Alone with You (Simon & 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.

Robin and Ruby (Kensington Publishing)

The award-winning author will read from and sign his new novel.

"A fiercely gripping story... a brother and sister, bonded and haunted, smart and intense, sharing overlapping roads to romance or tragedy or hard-won self-understanding." --Michelle Tea, author of Rose of No Man's Land and Valencia

Praise for The World of Normal Boys:
"Extraordinary...an exhilarating experience...that Soehnlein has produced as his first novel a work of such maturity and excellence is little short of astounding." -- Fenton Johnson, author of Scissors, Paper, Rock

"This is a rich and unflinching book." --The New York Times Book Review

K.M. Soehnlein is the author of the Lambda Award-winning bestselling novel, The World of Normal Boys, and You Can Say You Knew Me When. He lives in San Francisco, where he works as a freelance writer, editor and writing teacher. Readers can visit his blog at http://kmsoehnlein.typepad.com and his website at www.kmsoehnlein.com.

Students in University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing program will read from their work.

This evening's student readers are Kimberly Laux, Tesia Walker,  Ilir Lita, Jacqui Lazo, and Ra’Kenna Joseph. Faculty member and author Madelyn Cain (The Childless Revolution) will also read.

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.

Legend of a Suicide (Harper Perennial)

David Vann, whose short story collection Legend of a Suicide earned rave reviews in hardcover, will be here to read and sign the new paperback edition.

"The reportorial relentlessness of Vann’s imagination often makes his fiction seem less written than chiseled. A small, lovely book has been written out of his large and evident pain. 'A father, after all,' Vann writes, 'is a lot for a thing to be.' A son is also a lot for a thing to
be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide, David Vann proves himself a fine example of both.” —Tom Bissell, New York Times Book Review

"Brilliant . . . . Vann's prose follows the sinews of Cormac McCarthy and Hemingway, yet has its own nimble flex." —The Times (London)

David Vann is a professor at the University of San Francisco. A contributor to Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Men’s Journal, Outside, and National Geographic Adventure, he is author of a best-selling memoir, A Mile Down: The True story of a Disastrous Career at Sea, and the forthcoming Last Day On Earth: A Portrait of the NIU Shooter, Steve Kazmierczak, winner of the 2009 AWP Nonfiction Prize.  He has also been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and a Wallace Stegner Fellow.

Make/shift

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.

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 & Letters. His first novel, The Heaven of Mercury, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

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
& 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.

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.

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.

Six finalists for the Lambda Literary Awards will read from their nominated work. Tonight's readers are James Morrison, Stacie Cassarino, Kathleen Bradean, Dexter Flowers, Ariel Schrag, and Dayle A. Dermatis.

James Morrison is the author of a memoir, Broken Fever (2001), a novel, The Lost Girl (2007), and a collection of short stories, Said and Done (2009), as well as several books on film.  He lives in Southern California and teaches at Claremont McKenna College.

Stacie Cassarino is a recipient of the "Discovery"/The Nation prize, the Audre Lorde Award, the Astraea Foundation Writer’s Fund, a finalist for the Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and nominee twice for the Pushcart Prize. She has worked as a chef, and has held teaching positions at Middlebury College, Pratt Institute, and now UCLA where she's working towards her Ph.D. She lives in Venice, CA.

Award winning author Kathleen Bradean’s stories can be found in The Best of Best Women’s EroticaThe Sweetest Kiss (Cleis), The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 9 (Running Press), Zane’s Sensuality – Caramel Flava II (Atria), Broadly Bound (Phaze), Where the Girls Are (Cleis), Coming Together Against the Odds (Coming Together), and Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades (Lethe Press). She blogs weekly for Oh Get A Grip, and reviews erotica monthly at EroticaRevealed.Com and  Erotica-Readers.Com.
2010 (Cleis),

Dexter Flowers is a Portland writer, who started her writing career as an eighth grade advice columnist.  Since then she's busted out in the 2007 national Sister Spit tour and is published in the anthologies Baby Remember My Name, It's So You  both edited by Michelle Tea, and Portland Queer, edited by Ariel Gore, which is Lammy-nominated in the Anthology category.  She's been a featured reader at the San Francisco library's RADAR reading series, and is a frequent personality on KBOO free radio.

