grit, as well as some of the local literature of disaster, and what it means to accept the city as somewhere catastrophe can strike in an instant. Next they speak with Adrian Scott Fine, president of the Los Angeles Conservancy, about some of the historic structures that have been lost in the fire, historical and cultural memory, and how to honor the history of the city. Please find a full list of resources from Mutual Aid LA here. The Los Angeles Review of Books is hoping for collective safety and looking forward to a communal recovery. 

In this week's episode, we are talking about the wildfires that have ravaged LA. Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak to author David L. Ulin about Los Angeles as a place forged in precarity and grit, as well as some of the local literature of disaster, and what it means to accept the city as somewhere catastrophe can strike in an instant. Next they speak with Adrian Scott Fine, president of the Los Angeles Conservancy, about some of the historic structures that have been lost in the fire, historical and cultural memory, and how to honor the history of the city. Please find a full list of resources from Mutual Aid LA on lareviewofbooks.org. The Los Angeles Review of Books is hoping for collective safety and looking forward to a communal recovery.

Ich begrüße Sie zur Januar-Ausgabe der Talk Noir. Mit David L. Ulins Kriminalroman "Der Frau, die schrie", der im Original "The Thirteen Questions Method" heißt, bewegen wir uns an die Grenzen des Genres. Ist ein Mord überhaupt passiert? Waren es gar zwei? Der Ich-Erzähler sitzt in Los Angeles in einem Apartment und hört eine Frau schreien. In der Hauptstadt des Noirs versteckt er sich vor seiner Vergangenheit. Er will sich nicht mehr erinnern. Die Schreie seiner Nachbarin wecken nicht nur sein Interesse, plötzlich steht sie vor seiner Tür.

City Lights LIVE! presents "Insurgent Beatitudes: The History of a Cultural Center,” a conversation between Elaine Katzenberger, Amy Scholder, and Paul Yamazaki, moderated by David L. Ulin. Continuing its 70th anniversary celebratory programming, City Lights Books brings together those who are at the heart of its core. City Lights was founded as a cultural hub, providing space and encouragement for a creative cross-pollination across the arts, as well as the realms of politics, philosophy, and social change. Here's a chance to hear about our history from some of the folks who've made significant contributions over the years, working alongside Lawrence Ferlinghetti and beyond, guiding City Lights into its present and future. David L. Ulin is the author or editor of nearly twenty books, including "Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles,” shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the novel "Ear to the Ground." His fiction has appeared in Black Clock, The Santa Monica Review, Scoundrel Time, and Zyzzyva, among other publications. Elaine Katzenberger is the executive director of City Lights and the publisher of City Lights Books. Amy Scholder is a literary editor, documentary filmmaker, and a former editor at City Lights Books where she began her career. Paul Yamazaki has been a bookseller since 1970. He has been the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers for more than thirty years.

David L. Ulin is the author of the novel Thirteen Question Method, available from Outpost 19. Ulin is the author or editor of nearly twenty books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the novel Ear to the Ground. His fiction has appeared in Black Clock, The Santa Monica Review, Scoundrel Time, and Zyzzyva, among other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, he is the books editor of Alta Journal, and a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary magazine Air/Light. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch @otherppl Instagram  YouTube TikTok Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel, Thirteen Question Method. His other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time; and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. For Library of America, he has edited Didion: The 1960s and 70s and Didion: The 1980s and 90s. David Ulin is the books editor of Alta and the former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harper's, The Paris Review, and The Best American Essays 2020. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, as well as a COLA Individual Master Artist Grant from the City of Los Angeles. He is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the journal Air/Light. David Ulin joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about cinematic writing, Chekhov's gun, embodying a protagonist, the “literature of disintegration” and why he's a fan, tulpas, noir, and much more. For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. We're also excited to announce the opening of our new bookstore on bookshop.org. We've stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our own personal favorites. By purchasing through the store, you'll support both independent bookstores and our show. New titles will be added all the time (it's a work in progress). Finally, on Spotify you can listen to an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We like to hear from our listeners. (Recorded on September 22, 2023)  Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett Co-Host: Marrie Stone Music and sound editing: Travis Barrett

Join Deborah Eisenberg and David L. Ulin for a conversation on Eisenberg's work and the craft of writing. A short story writer who crafts distinctive portraits of contemporary American life with precision and moral depth, Deborah Eisenberg is the author of Transactions in a Foreign Currency, Under the 82nd Airborne, All around Atlantis, Twilight of the Superheroes, and Your Duck Is My Duck. Writer and editor David L. Ulin is Professor of the Practice of English at the University of Southern California and a former book critic for the Los Angeles Times. Speakers: Deborah Eisenberg is the author of five collections of short stories: Transactions in a Foreign Currency, Under the 82nd Airborne, All around Atlantis, Twilight of the Superheroes, and Your Duck Is My Duck. She is a MacArthur Fellow and the recipient of numerous honors, including the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. She is a professor emerita in the writing program at Columbia University's School of the Arts. David L. Ulin is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, which was short-listed for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Lannan Foundation, and Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas. A former book editor and book critic for the Los Angeles Times, he has written for Harper's, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Paris Review, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. His essay “Bed” appeared in The Best American Essays 2020. He is a Professor of the Practice of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary journal Air/Light. Most recently, he edited Joan Didion: The 1960s and 70s and Joan Didion: The 1980s and 90s for Library of America. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This event is a partnership between Lannan Foundation and Haymarket Books. Lannan Foundation's Readings & Conversations series features inspired writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, as well as cultural freedom advocates with a social, political, and environmental justice focus. We are excited to offer these programs online to a global audience. Video and audio recordings of all events are available at lannan.org. Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago. Our mission is to publish books that contribute to struggles for social and economic justice. We strive to make our books a vibrant and organic part of social movements and the education and development of a critical, engaged, international left. Lannan Foundation is a family foundation dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity through projects that support exceptional contemporary artists and writers, inspired Native activists in rural communities, and social justice advocates. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/OVPRslmLgLk Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

