Skylight Books Author Reading Series

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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Lucky for Good (Atheneum Books)

Newbery Award–winning middle readers author Susan Patron launches her latest (and the last) book in her excellent Hard Pan trilogy.

"A terrific read and a lovely completion to the trilogy." --School Library Journal

"The biggest treat is ever-hopeful Lucky, who ends her adventures on a high note." --Publishers Weekly

Susan Patron is the Newbery Award–winning author of The Higher Power of Lucky, among many other books for children, including Maybe Yes, Maybe No, Maybe Maybe, which was an ALA Notable Book, and two sequels to The Higher Power of Lucky: Lucky Breaks and Lucky for Good. She was a children's librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library for thirty-five years before retiring in 2007 and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, René.

Photo of the author by Sonya Sones.

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

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Stealing Angel (Spinsters Ink)

Acclaimed local novelist and poet Terry Wolverton will read and sign her new novel, Stealing Angel.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS, SEPTEMBER 17, 2011.

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Birthday Girl with Possum by Constantine

Sunset at the Temple of Olives by Suntup

1000 Black Umbrellas by McGinn (all books published by Write Bloody Publishing)

Brendan Constantine, Paul Suntup, and Daniel McGinn kick off their Three Horsemen of the Apostrophe tour with an event at Skylight Books!

Brendan Constantine A poet based in L.A., he is currently poet-in-residence at The Windward School and Loyola Marymount University Extension. In 2002 he was a nominee for Poet Laureate for California.

Paul Suntup has edited three books of poetry and his work has appeared in numerous publications, including Rattle, Spillway, Artlife, Cider Press Review, ISM and the anthology 180 More: Exraordinary Poems.

Daniel McGinn is an old school poet based in Orange County, CA. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including So Luminous the Wildflowers, Aim for the Head and Beyond the Valley of the Contemporary Poets.

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

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Inside Scientology (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Journalist Janet Reitman will discuss and sign her new book Inside Scientology, the first full, journalistic history of the Church of Scientology, based on the article Reitman wrote for Rolling Stone in 2007, which was a finalist for the National Magazine Award.

"Inside Scientology is an engrossing, groundbreaking work that brings a welcome sense of fair-mindedness to a subject that is, for many journalists and scholars, too hot to touch. Reitman has accomplished the miracle of adding light without heat."--Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Janet Reitman was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2007 for the Rolling Stone story “Inside Scientology,” from which this book grew. She is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. Her work has appeared in GQ, Men’s Journal, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, and the Washington Post, among other publications. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

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

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Pulp and Paper (University of Iowa Press) by Rolnick If You're Not Yet Like Me (Flatmancrooked) by Lepucki

Josh Rolnick, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, will read and sign his new short story collection Pulp and Paper, joined by Edan Lepucki, a staff writer for The Millions, reading and signing her novella-with-stories collection If You're Not Yet Like Me.

“Josh Rolnick is a wonderful observer and a beautiful storyteller. Each story in Pulp and Paper is a path to the hearts of Rolnick’s characters, who, like you and me, strive to be their true, honest selves despite follies and weaknesses. A truly compassionate collection.” --Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants

"If You're Not Like Yet Like Me tells quite a few damn good jokes before it decides to twist your heart apart. Gracefully written, barbed and biting; a touching meditation on the mistakes we make before meeting the ones who truly deserve our love." --Victor LaValle, author of Big Machine

Josh Rolnick’s short stories have won the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize. They have also been published in Harvard Review, Western Humanities Review, Bellingham Review, and Gulf Coast, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices. A reporter, editor, and journal publisher, he grew up in New Jersey, spent summers camping his way through Upstate New York, and has lived in Jerusalem, London, Philadelphia, Iowa City, Washington, D.C., and Menlo Park, California. He currently lives with his wife and three sons in Akron, Ohio.

Edan Lepucki is a staff writer for The Millions. She is a fiction writer and instructor living in Los Angeles, and her stories have been published in McSweeney's, Narrative Magazine, Meridian, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, among others. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and an excerpt of her recently-completed novel, The Book of Deeds, won the 2009 James D. Phelan Award. Her novella, If You're Not Yet Like Me, was published last fall. Learn more about her writing classes at writingworkshopsla.com.

Photo of Rolnick by Nancy Williams.

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

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Bookstore Pop-ups, Hybrids, and Rebels: Why Indie booksellers are leading the movement to support and foster local businesses

A panel discussion with maverick booksellers David Kipen, Andrew Laties, and Josh Spencer on why there is no better time to be in the book business.