Ariel Schrag is the author of the autobiographical graphic novels Awkward, Definition, Potential, and Likewise, which chronicle her four years at Berkeley High School. Potential is currently being developed into a feature film with director Rose Troche. Schrag was also a writer for the hit Showtime series The L Word.

An interviewer said of Dayle A. Dermatis, “She has so many aliases, you’d think she was a spy!” Under her Andrea Dale pseudonym, she’s sold approximately 50 erotic stories, two of which are in 2010 Lamba Award-nominated anthologies. Tonight she will be reading “Queens Up” which appeared in Lesbian Cowboys: Erotic Adventures.

I Though 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.

Wilson (Drawn & 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 Q&A!

And, Drawn and Quarterly sent us really nice double-sided
posters -- one side is the book cover and the other side is an enlarged
page from the book -- which are available with the purchase of a copy
of Wilson here at Skylight (while supplies last)!

The Silver Hearted (Alyson Books)

David McConnell will read and sign his novel The Silver Hearted.

"The Silver Hearted is our Heart of Darkness. It is just as
ominous, as violent, as exotic, as darkly colonial. But it is a lot
better written than Conrad's book. Whereas Conrad is always resorting
to 'the unspeakable,' McConnell tells us everything in glowing detail
and in fresh, eloquent language. Sexy, demonic, elusive, The Silver
Hearted is a perfect work of art. "--Edmund White

New York-based novelist David McConnell, whose short fiction and
criticism have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, is the
author of the fictional memoir The Firebrat.

Photo of David McConnell by Everett McCourt

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).

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 something deep 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. 

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.

Swagger Is a Woman (Mouthfeel Press)

Los Angeles poet Cassandra Love will read from and sign her new poetry collection, Swagger Is a Woman.

Cassandra Love was born in Beverly Hills, California but considers the Pacific her native home. She began writing at an early age and formalized her writing career during her senior year in high school. As a Yale student, she played basketball and studied literature. She has published her work in Falling Star Magazine, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and FORTH Magazine. Her work has been featured in the anthologies Mezcla: Art & Writing from the Tumblewords Project, Silhouette: Bold Lines & Voices from WriteGirl and Listen to Me. She is currently at work on a book of poems about mothers and motherhood. She is currently residing in the NoHo Arts District. She also hosts the radio show “For the Love of Poetry” on BlogTalkRadio.

Empty the Sun (A Barnacle Book)

Skylight Books and A Barnacle Book present Joseph Mattson reading from and signing Empty the Sun!

Please note that, unlike most of our weekend events, the reading will begin at 7:30 p.m.

This will be a multimedia extravaganza featuring a reading from author Joseph Mattson, the book's soundtrack by Six Organs of Admittance (included with the purchase of the book), and archival 8 mm footage (available on DVD) compiled as a companion to the novel.

Joseph Mattson is the author of Eat Hell, and his writing has appeared in Ambit, Slipstream, Two Letters, and more. An epical rambler -- miles under him include work as a farmer, dishwasher, getaway driver, and in healthcare for the clinically mentally insane -- his home base is Los Angeles.

Current author photo by Richard Medina.  Childhood photo courtesy of the author's mother.

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.

Sunnyside (Vintage)

Glen David Gold returns to Skylight to read from and sign his novel Sunnyside, now out in paperback!

"A breathless stupendous novel that recreates both a young brash America on the
verge of becoming itself, and Chaplin, one of its most bewitching quixotic
citizens. From lighthouse to Hollywood to starlets to war to stardom to madness
to genius Gold's startling narrative carries us across the world and back. Gold
proves himself yet again to be the hungriest craftiest funniest and most humane
novelist we have."
-Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Glen David Gold is the author of the best-selling novel Carter Beats the Devil, which was translated into 14 languages, and named a book of the year by Entertainment Weekly, The LA Times, Publishers Weekly, and The Washington Post.  He has written memoir, essays, short stories and journalism for The New York Times Magazine, McSweeney's, Playboy, Black Clock, Tin House, and the Independent UK.  After
toiling as a screenwriter for many years, he turned to writing graphic
novels for DC (The Spirit) and Dark Horse (the Escapist).  His
essays on the comic book artist Jack Kirby have appeared in many
journals, as well as in support of the ground-breaking exhibition Masters of American Comics.  His most recent novel, Sunnyside, is also an international bestseller.  Currently, Gold is writing the libretto for an opera, Erdnase, with Gavin Bryars, composer.

