Skylight Books Author Reading Series

The Black Automaton (Fence Books)

Poet Douglas Kearney will be making his third appearance at Skylight Books, this time to present his new poetry collection The Black Automaton, which was selected for the National Poetry Series!

Douglas Kearney’s work as a poet, performer and librettist has been featured in many fine publications and venues in print, in-the-flesh and in digital code. His first full-length collection of poems, Fear, Some, was published in 2006 (Red Hen Press). His second manuscript, The Black Automaton, was chosen by Catherine Wagner for the National Poetry Series and will be published by Fence Books in November 2009. In 2008, he was honored with a Whiting Writers’ Award. He lives in the Valley with his family and teaches courses in African American poetry, opera and myth at California Institute of the Arts.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 21, 2010.

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This Time Tomorrow (St. Martin's Press)

A launch party for the debut novel by Michael Jaime-Becerra, author of the acclaimed short story collection Every Night is Ladies' Night.

Michael Jaime-Becerra grew up in El Monte, CA, a working-class suburb of Los Angeles. He received his MFA from the University of California, Irvine and currently teaches creative writing at University of California, Riverside. His short story collection, Every Night Is Ladies' Night, was named to lists of the years' best books by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. It was awarded a California Book Award, the Silver Medal for a First Work of Fiction. Michael lives in El Monte, CA.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 17, 2010.

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The Girl Who Fell From Earth (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)

A launch event for the debut novel by this award-winning local author!

Heidi W. Durrow is the 2008 winner of the Bellwether Prize for the best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice. She has also won the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition and the Chapter One Fiction Contest. She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and the Lois Roth Endowment and a Fellowship for Emerging Writers from the Jerome Foundation. Her writing has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, the Literary Review, and others.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 16, 2010.

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Life in the USA: An Immigrant's Guide to Understanding Americans (University of Michigan Press)

A launch party for this new book by two local authors!  Planaria J. Price and Euphronia Awakuni will discuss and sign Life in the USA, designed to help immigrants become more comfortable by gaining familiarity with the many the nuances of American culture.

Euphronia Awakuni has lived and worked in Japan and traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia and Europe. She has a Master’s in TESOL and has taught at Glendale College, USC and LACC.  She received a John Woods scholarship to attend the Prague Summer Program with the University of Western Michigan in 2005.   She has taught English and ESL in Los Angeles at Evans Community Adult School for the last nine years.  She is currently working on a new novel.

Planaria Price has taught English as a Second Language to adults for 37 years in Los Angeles.  She often lectures and is the author of five books on English and American culture: Competency in English, Open Sesame: Understanding American English and Culture Through Folktales and Stories; Eureka!: Discovering American English and Culture Through Proverbs, Fables, Myths, and Legends;  Achieving Competency in English: A Life Skills Approach; Life in the USA: an Immigrants Guide to Understanding Americans. She is also the author of a pronunciation book: Realistically Speaking: a Practical Approach to the Basic Sounds and Rhythms of American English.   She is currently working on a Holocaust memoir: A Witness Forever, the Barbara Reichmann story.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBURARY 13, 2010.

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Her Fearful Symmetry (Scribner)

The best-selling author of The Time Traveler's Wife reads from her newest novel.

Audrey Niffenegger lives in Chicago, where she is a visual artist and writer. She is the founding member of Text 3, an artist and writer’s group that also performs and exhibits in Chicago. Her work is in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Newberry Library. She is the author of two visual novels, The Three Incestuous Sisters and The Adventuress. Her short story, The Night Bookmobile, was serialized as a graphic novel in the London Guardian last year. Her first novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, was published in 2003 and was a national bestseller. Her new book, Her Fearful Symmetry, is set in and around London’s historic Highgate Cemetery, where Niffenegger, a self-proclaimed “cemetery tourist,” is an occasional guide.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JANUARY 28, 2010.

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Footnotes in Gaza (Metropolitan Books)

From the great cartoonist-reporter, a sweeping, original investigation of a forgotten crime in the most vexed of places Rafah, a town at the bottommost tip of the Gaza Strip, is a squalid place. Raw concrete buildings front trash-strewn alleys. The narrow streets are crowded with young children and unemployed men. On the border with Egypt, swaths of Rafah have been bulldozed to rubble. Rafah is today and has always been a notorious flashpoint in this bitterest of conflicts.

Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinians dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah--cold-blooded massacre or dreadful mistake--reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco immerses himself in daily life of Rafah and the neighboring town of Khan Younis, uncovering Gaza past and present. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, alive with the voices of fugitives and schoolchildren, widows and sheikhs, "Footnotes in Gaza" captures the essence of a tragedy.

As in "Palestine" and "Safe Area Goražde," Sacco's unique visual journalism has rendered a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. "Footnotes in Gaza," his most ambitious work to date, transforms a critical conflict of our age into an intimate and immediate experience.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JANUARY 19, 2010.

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A Common Pornography (HarperCollins)

Kevin Sampsell has been the publisher of Future Tense Books since 1990. His fiction has been published widely in literary journals like LIT, McSweeney’s, Opium, and on popular sites like Nerve and Failbetter. His non-fiction essays and reviews have appeared in various newspapers and magazines. His books include Beautiful Blemish and Creamy Bullets. He works as Small Press Champion (his actual title) for Powell’s Books. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

"This is a heartbreaking and magnificent book.  I love its mosaic structure—a portrait of a family and a young man created out of jewel-like fragments of memory.  In its depiction of small-town American life—the ennui and despair and beauty—I am reminded of Denis Johnson's Jesus’ Son. This is the kind of book where you want to thank the author for helping you feel less alone with being alive."—Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir! and The Double Life is Twice as Good

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 9, 2010.

