Skylight Books Author Reading Series

Iron City (White Whisker Books)

Join L.A. novelist David Scott Milton for the launch of his new novel, Iron City!

About Iron City: Frank Kalinyak, disgraced ex-cop, returns to Pittsburgh, Pa., “Iron City”, his hometown, from Tucson where he has been living a desperate existence since the death of his young daughter. He has been summoned home by Bobby Mack, an Assistant D.A., to find out who murdered an old high school friend. Kalinyak is swept into a whirlpool of bizarre killings, religious fanaticism, church duplicity, hustlers, cops, junkies, old friends gone bad. Amid the fractured landscape of Iron City, rusting mills, rotting industry, he struggles to find sense in his life. Ultimately he must ask: who is he and can he survive?

David Scott Milton started as an actor in New York, learning acting and playwriting at  Theatre Genesis alongside Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, and Murray Mednick. Milton’s first play, Bread, appeared at the American Place theatre, and he had a half-dozen more plays appear Off-Broadway.  Duet premiered on Broadway, starring Ben Gazzara. Milton’s play Skin won the Neil Simon Playwriting Award.

When Milton moved to Los Angeles in the seventies, he fell into film writing and fiction writing. Ivan Passer directed his first screenplay, Born to Win, starring George Segal and Karen Black. Iron City is his sixth novel.

He taught playwriting at USC starting in 1977, and for thirteen years, he also taught creative writing to men at the maximum security prison in Tehachapi. He wrote an article about the the prison for the Los Angeles Times (click here) and he created a one-man show, Murderers Are My Life, which was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 4, 2011.

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Luminous Airplanes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Novelist Paul La Farge (Haussmann, or the Distinction) visits Skylight for a reading and signing of his latest, Luminous Airplanes, a novel that was 10 years in the making.

"This is one of the best works of fiction to come my way in a long time. Paul La Farge writes beautifully, with wit, humor and passion. He has created as thoroughly imagined a world as you would expect from Chekhov or Flaubert, and has bestowed upon two fictional families enough sympathy and care to rank himself among the best of parents. Luminous Airplanes is a quiet triumph of a book." --Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

“Remarkable . . . brilliantly imagined . . . La Farge spins his tale with the grace of an acrobat and creates the thrill of watching a high-wire act when digressions begin to converge into a coherent story.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A page-turning pleasure . . . Where so much experimental fiction seems pessimistic or even cynical about its possibilities, this novel sustains a spirit of innocence and wonder.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Paul La Farge is the author of two previous novels: The Artist of the Missing (FSG,1999) and Haussmann, or the Distinction (FSG, 2001); and a book of imaginary dreams, The Facts of Winter. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Harper’s Magazine, Fence, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. His nonfiction has appeared in The Believer, Bookforum, Playboy, and Cabinet. He teaches at Bard College.

Photo of the author by Carol Shadford.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 28, 2011.

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Shards (Grove Press)

Debut novelist Ismet Prcic will read and sign Shards, based on his experiences leaving war-torn Bosnia.

"Ismet Prcic has taken apart the complexities of war, love, family and home and scattered them across a novel that is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful. Shards is an original work of art, brutal and honest, and absolutely unforgettable." --Dinaw Mengestu, author of How to Read the Air

"Ismet Prcic's prose is a gleaming pinball kept in inexhaustible play, kinetically suspended in time and space, endlessly flung away from its inevitable ending, colliding with memory and invention. This is writing fed by skill, inertia, horror, and sorrow, a survivor's story of triumph and guilt. Yet Prcic's sensibility is at once brutally and tenderly comic. Humanity seems to run deepest among those who have survived its near-absence in the world." --Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury and Aliens in the Prime of their Lives

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First Day on Earth (Scholastic)

Young adult author (and Skylight favorite!) Cecil Castellucci returns to Skylight Books to launch her new young adult novel First Day on Earth.  This isn't just a launch party -- it's also Cecil's birthday, so expect a party!