“For a while I was really interested in the future of books. Now I’m interested in the present of books.” – Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-founder, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn (founded 2009)

For the past decade, the book business has been dominated by conversations about chain stores, online retailers, and the e-book market, all of which pointed to the perennial uncertainty about the future of books generally. And yet from coast to coast a new wave of independent booksellers is staking a claim and embracing uncertainty to make the point: books are still here, and the future is now.

Skylight books is pleased to welcome David Kipen (Libros Schmibros), Andrew Laties (Rebel Bookseller) and Josh Spencer (The Last Bookstore) for a panel discussion on why and how:

• Even in a treacherous economy, independent bookshops like Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore are opening and succeeding;
• Pop-up stores, like the current Libros Schmibros partnership with the Hammer Museum, are becoming the norm
• Independent bookstores are leading the movement to support locally owned businesses.

David Kippen is the founder of Libros Schmibros, a hybrid lending library and used book shop in Boyle Heights.  He is the former director of the National Endowment for the Arts' National Reading Initiatives, and past book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, established Libros Schmibros in July 2010

Andy Laties is the author of Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Business Represent Everything You Want to Fight For—From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities. Laties co-founded Children's Bookstore, Children’s Bookfair Company, Children’s Museum Store, and Povertyfighters.com, and created the film Art of Selling Children’s Books. He co-founded and still manages the museum shop at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, which Parents Choice called “the very best bookstore for picture books in the entire world.” Josh Spencer is the founder of The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA. After selling books online for a decade, Spencer decided to go backwards in time and open up a physical used bookstore in 2009.  With his neighborhood of downtown LA experiencing its own rebirth it seemed like the logical place to try retail time travel.  The Last Bookstore did well enough for him to move into a new location 10 times as big less than two years later, and the rest is history in the making (as we speak).

Moderated by Emily Pullen from Skylight Books.

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

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More Notes of a Dirty Old Man (City Lights)

Editor David Calonne will discuss and sign the new anthology of Charles Bukowski's previously uncollected columns.

After toiling in obscurity for years, Charles Bukowski suddenly found fame in 1967 with his autobiographical newspaper column, "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," and a book of that name in 1969. He continued writing this column, in one form or another, through the mid-1980s. "More Notes of a Dirty Old Man" gathers many uncollected gems from the column's twenty-year run. Drawn from ephemeral underground publications, these stories and essays haven't been seen in decades, making "More" a valuable addition to Bukowski's oeuvre. Filled with his usual obsessions--sex, booze, gambling--"More" features Bukowski's offbeat insights into politics and literature, his tortured, violent relationships with women, and his lurid escapades on the poetry reading circuit. Highlighting his versatility, the book ranges from thinly veiled autobiography to purely fictional tales of dysfunctional suburbanites, disgraced politicians, and down-and-out sports promoters, climaxing with a long, hilarious adventure among French filmmakers, "My Friend the Gambler," based on his experiences making the movie "Barfly." From his lowly days at the post office through his later literary fame, "More" follows the entire arc of Bukowski's colorful career.

Edited by Bukowski scholar David Stephen Calonne, "More Notes of a Dirty Old Man" features an afterword outlining the history of the column and its effect on the author's creative development.

David Stephen Calonne is the author of Charles Bukowski: Sunlight Here I Am, Interviews and Encounters 1963-1993, and most recently, Bebop Buddhist Ecstasy: Saroyan's Influence on Kerouac and the Beats, with an Introduction by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He has edited two Bukowski volumes for City Lights, Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook (2008) and Absence of the Hero (2010). Calonne has lectured in Paris and was invited by the Bukowski Gesellschaft to lecture the past two summers in Andernach, Germany. He presently teaches at Eastern Michigan University.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 10, 2011.

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The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press) by McDaniel Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books) by Gnall Bang Ditto (Manic D) by Tamblyn

Poets Jeffrey McDaniel, Stacy Gnall, and Amber Tamblyn will read and sign their respective poetry collections.

Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of four books, most recently The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry 1994 and 2010. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York.

Stacy Gnall is from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA at the University of Alabama, and she is currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her first collection of poetry, Heart First into the Forest, was published by Alice James Books. She lives in Los Angeles.

Amber Tamblyn is a Venice, California native. She has been a writer and actress since the age of nine. She was nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award for her work in television and film. In 2005 Simon & Schuster published her debut collection of poetry Free Stallion. She is the producer of "The Drums Inside Your Chest," an annual poetry concert (thedrumsinsideyourchest.com) and the nonprofit, Write Now Poetry Society (writenowpoets.org). Her second book of poetry and prose Bang Ditto (Manic D. Press) was released last Fall. She writes for The Poetry Foundation and lives in NYC.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 9, 2011.

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