Skylight Books Author Reading Series

Half a Life by Strauss; The Instructions by Levin (both books published by 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. Joining him, Adam Levin will read and sign his new novel, The Instructions, which begins with a chance encounter with the beautiful Eliza June Watermark and ends, four days and 900 pages later, with the Events of November 17; this is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age ten: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker.

Advance praise for Half a Life: “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

Advance praise for The Instructions: "A great big novel, shaggy and undisciplined, but with moments of brilliance." —Publishers Weekly

"The Instructions is a sizzling fire-cracker of a book. Readers beware: you will not be able to put this book down, you will not be able to get ten-year old Gurion Maccabee's fevered voice out of your head, and you will not be able to read anything else for like six months without thinking back to this book. The Instructions is a thrilling hurricane of an epic—1,000 pages that takes places over a mere four days—and it will chew you up and spit you out and you will be better for it." —Rachel Meier, Booksmith (San Francisco, CA)

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.

Adam Levin's stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney's, and Esquire. Winner of the 2003 Tin House/Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, Levin holds an MA in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. His collection of short stories, Hot Pink, will be published by McSweeney's in 2011. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches writing at Columbia College and The School of the Art Institute.

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Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life (Red Hen Press)

Local author Rob Roberge will read from and sign his short story collection Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life.

Rob Roberge is the author of the story collection Working Backwards From the Worst Moment of My Life and the novels More Than They Could Chew and Drive. He teaches writing at the Antioch University Los Angeles, MFA in Creative Writing, UC-Riverside’s Palm Desert MFA program and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, where he received the Outstanding Instructor Award in Creative Writing in 2003. His stories have been featured in ZYZZYVA, Chelsea, Black Clock, Other Voices, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Ten Writers Worth Knowing Issue of The Literary Review. His work has also been anthologized in Another City (City Lights, 2001), It’s All Good (Manic D Press, 2004) SANTI: Lives of the Modern Saints (Black Arrow Press, 2007) and Orange County Noir (Akashic, 2010). Non-fiction appears, or has appeared, in The Nervous Breakdown and Penthouse. He plays guitar and sings with several LA bands, including, among others, the punk pioneers, The Urinals. In his spare time, he restores and rebuilds vintage amplifiers and quack medical devices.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 2, 2010.

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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.

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

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

Musician Danbert Nobacon (Chumbawamba)  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.

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

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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.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 24, 2010.

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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.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 22, 2010.

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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.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 18, 2010.

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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.

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.

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

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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.

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