Author photo by Sarah Stollar.

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. (image by Kaz)  

Sammy Harkham is an Award winning cartoonist behind Crickets (Drawn & 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.

Did you know that many Skylight staffers have been published in journals like McSweeney's (Kerrie Kvashay-Boyle), Black Clock (Monica Carter), Penny Ante (Steven Salardino), and more?  And that frequent event host Noel Alumit has published two novels?  Come see the other side of your favorite bookstore clerks at a very special Skylight Reads event.  More details are forthcoming, so check back, and we hope to see you there!

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.

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.

Photo of the author by Max S. Gerber.

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.

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!  The workshop will be on "Character-Driven Screenplay Structure," and will examine how to build an iconic character from the inside out, and how plot emerges from and is influenced by the unique choices characters make based on their specific psychological/emotional needs, fears and desires.  Each participant should bring a pad of paper and a pen, and please RSVP (including the date/location of the workshop) to Landaubookrelease@gmail.com.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The students from the Thomas Starr King Middle School Writers Club will be sharing their work with the world.  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.

The Lesser Tragedy of Death (Akashic Books)

Novelist Cristina Garcia will read from her debut poetry collection, The Lesser Tragedy of Death, part of Akashic Books' Black Goat Poetry series. Black Goat curator Chris Abani will read as a special guest!

Cristina Garcia is the author of several novels including Dreaming in
Cuban and A Handbook to Luck, anthologies, and books for young readers.
The Lesser Tragedy of Death is her first collection of poetry. Garcia's
work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into a
dozen languages. She is a Visiting Professor and Black Mountain
Institute Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas.

Chris Abani's prose includes Song For Night (Akashic, 2007), The Virgin
of Flames (Penguin, 2007), Becoming Abigail (Akashic, 2006), GraceLand
(FSG, 2004), and Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985). His poetry
collections are Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon, 2006), Dog Woman
(Red Hen, 2004), Daphne's Lot (Red Hen, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic
(Saqi, 2001). He is a Professor at the University of California,
Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the
Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book
Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award,
the PEN Hemingway Book Prize & a Guggenheim Award.

On the eve of Gay Pride Weekend, nine amazing writers will explore "pride"—all sorts of pride. True creativity will shine as writers read work that exemplifies pride’s meaning. This could be discussing civic pride, an analysis of Pride and Prejudice, a description of a pride of animals, the Deadly Sin of pride and, of
course, gay pride.

Tonight's participating writers are Alex Davis, Larry Duplechan, Alison de la Cruz, D’Lo,
David Francis, Jacky Guerrero, Hank Henderson, Imani Tolliver, and Ric Montejano.

Series Curator Noël Alumit wrote the novels Letters to Montgomery Clift and Talking to the Moon. He recently recieved the James Duggins Award, which honors Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender mid-career novelists "of extraordinary talent and service to the LGBT community."  www.thelastnoel.blogspot.com

The Promising Series exclusively features Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender writers. The series celebrates diverse, queer writing and promotes the next generation of LGBT writers.

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 Is Where We Live (Spiegel & 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

Photo of the author by Margo Silver.

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). (Erika Schickel, author of You're Not the Boss of Me, can not make it.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World (Penguin)

Join us for a special presentation by Boing Boing founder, Make magazine editor, and Made by Hand author Mark Frauenfelder!  In this 45-minute demo, he'll show us how to make yogurt, sauerkraut, kombucha, and cigar box
guitars and amplifiers (check out the one on the book's cover, below!).

"This is a must-read book. Mark has lovingly and
candidly documented the complex, myriad, intangible and often very
tangible rewards of grabbing the world with both of your hands, and
learning how it works."
- Adam Savage, Mythbusters

"What Mark Frauenfelder knows is that making a ukulele out of a cigar
box is not just fun (and finally a good use for your thousands of old
cigar boxes), it's a way of restringing and retuning your whole life.
Buy this book, read it, and then maybe make it into a clarinet. I bet
you can!"
- John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and More Information Than You Require 

Mark Frauenfelder is the editor-in-chief of Make magazine, and the founder of the popular Boing Boing blog.  He was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998, and is  the author of six books. His latest book is Made By Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World.