"A Dreadful Consolation," written by by Christos Ikonomou and translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich: https://airlightmagazine.org/airlight/issue-5/a-terrible-consolation/

David L. Ulin is the editor of the Library of America's Joan Didion: The 1960s and 70s, the editor of Air/Light literary journal, and the former books editor for the Los Angeles Times. I think [Joan Didion] is a corrective. Part of what drew me to her initially was that her inner weather and my inner weather are not that dissimilar. So there was that sense of recognition, but also the idea of her as a corrective of all that sunshine-y, California lotus-land myth. She is actively trying to destroy that mythology. And I think that as someone who resists that mythology because it reduces the state to the level of a cliche--it reduces the culture and the place to the level of a cliche--I liked that idea.  Notes and references from this episode: Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, by David L. UlinEasy Rawlins series, by Walter MosleyDavid Trinidad, Poetry FoundationEat the Mouth That Feeds You - by Carribean FregozaIn the Watchful City, by S. Qiouyi LuIf He Hollers Let Him Go, by Chester Himes  The Socialist Who Won a Democratic Primary and the Dirty Hollywood Politics That Sunk His Campaign, by Zelda Roland, KCETDreaming: Hard Luck And Good Times In America, by Carolyn SeeGolden Days, by Carolyn SeeThe Nowhere City, by Alison LurieI Should Have Stayed Home, by Horace McCoyThe Flutter of an Eyelid, by Myron BrinigJoan Didion: The 1960s and 70s (Library of America), edited by David L. UlinLabyrinth, by David L. Ulin =====Theme music by Sounds SupremeTwitter: @WhatCaliforniaSubstack newsletter: whatiscalifornia.substack.comSupport What is California? on Patreon: patreon.com/whatiscaliforniaEmail: hello@whatiscalifornia.comPlease subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked What is California?, please rate and review What is California? on Apple Podcasts! It helps new listeners find the show.

“By turns raw and mystical, steeped in loss but also reconciliation, it is a book that challenges our preconceptions, in regard to content and form.” So says author David L. Ulin about The Spring, the debut book from author Annie Connole. Connole joined writer Frances McCue in a virtual conversation about the book-length lyric essay. Together, they explored the themes in the book, which examine grief and transformation through the lens of mystical animal appearances following the death of the narrator's partner. Traversing the wild landscapes of the American West, it combines prose and photography to create a lucid, dream-like vision of visitations and allegorical animal encounters with Snake, Owl, Horse and Dragonfly, among others. Connole invited us to experience a bit of that mysticism as she shares from the stirring, elegiac tale of death, love, rebirth, and friendship. Annie Connole is a writer living in the Mojave Desert. She was born and raised in the rocky highlands of Helena, Montana. Her work has appeared in literary journals including The Rumpus. Connole received a BA from The New School where she studied art and philosophy and an MFA in Creative Writing from University of California Riverside — Palm Desert. Frances McCue is a poet, writer, and teacher whose lifelong work is to connect literature to community life. For its first decade, 1996-2006, McCue was the founding director of Richard Hugo House. She has published six books, three were finalists for the Washington State Book Award in poetry, history and biography, and one book of poems, The Bled, was the winner in 2011. Her other books include The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs and Timber Curtain. Her most recent book is I Almost Read the Books Whole, a “book-jacket blurbs as poems.” Buy the Book: https://www.chinmusicpress.com//product-page/the-spring  Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

Episode 68 – Minisode – The Friday Four – Books about books!   Continuing to celebrate ‘Read Across America’ Week we have four books about books for you today on the Friday Four! Could there be anything better? We don’t think so!   Tami's Recommendations What We Talk About When We Talk About Books by Leah Price The Great American Read: The Book of Books: Explore America's 100 Best-Loved Novels by PBS (Foreword by Meredith Vieira)  Amie's Recommendations The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time by David L. Ulin Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount   Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter here. Links to Things We Talked About: The Great American Read from PBS Bibliophile Note Cards on Amazon Check out our patreon page and become a supporter—early access to all episodes, fun videos, polls, exclusives…it’s all on patreon.  

As the first installment of the Air/Light Podcast, we're thrilled to present a conversation between choreographer Andre Tyson and Douglas Kearney about their performance, Code~dIsSoNaNcE~REVERIE. The conversation was hosted by Air/Light editor David L. Ulin. It was recorded on October 20, 2020.

Vroman's in Pasadena and Book Soup in West Hollywood are two of Southern California's most iconic bookstores. Though they're in very different communities, each one plays a central role in the life of the city. Which is why, in late September, Vroman's sent a shudder through the world of Southern California's readers when the 126 year old bookstore announced it was at risk of closing due to the effects of the pandemic. In an extraordinary bit of outreach, Vroman's asked its community to shop early and often for the holidays and to recommend the store by word of mouth. The situation has since stabilized, but the risk remains. In the third part of our "Art of Bookselling" series, Air/Light editor David L. Ulin talks to Julia Cowlishaw, the CEO of Vroman's and Book Soup. Cowlishaw and Ulin discuss the issues facing independent booksellers in the world of COVID-19, how she approaches managing two very different bookstores, and more.

