Skylight Books Author Reading Series

Los Angeles Noir 2, edited by Denise Hamilton (Akashic Books)

Orange County Noir, edited by Gary Phillips (Akashic Books)

Seven wonderful mystery writers will be here to present two new entrants in the very popular Akashic Noir anthology series: Los Angeles Noir 2 and Orange County Noir.  Editors Denise Hamilton and Gary Phillips and contributors Susan Straight, Robert S. Levinson, Robert Ward, Jervey Tervalon, and Naomi Hirahara will read from their work.

Denise Hamilton writes the Eve Diamond series and is editor of Los Angeles Noir, an anthology of new writing that spent two months on the best-seller lists, won the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, and won the Southern California Independent Booksellers’ award for Best Mystery of the Year. Her latest novel, Los Angeles Times best seller The Last Embrace, has been compared to James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler.

Gary Phillips writes stories of chicanery and misadventure in various formats, including novels and short stories. He has contributed stories to several volumes in the Akashic Noir Series, including Los Angeles Noir, Dublin Noir, and Phoenix Noir. He recently published Freedom’s Fight, a novel set in World War II.

Susan Straight is a native of Riverside, California, just over the Orange County border. She has published six novels, including Highwire Moon, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and A Million Nightingales, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her new novel, One Candle, will be published in 2010. Her short story “The Golden Gopher,” from Los Angeles Noir, won an Edgar Award in 2008.

Robert S. Levinson is the author of the novels The Traitor in Us All, In the Key of Death, Where the Lies Begin, and Ask a Dead Man, as well as the Neil Gulliver and Stevie Marriner series of mystery-thrillers, which to date consist of The Elvis and Marilyn Affair, The James Dean Affair, The John Lennon Affair, and Hot Paint: The Andy Warhol Affair. The Derringer Award–winner’s short stories appear often in the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines.

Robert Ward’s 2006 novel Four Kinds of Rain was nominated for a Hammett Prize. He is a former writer-producer on TV shows New York Undercover, Hill Street Blues, and Miami Vice. His latest novel, Total Immunity, was published in 2009 by Harcourt.

Jervey Tervalon lives in Altadena, California, with his two daughters. He teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California and is currently revising the manuscript of Hope Found Chauncey, a sequel of sorts to his best-selling novel Understand This. His essay “The Slow Death of a Chocolate City,” originally written for the LA Weekly, won a Los Angeles Press Club Award in 2008.

Naomi Hirahara, born and raised in Southern California, won an Edgar Award for her third mystery in the Mas Arai series, Snakeskin Shamisen. She writes crime fiction and also novels for younger readers; her short story “Number 19” was published in the original Los Angeles Noir. She contributes a mystery serial for an English-language weekly in Japan and regularly leads writing workshops. Her fourth Mas Arai mystery, Blood Hina, is being published in 2010.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 27, 2010.

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My Footprint: Carrying the Weight of the World (Simon Spotlight)

Actor Jeff Garlin (Curb Your Enthusiasm) will be here to present his new book, in which he chronicles his year-long journey to reduce both his physical footprint (losing weight) and his carbon footprint (going green) in his laugh-out-loud self-experimental memoir.

Jeff Garlin is best known for his work on Curb Your Enthusiasm. He also spent three seasons on NBC’s Mad About You and has appeared on Arrested Development, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Daily Show with John Stewart, and WALL-E.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 25, 2010.

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Not Your Typical Political Animal (Art Attack Press)

Political artist Robbie Conal will be here to present Not Your Typical Political Animal, a humorous and soulful collection of 20 years worth of writings, drawings, and paintings featuring his political animal muses.

In the 1980s, Robbie Conal, angered by the extreme hubris of the Reagan Administration, began making satirical posters of politicians and bureaucrats who, by his personal standards, had abused their power in the name of representative democracy. He developed an irregular guerrilla army of volunteers, and started pasting up his political jabs in the form of posters, in all of the major cities across the country. Since 1986, when his first poster, “Men With No Lips,” anonymously appeared in the streets of Los Angeles, Robbie has made more than 60 posters satirizing politicians from both parties, televangelists, and global capitalists. He has gained national prominence as the country's premiere street poster artist. Conal’s work has been featured on CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose, and in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, People Magazine, Interview, and scores of daily newspapers around the country. The Washington Post named him "America’s foremost street artist" in 1988. His books include Art Attack: The Midnight Politics of a Guerrilla Poster Artist (HarperCollins, 1992), Artburn (Akashic Books, 2003), and Not Your Typical Political Animal (Art Attack Press, 2010). He continues to teach drawing, work on new posters and paintings, and live in Los Angeles with his wife and their two cats, Smilla and Bodhi.

THIS EVENT WAS RECODED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 21, 2010.

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The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To (Vintage)

A launch party for the debut novel from DC Pierson, about the typical high school experience: the homework, the awkwardness, and the mutant creatures from another galaxy.

DC Pierson was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ.  He graduated from NYU's Dramatic Writing Department in 2007 with a degree in writing for television. His comedy group DERRICK made a feature film called "Mystery Team."  He publishes short stories and unsolicited opinions on his website, dcpierson.com. This is his first novel.

THIS EVENT WAS RECODED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 20, 2010.

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The Traitor in All of Us (Five Star)

A launch party for Los Angeles crime fiction author Robert Levinson and his new book The Traitor in Us All.

The cover art of this new book is a detail from an oil painting by James Strombotne, whose work hangs in major museums and private collections. The author and artist will be signing "limited edition" reproductions of the cover suitable for framing, with complimentary copies offered to the first 12 who attend and purchase the book at the event.

Robert S. Levinson is the best-selling author of seven previous mystery and thriller novels, In the Key of Death, Where the Lies Begin, Ask a Dead Men and four in the Neil Gulliver and Stevie Marriner "Affair" series. His short stories appear regularly in the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. He is a 2009 Derringer Award winner for "The Quick Brown Fox," which also appears in the new anthology, BETWEEN THE DARK AND THE DAYLIGHT. He won Ellery Queen Magazine Readers Award honors three consecutive years. His short stories have appeared in "year's best" anthologies five years running, while plays staged at RiverPark Center, Owensboro, KY, were nominated for "Angie" awards of the International Mystery Writers Festival two years running.

THIS EVENT WAS RECODED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 16, 2010.

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