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From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time (Dutton Books)

Physicist Sean Carroll, founder of the Cosmic Variance blog and dubbed the "great science communicator" by ted.com, will be here to present his new book, From Eternity to Here.

"Sean Carroll is a sure-footed guide through some of the most perplexing and fascinating insights of modern physics. His delightful From Eternity to Here is an accessible and engaging exploration of the mysteries of time, deftly grappling with issues that will very likely play a critical role in the next major upheaval in our understanding of the cosmos.” --Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe

Sean Carroll, Ph.D. is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology.  After receiving his doctorate from Harvard university, he pursued his research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago.  His technical papers on dark matter and dark energy, the physics of extra dimensions, and alternative theories of gravity as well as the graduate-level textbook Spacetime and Geometry have been widely praised by his academic peers.  Sean Carroll is one of the founders of the group blog, cosmicvariance.com, named one of the top five science blogs by Nature.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 6, 2010.

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Los Angeles' Original Farmer's Market (Arcadia Publishing)

The authors of a new book celebrating Los Angeles's original farmer's market (at 3rd and Fairfax) will be here to discuss the 75 year history of this historic landmark.

The original Farmers Market at Third Street and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles has been at the center of its city's history for 75 years. Farmers Market led Los Angeles out of the Great Depression, drew tourists from around the world, and became the most popular attraction in Southern California. It is Los Angelesas beloved grocery store, its town square, its favorite dining room and den, Hollywood's best friend, and one of the city's most delightfully eccentric citizens. From its uniquely quirky beginnings to its contemporary stature as the coolest place in town, Farmers Market has a history rich in stories and is alive with character, integrity, and tradition.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 22, 2009.

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Just Kids (Ecco)

Music legend Patti Smith will discuss and sign her new book, Just Kids, the story of Smith's extraordinary relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. This is Smith's first book of prose.

Patti Smith’s seminal album Horses was followed by nine releases, including Radio Ethiopia, Easter, Dream of Life, Gone Again and Trampin’. Her artwork was first exhibited at Gotham Book Mart in 1973, and she has been associated with the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Strange Messenger, a retrospective of three hundred works, made its debut at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and has been exhibited worldwide. Her books include Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Patti Smith Complete 1975 - 2006. In 2005, she received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the highest grade awarded by the French Republic to eminent artists and writers who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts throughout the world.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JANUARY 30, 2010.

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The Unnamed (Little, Brown & Co.)

National Book Award-nominated writer Joshua Ferris (Then We Came to the End) will read from his new novel, The Unnamed.

Joshua Ferris's first novel, Then We Came to the End, has sold in 20 countries and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Granta, Tin House, New Stories From the South, Best New American Voices, The Guardian, The Iowa Review and Prairie Schooner. He attended the University of Iowa and the University of California, Irvine. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 4, 2010.

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The Crying Tree (Broadway Books)

Naseem Rakha will read and sign her debut novel, which Publishers Weekly called a "complex, layered story" that "comes together through spellbinding storytelling," and was "highly recommended" by Library Journal.

Naseem is an award-winning journalist whose stories have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace Radio, Christian Science Monitor, and Living on Earth. She lives in Oregon with her husband, son, and many animals. When Naseem isn’t writing, she’s reading, knitting, hiking, gardening, or just watching the seasons roll in and out.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 4, 2009.

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New writing from LGBT writers, curated and hosted by our staffer Noel Alumit. This month, we're featuring D. Travers Scott, Myriam Gurba, and Ian MacKinnon.

D. Travers Scott has worked as a writer, critic, and artist, appearing everywhere from underground 'zines to Harper's and This American Life. For the first time, the best of Scott's celebrated short fiction are gathered together in Love Hard: Stories 1989-2009, collecting work originally appearing in award-winning anthologies, queer media, erotica, and live performance, along with new stories never before published. Together, they offer the first comprehensive overview of Scott's ongoing explorations of masculinity, sexuality, urban environments, family, love, and the power of writing. Scott is also author of two novels: the internationally acclaimed Execution, Texas: 1987 and the Lambda Literary Award winner, One of these Things is Not Like the Other. He is currently completing a PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California in Los Angles, where he lives with his husband.

Myriam Gurba is a teacher and writer. She lives in a small blue house in Long Beach with two rabbits and a Midwestern trannie. She is the author of Dahlia Season, a novella and short story collection which won the Edmund White Award.

Ian MacKinnon is a gay centered performance artist and curator of queer theatre events in Los Angeles. He is a member of Queer Exchange, a group of LGBTQ multidisciplinary artists who perform, tour, and conduct workshops around California. In his solo work, Ian combines spoken text, gay centered Jungian psychological theory, digital video, and music to evoke issues central to the queer community and to Gay Liberation. He graduated with honors and a BFA in Acting from Meadow's School of the Arts at SMU. Ian was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for "Best Off Off Broadway Performance" for his piece, Spanked, performed at the New York International Fringe Festival, and toured to The New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 20, 2009.

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