On episode 085 of the Quarantine Tapes, Paul Holdengräber is joined by writer David Ulin. Their conversation stays close to home for David, talking about his experience of Los Angeles in the last few months. They dig into how the pandemic is changing public space and speculate on what city life might look like as we move through this time. David and Paul also talk about walking, monuments, and the consolation they can draw from reading literature about previous plagues throughout history.DAVID L. ULIN is the author or editor of a dozen books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lannan Foundation, and teaches at the University of Southern California.

On this episode, we talk with book critic and writer David L. Ulin about books to read amid a pandemic. We also discuss the reaction to the Navy dismissing a captain who spoke out about the outbreak. Plus, a new reading list at PEN.org. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/penamerica/support

Hope you like Kathleen Turner, because in this long delayed episode Betsy is clearly doing her best rendition of her. Apologies for the gap in the episodes. Fortunately, Betsy and Kate are back in style. This week they discuss a book that has a complicated history. It would be easier if this were a more straightforward case of racism. Along the way they also discuss the Wilder Award's name change, whether people care more about animal cruelty or corporeal punishment, and the names of Kate's blisters. Source Notes: Here's the Wendy McClure thread about the Wilder Award that Betsy referenced: https://twitter.com/Wendy_Mc/status/1011625742201950209 In terms of the cormorans, this is indeed a legitimate fishing method: https://en.wi David L. Ulin wrote a very interesting piece for the L.A. Times called The Story About Ping and the Invention of Nostalgia: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-the-story-about-ping-and-the-invention-of-nostalgia-20130730-story.html If you're curious about The Good Place podcast, just come right here: https://art19.com/shows/the-good-place-the-podcast For the full Show Notes, please visit: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2018/07/09/fuse-8-n-kate-the-story-about-ping-by-marjorie-flack-ill-kurt-wiese/

It’s been two years since the events of Gangsterland, when legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the guise of Las Vegas Rabbi David Cohen. Now, in September of 2001, everything’s coming up gold for David—but Sal wants out. He only needs to make it through the High Holidays, and he’ll have enough money to slip away, grab his wife and kid, and start fresh. Across the country, former FBI agent Matthew Drew is now running security for an Indian Casino outside of Milwaukee, spending his off-time stalking members of The Family, looking for vengeance for the murder of his former partner. So when Sal’s cousin stumbles into the casino one night, Matthew takes the law into his own hands— again—touching off a series of events that will have Rabbi Cohen running for his life, trapped in Las Vegas, with the law, society, and the post-9/11 world closing in around him. With the wit and gritty glamour that defines his writing, Tod Goldberg traces how the things we most value in our lives—home, health, even our spiritual lives—have been built on the enterprises of criminals. Mr. Goldberg is joined by David L. Ulin, author of Ear to the Ground.

In Why Poetry, award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder takes on what it is that poetry--and poetry alone--can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. In lively, lilting prose, he shows us how that misunderstanding interferes with our direct experience of poetry and creates the sense of confusion or inadequacy that many of us feel when faced with it. Mr. Zapruder is joined by David L. Ulin, author of the novel Ear to the Ground.

Catalina (Farrar/MCD) A magnetic, provocative debut novel chronicling a young woman’s downward spiral following the end of an affair Elsa Fisher is headed for rock bottom. At least, that’s her plan. She has just been fired from MoMA on the heels of an affair with her married boss, and she retreats to Los Angeles to blow her severance package on whatever it takes to numb the pain. Her abandoned crew of college friends (childhood friend Charlotte and her wayward husband, Jared; and Elsa’s ex-husband, Robby) receive her with open arms, and, thinking she’s on vacation, a plan to celebrate their reunion on a booze-soaked sailing trip to Catalina Island. But Elsa doesn’t want to celebrate. She is lost, lonely, and full of rage, and only wants to sink as low as the drugs and alcohol will take her. On Catalina, her determined unraveling and recklessness expose painful memories and dark desires, putting everyone in the group at risk. With the creeping menace of Patricia Highsmith and the bender-chic of Bret Easton Ellis, Liska Jacobs brings you inside the mind of an angry, reckless young woman hell-bent on destruction—every page taut with the knowledge that Elsa’s path does not lead to a happy place. Catalina is a compulsive, deliciously dark exploration of beauty, love, and friendship, and the sometimes toxic desires that drive us. Praise for Catalina “Catalina is an extraordinarily engaging study in the tension of opposing forces: youth and world-weariness, beauty and unreliability, good intentions and roads to hell. The backbone of the novel is its relentless unwillingness to apologize for its main character—not for her faults, not for her complexities. Hot damn and about time. Liska Jacobs writes with teeth; this book’s got bite.”—Jill Alexander Essbaum, New York Times-bestselling author of Hausfrau “Catalina’s feminist fatale narrator, Elsa, has both the heartbroken cynicism of Daisy Buchanan and the inscrutable seductiveness of Carmen in The Big Sleep. Liska Jacobs writes crystal-clear, hypnotically sensual prose, and Catalina is California noir at its darkest and sharpest.”—Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man and In the Drink “In her propulsive debut, Liska Jacobs tells the story of a beautiful young woman’s dissolute downward spiral with precision and insight. Catalina deftly explores the desperate social frontiers where the morals of the privileged class dissolve. You won’t be able to look away.”—J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times-bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest? “Catalina is true California, down to the bones and skin, a novel about the places Liska Jacobs knows in her soul. Beauty and the body as currency and betrayal, seekers of love and comfort—her characters blow all that up, and just when you think you know what will happen, Catalina swerves and you are along for the ride.”—Susan Straight, author of Between Heaven and Here and Highwire Moon “Sophisticated and surprising, Catalina brings an excitingly modern vibe to the time-honored story of a young woman coming undone in California. Like a love child of Joan Didion and Kate Braverman, Liska Jacobs is a master of menacing cool and the seductive havoc wreaked by self-destruction.”—Gina Frangello, author of A Life in Men and Every Kind of Wanting Liska Jacobs holds an MFA from the University of California, Riverside. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and The Hairpin, among other publications. Catalina is her first novel. Photo by Jordan Bryant David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel Ear to the Ground.A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, his other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award.