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. 

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).

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.

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.

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 "Shit 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.

Photo of the author by Matt Hoyle.

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.

Leaving Rock Harbor (Scribner)

Rebecca Chace will read from and sign her new novel, Leaving Rock Harbor.

"Leaving Rock Harbor is an irresistible read in part because its protagonist, Frankie Ross, seduces us on the first page and never surrenders our affection, but also because fictional Rock Harbor feels as real as she does.  —Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and That Old Cape Magic

Rebecca Chace is the author of the forthcoming novel Leaving Rock Harbor (Scribner, June 2010) and memoir Chautauqua Summer, which was selected as an “Editor's Choice” and one of the “Picks for Summer” by The New York Times Book Review, and the novel Capture the Flag, which was adapted into a screenplay co-written by Chace and director Lisanne Skyler (Getting to Know
You). The short film of Capture the Flag is being shown at film
festivals around the country.

Back by popular demand! Skylight's Hot Summer Nights, in which we stay open until midnight on Saturday nights during the summer, is back and better than ever.  Saturday nights from July 17 through August 28, come by the store to enjoy some snacks, some music (occasionally live), some art (occasionally projected onto the walls), and some good summer times. More details to come!

Revolver (Vertigo)

Graphic novelist Matt Kindt (Super Spy)
will discuss and sign his brand-new book Revolver!

Matt Kindt is the
Harvey Award-winning writer and artist of the graphic novels Revolver, 3 Story,
Super Spy, 2 Sisters, and Pistolwhip. He has been nominated for
four Eisner
and three Harvey Awards. His work has been published in French,
Spanish,
Italian, and German.

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. 

Photo of the author by Dan Koeppel.

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.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House)

We're thrilled to have David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green, back to our store to read from and sign his new, highly anticipated novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

At the event, we'll be raffling off two posters signed by Mitchell, so be sure to buy the book here to get a raffle ticket!

We'll also be simulcasting the event to our annex space next door, so we can accommodate an overflow crowd.

We've already sold a large part of our order of first printings; if having a first printing is important to you, we recommend calling and purchasing one over the phone for pick-up when you arrive to the event.

We will be using numbered "tickets" to the signing line.  They are free and first come, first served.  If you'd like to have David Mitchell sign a book for you, pick up a signing line ticket at the front counter when you come to the event.  They'll be available starting at 5:30 p.m. on Friday (two hours before the event begins).

And now, more on David Mitchell!

"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.

Photo of the author by Miriam Berkley; http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/MiriamBerkley/

Rose Sees Red (Scholastic) and Grandma's Gloves (Candlewick)

A launch party for two new books by this great local author!  Rose Sees Red is Cecil Castellucci's fourth young adult novel, following Beige, Queen of Cool, and Boy Proof.  Grandma's Gloves is her first children's picture book.  She is also the author of the graphic novels The Plain Janes and Janes in Love, and the editor of the anthology Geektastic.

Some of Cecil's former classmates from La Guardia High School of the Performing Arts will participate in the reading of Rose Sees Red, providing voices for the characters in dialogue!

Back by popular demand! Skylight's Hot Summer Nights, in which we stay open until midnight on Saturday nights during the summer, is back and better than ever.  Saturday nights from July 17 through August 28,
come by the store to enjoy some snacks, some music (occasionally live),
some art (occasionally projected onto the walls), and some good summer
times. More details to come!

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.

Sick City (Harper Perennial)

Tony O'Neill will return to Skylight Books to read from and sign his newest novel, Sick City! Cisco wine (which has been described as "liquid crack," and which is featured in the novel) will be served.

"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.

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.

In This House (Turtle Point Press)

Poet Howard Altmann will read and sign his new poetry collection, In This House. Patricia Clarkson, who was schedule to appear, will not be able to make it.

"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 & The Thompsons (Playscripts 2008). Born and raised in Montreal, he has earned degrees from McGill and Stanford.