"A simple, tender work that speaks to the alien in all of us." --Kirkus Reviews

Mal lives on the fringes of high school. Angry. Misunderstood. Quiet, but with a lot of words underneath. Seven years ago, Mal disappeared for three days. Everyone tells him it was a breakdown, a seizure, something medical. He thinks it was something different. An alien abduction. But there's no way for him to know for sure. Then, at an abductee support group, he meets Hooper, who has some otherworldly secrets of his own. And suddenly the truth is closer than Mal ever imagined it could be.

Cecil Castellucci grew up in New York City and is the author of the young adult novels Rose Sees Red, Boy Proof, The Queen of Cool, and Beige, the children's picture book Grandma's Gloves, and the comic books The Plain Janes and Janes in Love. Currently, Cecil Castellucci lives in Los Angeles. You can learn more about her at www.misscecil.com and via her blog, castellucci.livejournal.com.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 25M 2011.

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Touch and Go by Nodine

Hick by Portes (both books published by Unbridled Books)

Thad Nodine will read and sign his debut novel, Touch and Go, joined by special guest Andrea Portes, whose novel Hick has just been adapted into a film, appearing at the Toronto International Film Festival!

"Nodine’s cinematic novel deserves to be hailed as one of the year’s finest fiction debuts."  -- Publisher's Weekly

“Touch and Go is a strong debut—a high-velocity vision quest that keeps surprising and surprising.” — Jonathan Franzen

Thad Nodine is a novelist and writer who grew up in Florida and now lives in California, in a brown house with a red door not far from the Pacific. He has written for a living since graduating from college -- as a legislative correspondent, speech writer, journalist, publishing director, writing instructor, university lecturer, grant writer, editor, communications director, researcher, vice president, and education policy specialist. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and UC Santa Cruz. Touch and Go is his first novel.

Andrea Portes grew up in rural Nebraska, later shuffling between Illinois, Texas, Brazil, North Dakota and North Carolina before attending Bryn Mawr College. She received her MFA from UC San Diego and became a script reader for Paramount Pictures. She now lives in Los Angeles and is a nightlife columnist for several websites. Hick is her first novel. A film version of Hick was shot in early 2011, staring Chloe Grave Moritz, Blake Lively, Alec Baldwin, Juliette Lewis and Eddie Redmayne. Directed by Derek Martini and adapted by Martini and Andea Portes, the film debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 21, 2011.

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The Man Who Couldn't Eat - Gallery Books

Award-winning magazine writer Jon Reiner will discuss and sign his book The Man Who Couldn't Eat, about the illness, infection, and doctor's orders that prevented him from eating or drinking anything at all for months.

"An engrossing and candid memoir. As a piece of writing, it's fearless and singular." --Publishers Weekly

Jon Reiner won the 2010 James Beard Foundation Award for Magazine Feature Writing with Recipes for the collaborative Esquire article “How Men Eat.”  His memoir, The Man Who Couldn’t Eat, is based on an acclaimed article of the same name that he wrote for Esquire in 2009.  He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 18, 2011.

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The Tragedy of Arthur (Random House)

We're thrilled to welcome back bestselling novelist Arthur Philips for his acclaimed latest, The Tragedy of Arthur! This virtuosic novel (masquerading as a memoir) includes an entire five-act "lost" William Shakespeare play!

"A long-lost Shakespeare play surfaces in Phillips's wily fifth novel, a sublime faux memoir framed as the introduction to the play's first printing—a Modern Library edition, of course… The play itself . . . reads not unlike something written by the man from Stratford-upon-Avon. It's a tricky project, funny and brazen, smart and playful.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Arthur Phillips was born in Minneapolis and educated at Harvard. He has been a child actor, a jazz musician, a speech writer, and a five-time Jeopardy! champion. His first novel, Prague, was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and received the Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for best first novel. He is also the bestselling author of The Egyptologist, Angelica, and The Song is You. His novels have published in over two dozen countries. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.