Hostage (Drawn + Quarterly)  Join award-winning cartoonist Guy Delisle (Pyongyang, Jerusalem, Shenzhen, Burma Chronicles) for the launch of his highly anticipated, non-fiction page-turner: Hostage. Set in the Caucasus region in 1997, Hostage tells the true story of Doctors Without Borders administrator Christophe Andre who was held captive for over three months. Recounting his day-to-day survival while conveying the psychological effects of solitary confinement, Delisle’s storytelling doesn’t just show André’s experiences, but brings you into the room alongside him. Hostage is a thoughtful, intense, and undeniably moving graphic novel that takes a profound look at what drives our will to survive in the darkest of moments. Guy Delisle is a cartoonist and animator from Québec City, Canada. Delisle spent ten years working in animation, which allowed him to learn about movement and drawing. He is best known for his bestselling travelogues about life in faraway countries, Burma Chronicles, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, Pyongyang, and Shenzhen. In 2012, Guy Delisle was awarded the Prize for Best Album for the French edition of Jerusalem at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Delisle now lives in the south of France with his wife and two children. David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel Ear to the Ground. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, his other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time; and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He is the former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times.   David Ulin photo by Noah Ulin       "This tour was supported by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States."

 In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared stories the younger man had never heard before. From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany and the heyday of the space program, Moonglow collapses an era into a single life and a lifetime into a single week. Hear from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author as he discusses his latest literary masterpiece—a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure.Click here for photos from the program. 

If you're familiar with the Los Angeles literary scene or are just a book aficionado, then you know David L. Ulin--author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, book critic, and former book editor of the Los Angeles Times. David L. Ulin is the author or editor of eight previous books, including The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He sat down with host Joseph Lapin at the Miami Book Fair.

Drinking Mare's Milk on the Roof of the World: Wandering the Globe from Azerbaijan to Zanzibar (OR Books) Tom Lutz is addicted to journeying. Sometimes he stops at the end of the road, sometimes he travels further. In this richly packed portmanteau of traveler’s tales, we accompany him as he drives beyond the blacktop in Morocco, to the Saharan dunes on the Algerian border, and east of Ankara into the Hittite ruins of Boğazkale. We ride alongside as he hitches across Uzbekistan and the high mountain passes of Kyrgyzstan into western China. We catch up with him as he traverses the shores of a lake in Malawi, and disappear with him into the disputed areas of the Ukraine and Moldova. We follow his footsteps through the swamps of Sri Lanka, the wilds of Azerbaijan, the plains of Tibet, the casinos of Tanzania, the peasant hinterlands of Romania and Albania, and the center of Swaziland, where we join him in watching the king pick his next wife. All along the way, we witness his perplexity in trying to understand a compulsion to keep moving, ever onward, to the ends of the earth. Praise for Tom Lutz “Move over Pico Iyer: Tom Lutz has returned to town with an irresistible book of true stories about accidental intimacies in unexpected places. His encounters on the road, described in gorgeous prose, are brief but intense. Lighting out for the territories has never seemed so enthralling.”—Jon Wiener “Highly intelligent, stimulatingly eclectic, and impressively learned.” —Salon on Lutz's Doing Nothing “In these provocative and personal travel essays, Tom Lutz walks the seam between memory and landcape, finding traces in the physical that illuminate the inner life. Smart, pointed, funny, and surprising, Lutz's journeys reveal both the writer and the world he navigates, offering not epiphany so much as engagement, which is, of course, the only thing that counts.” —David L. Ulin Tom Lutz is Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books and teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. His previous books include Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums and Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears.