A street fair celebrating your
neighborhood! Come and see the best that Los Feliz has to offer, with
locally owned businesses offering samples, specials, and a chance to get
to know their stores better.  Skylight will be participating -- click here for more details.

Back by popular demand! Skylight's Hot Summer Nights, in which we stay open until midnight
on Saturday nights during the summer, is back and better than ever. 
Saturday nights from July 17 through August 28, come by the store to
enjoy some snacks, some music (occasionally live), some art
(occasionally projected onto the walls), and some good summer times.
More details to come! 

Back by popular demand! Skylight's Hot Summer Nights, in which we stay open until midnight
on Saturday nights during the summer, is back and better than ever. 
Saturday nights from July 17 through August 28, come by the store to
enjoy some snacks, some music (occasionally live), some art
(occasionally projected onto the walls), and some good summer times.
More details to come! 

Bukowski turns 90! On the occasion of what would have been
his 90th birthday, Skylight Books in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles is throwing a party in celebration of poet, novelist, and
celebrated East Hollywood resident Charles Bukowski.
Special guests include: Sue Hodson, the manuscript curator of the
Bukowski Archive at the Huntington Library, and Bukowski's friend and
poet Gerald Locklin, as well as other people from Bukowski's life to be
announced. There will be readings, screenings, giveaways, food, and of
course drink.

Sue Hodson's presentation will begin at 8 p.m. followed by a Bukowski-inspired open mic beginning at 9 p.m. (signups for the open mic start at 7 p.m.).

Mark your calendars now and stay tuned to this page for more details -- you won't want to miss this party!

Charles Bukowski is one of the 20th century's best-known
American writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most
influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and
raised in Los Angeles, where he lived for fifty years. He published his
first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry
at the age of thirty-five.

During his lifetime, he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office, Factotum, Women, Ham on Rye, and Hollywood. Among his more recent books are the posthumous editions of Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way; The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain;Slouching Toward Nirvana; and Come on In!

Henry
Charles Bukowski, the Poet Laureate of Skid Row, died in San Pedro,
California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after
completing his last novel, Pulp.

Back by popular demand! Skylight's Hot Summer Nights, in which we stay open until midnight
on Saturday nights during the summer, is back and better than ever. 
Saturday nights from July 17 through August 28, come by the store to
enjoy some snacks, some music (occasionally live), some art
(occasionally projected onto the walls), and some good summer times.
More details to come!

Back by popular demand! Skylight's Hot Summer Nights, in which we stay open until midnight
on Saturday nights during the summer, is back and better than ever. 
Saturday nights from July 17 through August 28, come by the store to
enjoy some snacks, some music (occasionally live), some art
(occasionally projected onto the walls), and some good summer times.
More details to come! 

Back by popular demand! Skylight's Hot Summer Nights, in which we stay open until midnight
on Saturday nights during the summer, is back and better than ever. 
Saturday nights from July 17 through August 28, come by the store to
enjoy some snacks, some music (occasionally live), some art
(occasionally projected onto the walls), and some good summer times.
More details to come!

The Four Fingers of Death (Little, Brown & 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.

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.

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.

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 & 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.

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.

So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems by Moldaw (Etruscan Press); Masque by Byrne (Tupelo Press)

Poets Carol Moldaw and Elena Karina Byrne will read and sign their recent poetry collections.

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.

Former 12-year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, Elena Karina Byrne is a freelance teacher, editor, collage artist, Poetry Consultant/Moderator for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a reviewer for ForeWord's Clarion Reviews and Literary Programs Director for The Ruskin Art Club. Forthcoming in Now Culture, Blackbird, Chaparral, Drunken Boat, and The Kenyon Review, her publications include 2009 Pushcart Prize XXXIII Best of the Small Presses, Best American Poetry 2005, The Yale Review, The Paris Review, APR, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, The Journal, Ploughshares, Agni, TriQuarterly, Denver Quarterly, Verse and Volt. Books include The Flammable Bird (Zoo Press/Tupelo Press 2002), MASQUE (Tupelo Press, 2008) and the forthcoming  Burnt Violin (poetry, 2011); works in progress include Voyeur Hour (poetry chapbook) and Beautiful Insignificance (essays).

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.