Photo of the author by Barbi Reed.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 18, 2011.

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Ether (City Lights)

Ben Ehrenreich (The Suitors) returns to Skylight to read and sign his acclaimed second novel, Ether.

"Ether is a dark and powerful work, with disturbing metaphysical overtones. Ben Ehrenreich is a gathering power in the literary land." --John Banville, author of The Infinities and The Sea

Praise for The Suitors: "Smart and postmodern in a puckish, Calvino-like sense. . . . Ehrenreich writes with an ease and pure line-by-line skill that's rare." — New York Times Book Review

Ben Ehrenreich is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer. His fiction has been published in McSweeney's, Bomb, and Black Clock, among other publications. His novel, The Suitors, was published by Counterpoint in 2006 and received widespread critical attention. This is his second novel.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 16, 2011.

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Fiction Ruined My Family (Riverhead Books)

A launch party for local author Jeanne Darst and her debut book, the memoir Fiction Ruined My Family.

"Fiction Ruined My Family had me laughing out loud, which I almost never do, with one jaw-dropping scene after another. On nearly every page there's some sentence that's so perfect, in an old-school Oscar Wilde/Dorothy Parker sort of way, that it made everything I've ever written or said seem like dull, drunken mumbling." --Ira Glass, host of "This American Life"

"Dazzlingly funny, gut wrenching and infested with writing that will absolutely floor you. Fiction Ruined My Family has ruined me--how will I ever be able to use those adjectives again and mean them as much as I do now?" --Sloane Crosley, author of How Did You Get This Number Jeanne Darst is a writer/performer who has written for The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, and has performed her solo plays in bars, barns, and living rooms across the United States. An excerpt from Fiction Ruined My Family aired on This American Life. She lives in Los Angeles.

Photo of the author by Cory Lashever.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 14, 2011.

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The Marriage Plot (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

We're thrilled to announce that Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides, will be coming to Skylight to read and sign his new novel, The Marriage Plot!

Jeffrey Eugenides was born in Detroit and attended Brown and Stanford Universities. His first novel, The Virgin Suicides, was published by FSG to great acclaim in 1993, and he has received numerous awards for his work. In 2003, Eugenides received the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Middlesex (FSG, 2002), which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and France’s Prix Médicis.

Photo of the author by Karen Yamauchi.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 13, 2011.

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It Calls You Back: An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing (Touchstone)

Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running and Republic of East L.A., launches his new book It Calls You Back!

"Rodriguez’s life story is astonishing . . . It takes a heart broken open by a lifetime of sorrows to write with this wisdom and compassion. It takes a visionary to use this knowledge in service to those the world despises—troubled youth, the homeless, the incarcerated, the poor, the migrant—to be called back for those you love." —Sandra Cisneros, author of Caramelo and The House on Mango Street

The son of Mexican immigrants, Luis Rodriguez began writing in his early teens and has won national recognition as a poet, journalist, fiction writer, children’s book writer, and critic. He has emerged as one of the leading Chicano writers in the country with fourteen published books. Luis is best known for the 1993 memoir of gang life, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Now selling more than 300,000 copies, this book garnered a Carl Sandburg Literary Award, a Chicago Sun-Times Book Award, and was designated a New York Times Notable Book. Rodriguez co-founded Tia Chucha Press and Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore, a cultural center in Northeast San Fernando Valley. He is currently working as a peacemaker among gangs on a national and international level.

Photo of the author by D. Zapa Media.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 11, 2011.

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The Barbarian Nurseries (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Los Angeles Times columnist, Pulitzer-winning journalist, and acclaimed novelist Hector Tobar will read and sign his highly-anticipated new novel, The Barbarian Nurseries.