Grace (Counterpoint Press) For a runaway slave in the 1840s south, life on the run can be just as dangerous as life under a sadistic Massa. That’s what fifteen-year-old Naomi learns after she escapes the brutal confines of life on an Alabama plantation. In Natashia Deón’s debut Grace: A Novel Naomi must leave behind her beloved Momma and sister Hazel and take refuge in a Georgia brothel run by a freewheeling, gun-toting Jewish madam named Cynthia. There, amidst a revolving door of gamblers, prostitutes, and drunks, Naomi falls into a star-crossed love affair with a smooth-talking white man named Jeremy who frequents the brothel’s dice tables too often. The product of Naomi and Jeremy’s union is Josey, whose white skin and blonde hair mark her as different from the other slave children on the plantation. Having been taken in as an infant by a free slave named Charles, Josey has never known her mother, who was murdered at her birth. Josey soon becomes caught in the tide of history when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reaches the declining estate and a day of supposed freedom quickly turns into a day of unfathomable violence that will define Josey—and her lost mother—for years to come. Deftly weaving together the stories of Josey and Naomi—who narrates the entire novel unable to leave her daughter alone in the land of the living—Grace is a sweeping, intergenerational saga featuring a group of outcast women during one of the most compelling eras in American history.  It is a universal story of freedom, love, and motherhood, told in a dazzling and original voice set against a rich and transporting historical backdrop. Praise for Grace “Deón’s powerful debut is a moving, mystical family saga . . . The book provides penetrating insight into how confusing, violent, and treacherous life remained in the South after the Emancipation Proclamation, and how little life improved for freed slaves, even after the war. The omnipresences of Naomi’s ghost renders the story wide-angled, vast, and magical. Deón is a writer of great talent, using lyrical language and convincing, unobtrusive dialect to build portraits of each tragic individual as the sprawling story moves to its redemptive end.”—Publishers Weekly Starred Review “[T]his is a brave story, necessary and poignant; it is a story that demands to be heard. This is the violent, terrifying world of the antebellum South, where African-American women were prey and their babies sold like livestock. This is the story of mothers and daughters—of violence, absence, love, and legacies. Deón's vivid imagery, deft characterization, and spellbinding language carry the reader through this suspenseful tale. A haunting, visceral novel that heralds the birth of a powerful new voice in American fiction.” —Kirkus Starred Review  “In her gripping debut novel, Deón, awarded a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship, among other honors, dramatizes alliances formed by women in a violent place and time with adroit characterizations, a powerful narrative voice, and the propulsive plotting of a suspense novel… Deón stays in control of her complex material, from its clever parallel structure to the women’s psychological reactions to relentless tension. Readers will ache for these strong characters and yearn for them to find freedom and peace.” —Booklist Starred Review “There are moments of love in this harsh, affecting first novel, but the story mostly conveys the taking of personal freedom and human dignity. The presence of the apparition is fanciful, but it works well in bringing resolution to an imbalanced set of happenings.”—Library Journal “One of those rare novels so assured, so beautiful and so singular in voice that it almost seems besides the point to say it's a debut (and yet it is). Natashia Deón's Grace is a powerfully telling tale of two generations of women and those in their lives over a nation-defining period of American history. This is when slavery was fought for and ended on this very ground. This is also when tribulation and hardship did not just end because slavery finally did. The sparks of determination, resilience, aspiration, hope, and, grace (yes), all burn, even against great odds, helping light the way. Set 150 years and more ago, Grace carries resonance and meaning for us today. I can't wait to put this in readers' hands.”—Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company  “Natashia Deón’s gorgeous debut is not only a piercing and unwavering exploration of slavery and its legacy, but also a fierce insistence that we honor and acknowledge the ghosts that haunt our America today. Like all important, classic books, Grace makes a story we think we know, the story of our country and its people, dazzling and new. This is not a book anyone is going to be able to put down—or forget.” —Dana Johnson, author ofElsewhere, California, nominee for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award "The ghost narrator in Grace articulates how she feels when she falls in love: filled. It is precisely how this flawlessly constructed novel will leave you. With muscular prose whose poetry is unforced, Deón lights a fire under the feet of her characters, women and men consumed by their fidelity to each other and untamed by their circumstances, who charge through history at the speed of thought. Deón makes the case anew that the facts of the past can only be understood by training an unflinching gaze upon the human beings who survived its horrors and proves on every page that only a consummate writer is equal to the task." —Ru Freeman, author of A Disobedient Girl and On Sal Mal Lane “Natashia Deón’s superlative, gorgeously written debut grips you by the throat, exploring a teeming, post-Civil War world where the emancipation of slaves can be anything but freedom, violence is as casual as a cough, and love between a mother and a daughter can transcend even death. Scorchingly brilliant, this is one novel that already feels like a classic.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You “People will compare this book to Twelve Years a Slave, Cold Mountain, andBeloved, and those are fair comparisons for the kind of time and place here, and the evocation of the south 150 years ago. But reading it, I thought of murder ballads, those songs of melancholy and injustice. Natashia Deón’s genius lies, in part, in writing a book that sustains a murder ballad’s intensity for hundreds of pages and gets into your bones like a song.”—Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me and The Faraway Nearby Natashia Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center US Emerging Voices Fellowship and has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Bread Loaf, Dickinson House in Belgium, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Named one of 2013’s Most Fascinating People by LA Weekly, she has a MFA from UC Riverside and is the creator of the popular LA-based reading series, Dirty Laundry Lit. A practicing lawyer, she currently teaches law at Trinity Law School and Mount Saint Mary’s College. David L. Ulin is the author or editor of eight previous books, including The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and the Library of America’s Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is book critic of the Los Angeles Times.