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 Q&A
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. Photo credit: Claudia Kunin.

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. Photo credit: Ibarionex Perello.

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 a meditation on the role of photography in intimacy, loss and memory. A first-generation American raised in rural Pennsylvania, Sylvia is a graduate of Bucknell University and of NYU/International Center of Photography, and a grateful recipient of the 2009 Emerging Voices Fellowship. She co-founded MMIX Los Angeles Writers with her EV
cohort in 2009, and is a contributing writer to Flaunt and Exposure magazines and the political blog The Huffington Post. 
Photo credit: Bonnie Kaplan.

Denise Uyehara is an award-winning performance artist, writer and playwright whose work has been presented in London, Tokyo, Helsinki, Vancouver and across the United States. She is the recipient of numerous recognitions of excellence which include a mid-career COLA Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and funding from the Asian Cultural Council. She was also a Poets & Writers "Writer on Site" at Beyond Baroque and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her book Maps of City and Body: Shedding Light on the Performances of Denise Uyehara (Kaya Press) documents her recent works. Uyehara is a frequent lecturer at the University of California, Irvine and a founding member of the Sacred Naked Nature Girls. She was a PEN Emerging Voice Fellow in 1999. http://www.deniseuyehara.com/. Photo credit: Jen Long.

Mehnaz Turner was born in Pakistan and raised in southern California.
She was a 2009 Emerging Voices Fellow.  Her poems have appeared in: The Journal of Pakistan Studies, Cahoots Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Asia Writes and An Anthology of California Poets. She is currently at work on her first poetry collection, Tongue-tied: A Memoir in Poems.

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.

Vampires Don't Sleep Alone (Ulysses Press) by D.H. Altair and Elizabeth Barrial

When Werewolves Attack (Ulysses Press) by Del Howison

Del Howison (who also writes under the pseudonym D.H. Altair) and Elizabeth Barrial will discuss and sign their new books on handling encounters with supernatural creatures of the night! Vampires Don't Sleep Alone is a tongue-in-cheek dating guide for vampire-loving women (as well as an alternate history of vampires and their tribes), and When Werewolves Attack is a pocket field guide to identifying and avoiding attacks by werewolves. Get ready for Halloween early this year -- study up with tips from the experts!

Elizabeth Barrial is a freelance writer and the co-owner
of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, the world's first dark perfume house, whose
thematic focus is literature and gothic cultural anthropology.D.H.
Altair is the vampire nom de plume of Del Howison, a
three-time nominated Bram Stoker Award–winning editor and author. He has been
nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award, a Rondo Hatton Award, and the Black Quill
Award. His own short stories have appeared in various anthologies throughout the
years and his tale "The Lost Herd" was converted into a script by Mick Garris
and filmed as the premiere episode of the NBC horror anthology series Fear
Itself.

Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius (Da Capo Press)

Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber will discuss and sign their new biography, Becoming Jimi Hendrix. They're also bringing an electric guitar to raffle off at the event, so be sure to buy your copy of the book here to get a raffle ticket! 

Steven Roby is the author of Black Gold: The Lost Archives of Jimi Hendrix and he worked for the Hendrix family as editor and publisher of the international Hendrix fanzine, Experience Hendrix. He lives in San Francisco.

Brad Schreiber is a journalist, author, and screenplay writer who has won numerous awards and fellowships from such organizations as the Edward Albee Foundation and the National Press Foundation. He lives near Los Angeles.

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.

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. (photo of the author by Leslie Barton)

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 & 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.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Pantheon)

Local author and 5 Under 35 winner (for the short story collection Third Class Superhero) Charles Yu will read from and sign his debut novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Unvierse.

"[An] exhilarating blend of time travel and literary theory and family dynamics." --Wired.com

Charles Yu received the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 Award for his story collection Third Class Superhero, and he has also received the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. His work has been published in the Harvard Review, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Mississippi Review, and the Mid-American Review, among other journals.  He lives in Los Angeles.

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.

Photo of the author by Michael Waring.