"Tobar is both inventive and relentless in pricking the pretentious social consciences of his entitled Americans, though he also casts a sober look on the foibles of the Mexicans who serve them. His sharp eye for Southern California culture, spiraling plot twists, ecological awareness, and ample willingness to dole out come-uppance to the nauseatingly privileged may put readers in mind of T.C. Boyle." --Publishers Weekly

Hector Tobar, now a weekly columnist for the "Los Angeles Times", is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of "Translation Nation" and "The Tattooed Soldier". The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of the city of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Photo of the author by Doug Knutson.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 4, 2011.

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Childish Loves (W. W. Norton)

Novelist Ben Markovits will read and sign the third and final entry is his critically acclaimed trilogy of novels surrounding the life of Lord Byron.

"This story-within-a-story-within-a-story poses questions about the very nature of fiction." --Booklist

"I've been a keen reader of this unfolding trilogy, in its totality a work of high intelligence and canny storytelling. . . . With Childish Loves, his concluding novel, Markovits reaches well beyond the usual confines of historical fiction, breaking the boundaries of the genre, in a moving finale that raises this trilogy to a level of artfulness that deserves a wide audience and deep appreciation." --Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M.

Benjamin Markovits grew up in Texas, London and Berlin. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics. Since then he has taught high-school English, edited a left-wing cultural magazine, and written essays, stories and reviews for, among other publications, the New York Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books and the Paris Review. His novels include The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter, Imposture, and A Quiet Adjustment. Markovits has lived in London since 2000 and is married with a daughter and a son. He teaches creative writing at the Royal Holloway, University of London.

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Kippenberger: The Artist and His Families (J&L Books) Kippenberger. Der Künstler und seine Familien (Berlin Verlag)

Skylight Books and Villa Aurora present Susanne Kippenberger, discussing her biography of her late brother, the artist Martin Kippenberger. The event will feature film clips, images, and audio from Martin's career, and should not be missed!

Susanne's book will become available in English in December, but we didn't want to miss the chance to have this fascinating presentation in our store while the author is in the country.  We're hoping to have copies of the German edition of her book available for sale, and will take preorders of the English edition.

Over the course of his 20-year career, Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) cast himself alternately as hard-drinking carouser and confrontational art-world jester, thrusting these personae to the forefront of his prodigious creativity. He was also very much a player in the international art world of the 1970s right up until his death in 1997, commissioning work from artists such as Jeff Koons and Mike Kelley, and acting as unofficial ringleader to a generation of German artists. Written by the artist's sister, Susanne Kippenberger, this first English-language biography draws both from personal memories of their shared childhood and exhaustive interviews with Kippenberger's extended family of friends and colleagues in the art world. Kippenberger gives insight into the psychology and drive behind this playful and provocative artist.

Susanne Kippenberger, editor at Tagesspiegel Berlin and author of Kippenberger: Der Künstler und seine Familien and Am Tisch, is an accomplished journalist who has been awarded a number of prestigious journalistic awards.  She studied German, English, and American literature in Tübingen and at the Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and film at NYU. She is currently working on a biography of Jessica Mitford, daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, who, unlike the rest of her family, developed left-wing political opinions, became involved in the struggle against the British Union of Fascists and moved to the United States in 1939 where she joined the American Communist Party and was active in the Civil Rights movement. Kippenberger is currently a writer in residence at Villa Aurora in  Pacific Palisades.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 24,2011.

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Lightning People (Soft Skull Press)

Christopher Bollen, former editor-in-chief and current editor-at-large at Interview magazine, will read and sign his acclaimed debut novel, Lightning People.

"Bollen's intricate, humid Lightning People deftly combines paranoia and high drama with the mundane ache of real relationships, real weather, and a very real New York City. He delves into the the haunting mythologies we truly can't escape, while somehow capturing the sweetness of why we come together anyway." --Miranda July

"Smart and rich with the spirit of our age, with keen insight into human emotions and why we do the things we do. So readable." -Douglas Coupland

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 19, 2011.

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