Please welcome ZYZZYVA's Southern California All-Stars! Though a San Francisco publication, ZYZZYVA has championed writers, poets, and artists from the Southland since its founding in 1985. Come hear recent contributors Lou Mathews, Melissa Yancy, Jim Gavin, David Hernandez, and special guest Dana Johnson read from their work, and find out whyZYZZYVA is considered one of the country's finest literary journals. Emceed by ZYZZYVA Contributing Editor David L. Ulin. Issue No. 106 offers for your enjoyment more of the country’s finest stories, poetry, essays, and visual art. Jim Gavin is the author of Middle Men, published by Simon & Schuster. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope,Esquire, The Mississippi Review, and ZYZZYVA. Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark forthcoming from Counterpoint in August 2016. She is also the author of Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novel Elsewhere, California. Both books were nominees for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, Callaloo, and the Iowa Review, among others. Born and raised in and around Los Angeles, she is a professor of English at the University of Southern California. David Hernadez's most recent book of poetry is Dear, Sincerely. His other collections include Hoodwinked, Always Danger and A House Waiting for Music. He has been awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship and two Pushcart Prizes. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, AGNI, and The Best American Poetry. David teaches creative writing at California State University, Long Beach and is married to writer Lisa Glatt. David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel Ear to the Ground, written with Paul Kolsby. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, his other books includeSidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time; and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. Melissa Yancy is the recipient of a 2016 NEA Literature Fellowship, and winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press for her short fiction collection Dog Years, which will be published in late 2016. Her stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, One Story,Prairie Schooner, Zyzzyva, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles and works as a fundraiser for health care causes. Lou Mathews has received a Pushcart Prize, a Katherine Anne Porter Prize, National Endowment for the Arts and California Arts Commission fellowships in fiction. His stories have been published in Black Clock, Tin House, New England Review, 40+ other literary magazines, ten fiction anthologies and several textbooks. His first novel, L.A. Breakdown was an L.A. Times Best book. This is his first appearance in ZYZZYVA.

 Like writing, cities are all about process, the back-and-forth between our aspirations and our abilities; we walk to discover them and to discover ourselves. In this dialogue, moderated by Los Angeles native Louise Steinman, Vivian Gornick and David L. Ulin investigate the role of the city as both literary and psychic landscape. For Gornick, who was born and raised in the Bronx and is the author of the new memoir of self-discovery, The Odd Woman and the City, New York is the city that provokes. While for Ulin, as a Manhattan-raised Southern California transplant and author of the compelling inquiry, Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, L.A. is the terrain that inspires. What do their journeys have in common? What sets these two cities, and their literature, apart?Click here for photos of the program. 

 The best-selling author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-Winner How to Live, a spirited account of twentieth century intellectual movements and revolutionary thinkers, delivers a timely new take on the lives of influential philosophers Sartre, De Beauvoir, Camus, and others. At The Existentialist Café journeys to 1930s Paris to explore a passionate cast of philosophers, playwrights, anthropologists, convicts, and revolutionaries who would spark a rebellious wave of postwar liberation movements. From anticolonialism to feminism and gay rights, join Bakewell as she discusses with David L. Ulin what the pioneering existentialists can teach us about confronting questions of freedom today.Click here for photos of the program. 

On this week's show we discuss a panel that Tom Lutz recently moderated at UC Irvine on the limits of free speech with regard to cartooning. Also, former Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin recommends one of his favorite LA books, Armed Response by Ann Rower, and we talk with screenwriter John Romano about his work on the upcoming film adaptation of Philip Roth's American Pastoral. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

Liar: A Memoir (Crown Publishing)Indie darling and novelist Rob Roberge makes his major-house debut with Liar: A Memoir, an intense, darkly funny book of addiction and mental illness, relapse, recovery, and the nature of memory. Liar is Roberge’s desperate attempt to document his life when faced with the prospect of forgetting it after years of hard living and too frequent concussions suffered during substance-induced blackouts.In an effort to preserve his identity (for what is identity if not memories?), Roberge records the most formative moments of his life—ranging from the brutal murder of his childhood girlfriend, to a diagnosis of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, to singing and playing guitar with his band the Urinals as an opening act for famed indie band Yo La Tengo at The Fillmore in San Francisco. But the process of trying to remember his past only exposes just how fragile are the stories that lie at the heart of who we think we are.As Liar twists and turns through Roberge’s life, it turns the familiar story of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll on its head. Darkly comic and brutally frank, it offers a remarkable portrait of a down-and-out existence scattered across the country, from musicians’ crashpads around Boston, to seedy bars in Florida popular with sideshow freaks, to a painful moment of reckoning in the scorched Wonder Valley desert of California. As Roberge struggles to keep his demons from destroying the good things he has built in his better moments, he is forced to acknowledge the increasingly blurred line between the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves. A reflection on memory and an intimate look at recovery and redemption, Liar delves into the complications of the healing process and the challenges faced in trying to rebuild a life, all while Roberge infuses the narrative with candor and humor.Liar is a memoir that will provoke and engage.Praise for Liar“Roberge’s writing is both drop-dead gorgeous and mind-bendingly smart.” —Cheryl Strayed, New York Times bestselling author of Wild“Roberge is a modern master of the down-and-out-that-just-got-worse. His stories are dark and thrilling. They take hold of the reader like some bad, bracing dope and don’t let go until you feel the full measure of your own humanity. Prose this carefully wrought and true puts him in the tradition of Bukowski, Hammett, and Denis Johnson.” —Steve Almond“Roberge is the bard of the rough road, singer of the long haul, both lyrical and ferociously realistic.”—Janet Fitch“Roberge’s words bring it all back to life for me—the sounds, the sights, the smells, and the tastes. And it’s not always a pretty ride. I like that Roberge never takes the easy way out.” —Steve Wynn, The Dream SyndicateRob Roberge is the author of four books of fiction, most recently The Cost of Living. He is a core faculty member at UCR/Palm Desert’s MFA program and has taught at several universities, including the University of California’s MFA programs at the main campuses of Riverside, Antioch, and Los Angeles, and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. His work has been featured in Penthouse, The Rumpus, and The Nervous Breakdown, and his stories have been widely anthologized. Roberge also plays guitar and sings with the Los Angeles–based band the Urinals.David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, which was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. His novel, Ear to the Ground, will be published in April. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he spent ten years as book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times.