The Natural Kitchen: Your Guide to the Sustainable Food Revolution (Process)

Deborah Eden Tull will discuss and sign her new, simple, revolutionary guide to mindful, sustainable food shopping, planning, preparation, cooking, and eating in the city. The Natural Kitchen picks up where The Urban Homestead books leave off and brings the lessons of sustainable living into the kitchen, where the daily choices we make involving food have a profound impact both on our lives and the world at large.

Deborah Eden Tull is a sustainability consultant who has been traveling to, living in, or teaching about sustainable communities internationally for the last 17 years, including seven years as a monk at the Zen Monastery Peace Center. She teaches workshops throughout Los Angeles County, and is certified in Permaculture Design, Bio-Intensive Organic Gardening, and Compost Education. Her approach to sustainable living is a unique combination of peace and environmentalism that emphasizes the interconnection between personal and planetary wellbeing.

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.

3 Dead Princes: An Anarchist Fairy Tale (Exterminating Angel Press)

Musician Danbert Nobacon (Chumbawamba) and filmmaker Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy) 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.

Alex Cox is best known for his filmmaking skills (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Revengers Tragedy, Searchers 2.0), his presentation of the BBC's Moviedrome, his writing for various magazines and newspapers, his books (X Films, 10,000 Ways to
Die), and his acting abilities. Now he's a book illustrator, and a damn good one, too. Who knows what will be next?  Also, he loves monsters.

The French Revolution (Soft Skull Press)

Matt Stewart will read and sign his whimsical new novel, loosely based on the titular uprising, and set in the much more local San Francisco.

The book was originally published in 3,700 tweets (@thefrenchrev).  We can guarantee that buying the book here will make for an easier reading experience.

Matt Stewart's debut novel, The French Revolution, has been called "wildly imaginative," "brilliant," and "an excellent achievement." He’s mildly infamous for releasing the novel on Twitter first. His stories have been published in Instant City, McSweeney's, Opium Magazine, and more, and he blogs for the Huffington Post. Grab his free French Rev iPhone app on matt-stewart.com.

Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century (Free Press)

On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Hoover Dam, join Pulitzer Prize–winning Los Angeles Times journalist and author Michael Hiltzik for a discussion and book signing of Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century.

"[Colossus is a] detailed and vividly written study – destined to be the standard history for decades to come." --Washington Post

"With a runaway oil well fouling the Gulf of Mexico for weeks on end—and both government and industry seemingly helpless to stop it—Michael Hiltzik's Colossus, is a welcome reminder of the engineering genius that built America. Mr. Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, tells the Hoover Dam story in the grand tradition of David McCullough, who more or less invented the idea of popular and historically sophisticated books about stupendous engineering achievements.... Mr. Hiltzik clearly explains the technological and physical difficulties posed by the dam project, but he also fixes the endeavor in its time and captures the personalities of the people involved." --Wall Street Journal

Michael Hiltzik is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who has written about business, technology, and public policy for the Los Angeles Times for three decades. Currently the Times’s business columnist, he has also served as a financial and political writer, an investigative reporter, and a foreign correspondent in Africa and Russia. His previous books are The Plot Against Social Security (2005), Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (1999), and A Death in Kenya: The Murder of Julia Ward (1991).

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.

Half a Life (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.

“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

Darin Strauss is the best-selling author of Chang & 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.

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution (HarperPerennial)

Sara Marcus will discuss and sign Girls to the Front, her new book on the fascinating history of Riot Grrrl. Local band Dunes will play!

The last great underground cultural movement of the pre-Internet age, Riot Grrrl revolutionized girlhood itself. In the early 1990s, young women were realizing that the equality they’d been promised was still elusive, and a newly resurgent right wing was turning feminism into the ultimate dirty word. Riot Grrrl roared into the spotlight in 1991: an uncompromising movement of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet. They published zines, founded local groups, and organized national conventions, while fiercely prophetic punk bands such as Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, and Bikini Kill helped spread the word across the US and to Canada, Europe, and beyond.

Sara Marcus is a writer and musician living in New York. She has written for TimeOut New York, The Advocate, The Philadelphia Inquirer, UtneReader, and Heeb, where she was the politics editor from 2002-2007. Marcus received her MFA from Columbia University.

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.

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.

Make Me a Woman (Drawn & Quarterly)

Vanessa Davis will discuss and sign her new graphic novel, Make Me a Woman.

