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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