Colin Marshall talks with David. L Ulin, former book critic at the Los Angeles times and author of such books as 'The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith', 'The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time', and the novella 'Labyrinth'. He's also edited the anthologies of Los Angeles writing 'Reading Los Angeles' and 'Another City', and his new book, 'Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles', deals directly with his nearly 25-year history in the city and what it means, to him and others, to live here.

Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles (University of California Press)In Sidewalking, David L. Ulin offers a compelling inquiry into the evolving landscape of Los Angeles. Part personal narrative, part investigation of the city as both idea and environment, Sidewalking is many things: a discussion of Los Angeles as urban space, a history of the city’s built environment, a meditation on the author’s relationship to the city, and a rumination on the art of urban walking. Exploring Los Angeles through the soles of his feet, Ulin gets at the experience of its street life, drawing from urban theory, pop culture, and literature. For readers interested in the culture of Los Angeles, this book offers a pointed look beneath the surface in order to see, and engage with, the city on its own terms."Sidewalking is a profound and poetic book. It is a meditation not only on the strange and marvelous nature of Los Angeles but also on the nature of history, memory, and community itself. This is nonfiction writing at its very best."—Susan Orlean, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of seven books, including the New York Times bestseller The Orchid Thief“Sidewalking will cement David Ulin’s already well-deserved reputation. Like a good, long walk, his book is an exercise in patience, observation, and reflection. At the end of the journey, you feel you’ve been someplace—and you feel illuminated and enlightened."—Héctor Tobar, author of the New York Times bestseller Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free"An inspiring challenge to engage with urban life, Sidewalking raises unprejudiced questions about city and 'city'—the built environment and the individual’s own experience of it. L.A.'s famous sprawl and very human neighborhoods, its uneasy meld of public and private spaces, its legendary gridlock, its organic and artificial environments, all feature in what is no less than the teasing out of a new and nuanced interpretation of the nature of 'urbanity’ itself."—Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black and White Oleander"I see this book as a benign remake of [the movie] Falling Down. In this version, Michael Douglas, after abandoning his car, has the good fortune to bump into David Ulin, who not only offers to accompany him on his journey home but also suggests a few extensive detours. In the course of their walking-talk tour, Douglas learns that he has the good fortune to reside in a fascinating city and goes on to live a fulfilled—and inquiring—life."  —Geoff Dyer, author of numerous books, including But Beautiful, winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize"There are so many lines in this book I’d like to have at my fingertips, so many rational, logical, wholly original arguments for why Los Angeles is deeper and more soulful than it can seem, that I almost wish I could keep it in my pocket for whenever an outsider coughs up the usual hoary insults. As it is, Sidewalking has taken up welcome and necessary residence in my mind. And, to be precise, David Ulin doesn’t argue on behalf of his adopted city. He observes, he challenges, he shows his abiding and complicated love for the place. Which is only right, since when it comes to L.A.’s status as the most surprising and mysterious city in America, there is no argument." —Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion"In this brief but engaging book, the author chronicles his wanderings through the streets and his conversations with friends, entrepreneurs, and officials, and he makes it clear that he has read every book and seen every movie on his subject. Those who know the city will have the advantage, but Ulin casts his net widely, so most readers will enjoy his observations of Los Angeles in literary and popular art as well as his thoughtful personal views."—KirkusDavid L. Ulin is the author or editor of eight previous books, including The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and the Library of America’s Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is book critic of the Los Angeles Times.

On this week's show, Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin joins to talk about his latest book Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, the artifice and authenticity of the popular entertainment complex The Grove, and the urban qualities of New York compared with Los Angeles. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

David L. Ulin is the guest. He is the book critic for the Los Angeles Times, a Guggenheim fellow, and the author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, due out from the University of California Press in October. You can pre-order it now. I've been reading David for years in the LA Times and had the pleasure of meeting him this past winter during a residency in Palm Desert. His new book deals with a subject we have in common: the city of Los Angeles, a city notoriously difficult to wrap one's head around. David, though, does it masterfully, shining a light on LA's strange beauty, little idiosyncrasies, and big contradictions. In the monologue, I talk about my complete lack of imagination and tendency toward very thinly veiled autobiographical work, and I ponder my decision to read a sex scene in front of people at a local bookstore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Colin Marshall talks with Patricia Wakida, editor of Heyday Books' new LAtitudes: An Angeleno's Atlas, a collection of cartographically organized essays on the real Los Angeles from such contributors as David L. Ulin, Glen Creason, Laura Pulido, Lynell George, and Josh Kun.