"Davis creates an intimate portrait of a world you totally want to hang
out in. Her chatty-charming personality, quirky memories, and oddball
thoughts are all telegraphed in drawings that hum with life." --Publishers Weekly

Vanessa Davis is the award-winning cartoonist of the graphic novel and
minicomic, Spaniel Rage, which was praised by Bust and Vice magazines.
Her new Drawn & 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.

The Reversal (Little, Brown & 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.

Picture This: The Nearsighted Monkey Book (Drawn & Quarterly)

We're thrilled to have novelist and graphic novelist Lynda Barry (Cruddy) here at Skylight to discuss and sign her creative-drawing companion to the bestselling What It Is!

Lynda Barry single-handedly created a literary genre all her own, the
graphic memoir/how-to, otherwise known as the bestselling, the
acclaimed, but most important, the adored and the inspirational What It Is.
The R. R. Donnelley and Eisner Award–winning book posed, explored, and
answered the question: “Do you wish you could write?” Now with Picture This,
Barry asks: “Do you wish you could draw?” It features the return of
Barry’s most beloved character, Marlys, and introduces a new one, the
Near-sighted Monkey. LikeWhat It Is, Picture This is an
inspirational, take-home extension of Barry’s traveling, continually
sold-out, and sought-after workshop, "Writing the Unthinkable."

Here Comes Another Lesson: Stories (Free Press)

Stephen O'Connor will read from and sign new short story collection, Here Comes Another Lesson.

"The main lesson of this book is that there are still fiction writers out
there brave enough to take serious risks. For O'Connor, the risks pay
off lavishly. Here is a collection of great feeling, range and power." —Sam Lipsyte (The Ask)

Stephen O’Connor is the author of three previous books: Rescue (collection
of short fiction and poetry), Will My Name Be Shouted Out? (work of
memoir and social analysis), and Orphan Trains (narrative history). His
fiction, poetry, and journalism have appeared in The New England Review,
Poetry Magazine, The New York Times, The Nation, and elsewhere. O’Connor is
the recipient of the Cornell Woolrich Fellowship in Creative Writing from
Columbia University, the Visiting Fellowship for Historical Research by Artists
and Writers from the American Antiquarian Society, and the DeWitt
Wallace/Reader’s Digest Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony. He has received a
BA from Columbia University and an MA from the University of California at
Berkeley, both in English Literature. He currently teaches at the MFA programs
of Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence, and lives in New York City with his
wife and daughter.

Inferno (A Poet's Novel) (OR Books)

Eileen Myles will return to Skylight books to read from and sign her new novel, Inferno (A Poet's Novel). 

Set against the backdrop of New York in its punk heyday, Inferno is
the story of a female artist coming of age in the world of poetry, and
not only coming to terms with being an outsider, but embracing it, both
on a creative and sexual level.

"Eileen Myles debates her own self identity in a gruffly beautiful, sure voice of reason. Is she a 'hunk'? A 'dyke'? A 'female'? I’ll tell you what she is––damn smart! Inferno burns with humor, lust and a healthy dose of neurotic happiness." – John Waters

Eileen Myles came to New York from Boston in 1974 and soon began reading her poems publicly, taking workshops at St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York’s East Village and publishing in little magazines, zines and larger journals such as Partisan Review and Paris Review. Her books of poems include Not Me, School of Fish and Sorry, Tree. With Liz Kotz, she co-edited the notorious The New Fuck You/adventures in lesbian reading, responding to the short-lived gay and lesbian publishing boom in the ’90s. Her first fiction was Chelsea Girls (1994), followed by Cool for You (a nonfiction novel) in 2000. She directed the writing program at the University of California at San Diego for five years, returning to New York in 2007. In San Diego she wrote the libretto for the opera Hell (composed by Michael Webster), performed in 2004-06. During that time she also wrote much of Inferno. For the last three decades she’s been writing reviews, articles, essays and blogs, most recently in Art Forum, Parkett, Vice, AnOther Magazine and the Brooklyn Rail. Her essays were collected in The Importance of Being Iceland (2009). In 2010, the Poetry Society of American awarded Myles the Shelley Memorial Award. In the same year, she was the Hugo Writer at the University of Montana at Missoula. She lives in New York.