100 Not So Famous Views of L.A. (Prospect Park Books) Join us tonight for a very special visual presentation by local painter Barbara Thomason. For four years, artist Barbara Thomason roamed her beloved Los Angeles, seeking the vistas, nooks, bridges, signs, streets, and landmarks that most captivated her. Inspired by the color, compositions, and tonal changes of Hiroshige's acclaimed print series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, this grand project resulted in one hundred paintings, all of which Thomason executed in Cel-Vinyl to resemble woodblock ink in texture and tone. Each of these original paintings have now been beautifully reproduced and are accompanied by the artist's personal commentary and historical insight about her subject matter—an alchemical mix that results in a unique and splendid tour of the vibrancy, quirkiness, charm, and essential personality of a great American city. Praise for 100 Not So Famous Views of L.A. “This is Los Angeles without its history of forgetting, no longer rootless, placeless, but instead, through Thomason's transforming imagination, the embodiment of place.”—David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times book critic (from the Foreword) “Everyone who loves L.A. is going to want this book. Once you get the idea, it becomes addicting—you're compelled to pore over each page. She had me at Felix, the strangely ironic cat that lorded over all of my really awful late-night food choices as an undergrad at USC. It's the perfect hostess/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/anyone who lives in or has ever loved L.A. gift.” —Greg Freitas, Traveler's Bookcase (Los Angeles, CA) Barbara Thomason is a Los Angeles-based artist and professor of printmaking, sculpture, and painting at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. Her paintings, drawings, and prints have been shown in exhibitions at many galleries, museums, and universities. She received a masters degree in printmaking from California State University, Long Beach, and worked as a master printer in lithography at the renowned Gemini G.E.L., where she printed for Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Ed Ruscha, Ellsworh Kelly, and many others. She has been on the art faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Redlands; Otis College of Art and Design; and other fine institutions. David Ulin" is a book critic for the Los Angeles Times and the editor of The Library of America's Writing Los Angeles.

MARY COIN (Blue Rider Press) In her first novel since "The God of War, " critically acclaimed author Marisa Silver takes Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" photograph as inspiration for a breathtaking reinvention--a story of two women, one famous and one forgotten, and of the remarkable legacy of their singular encounter. In 1936, a young mother resting by the side of a road in Central California is spontaneously photographed by a woman documenting the migrant laborers who have taken to America's farms in search of work--little personal information is exchanged and neither has any way of knowing that their chance encounter has produced the most iconic image of the Great Depression. Three vibrant characters anchor the narrative of "Mary Coin" Mary, the migrant mother herself, who emerges as a woman with deep reserves of courage and nerve, with private passions and carefully-guarded secrets. Vera Dare, the photographer wrestling with creative ambition who makes the choice to leave her children in order to pursue her work. And Walker Dodge, a present-day professor of cultural history, who discovers a family mystery embedded in the picture. In luminous, exquisitely observed prose, Silver creates an extraordinary tale from a brief moment in history, and reminds us that though a great photograph can capture the essence of a moment, it only scratches the surface of a life. Mary Coin is quite simply one of the best novels I have read in years . . . In her portrayal of a time in American history when survival was often a day-to-day thing, Silver drills down to the absolute essentials: family, love, loss, the perpetual uncertainty of life. Again and again I found myself wondering: How does she know that? Silver's wisdom is rare, and her novel is the work of a master.--Ben Fountain, author of the 2012 National Book Award finalist "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Marisa Silver is the author of two novels, The God of War (a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist) and No Direction Home, and two story collections, Alone With You and Babe in Paradise (a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Prize Stories. Silver lives in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin authored The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith and The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Are So Important in a Distracted Time. Photo by Bader Howar THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS ON APRIL 6, 2013 COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780399160707

Author (and frequent Skylight Books event host!) Noel Alumit presents a panel on getting published, featuring author Dana Johnson, book critic and author David L. Ulin, editor Daniel Smetanka, and agent B.J. Robbins. Dana Johnson is the author of Elsewhere, California and Break Any Woman Down. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern California where she teaches literature and creative writing. BJ Robbins opened her Los Angeles-based literary agency in 1992 after a multifaceted career in book publishing that took her from publicity at Simon & Schuster to Marketing Director and later Senior Editor at Harcourt. Her agency represents non-genre fiction, both literary and commercial and a wide range of nonfiction, from narrative to history and biography, pop culture, travel-adventure, sports and health. Daniel Smetanka has worked in various aspects of the publishing industry for close to twenty years. As an Executive Editor at Ballantine/Random House, Inc., he acquired and published award-winning debut books including The Ice Harvest by Scott Philips, The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner, Down to a Soundless Sea by Thomas Steinbeck, and Among the Missing by Dan Chaon, a 2001 finalist for the National Book Award. He currently serves as Editor-at-Large for Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press. Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin authored The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith and The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Are So Important in a Distracted Time.

Colin Marshall sits down at the La Brea Tar Pits with David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times book critic, editor of the anthologies Writing Los Angeles, Another City, and Cape Cod Noir, and author of The Myth of Solid Ground, The Lost Art of Reading, and the upcoming novella Labyrinth. They talk about his attitude as a young New Yorker moving to Los Angeles; his approach to everything in life through the filter of books; his "graduate education" writing for the mythologized oasis of writerly cool that was the Los Angeles Reader; the importance of competition in print journalism; criticism as the search for the most important questions; how to talk about a city that doesn't know how to talk about itself; how to have a coherent conversation about a city that resists coherent conversation; the "sacred ordinariness" of Los Angeles; how literature of exile became literature of place; ersatz public and protected pseudo-urban space; whether the city will feel the same ten years from now; whether we'll still have what architectural critic Reyner Banham described as an "autopia" ten years from now; how narrative offers our only hope of meaning, yet only offers meaning up to a point; and what happens when our narratives go bad, assuming we notice. (Photo: Noah 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.

Colin Marshall talks to book critic and former Los Angeles Times book editor David L. Ulin. He’s also the editor of several anthologies of Los Angeles writing and the author of The Myth of Solid Ground. His latest book The Lost Art of Reading examines changes in his own and others’ style of engagement with books in the age of fragmented attention, always-flowing information sources, and countless outlets for on-demand media.

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.

A conversation about publishing, book criticism and LA literary culture with David L. Ulin, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review.