Skylight Books Podcast Series

DINAH LENNEY presents BRIEF ENCOUNTERS, together with EMILY RAPP BLACK, CHRIS DALEY, AMY GERSTLER, TOD GOLDBERG, JIM KRUSOE

Brief Encounters (W.W. Norton)

What anthology could unite the work of such distinct writers as Paul Auster, Julian Barnes, Marvin Bell, Sven Birkerts, Meghan Daum, Stuart Dybek, Patricia Hampl, Pico Iyer, Leslie Jamison, Phillip Lopate, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Lawrence Weschler?  What anthology could successfully blend literary forms as varied as memoir, aesthetic critique, political and social commentary, slice-of-life observation, conjecture, fragment, and contemplation?  What anthology could so deeply and steadily plumb the mysteries of human experience in two or three or five page bursts? 

For the late Judith Kitchen, editor of such seminal anthologies as Short Takes, In Short, and In Brief, "flash" nonfiction—the "short"—was an ideal tool with which to describe and interrogate our fragmented world.  Sharpened to a point, these essays sounded a resonance that owed as much to poetry as to the familiar pleasures of large-scale creative nonfiction.  Now, in Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction, Kitchen and her co-editor, Dinah Lenney, present nearly eighty new selections, many of which have never been published before, having been written expressly for this anthology. 

Taken together, as a curated gallery of impressions and experiences, the essays in Brief Encounters exist in dialogue with each other: arguing, agreeing, contradicting, commiserating, reflecting.  Like Walt Whitman, the anthology is large and contains multitudes.  Certain themes, however, weave their way throughout the whole: the nature of family, the influence of childhood, the centrality of place, and the role of memory.  In Lynne Sharon Schwartz's "The Renaissance," for example, the author remembers her relationship with her mother, tracing her own adolescent route from intimacy to contempt.  In "The Fan," Eduardo Galeano dramatizes the communal devotions of the soccer fan.  And in "There Are Distances Between Us," Roxanne Gay considers the seemingly impossible and illogical demands of love.  What binds these and many other disparate essays together is the ways in which they enrich, color, and shade each other, the manner in which they take on new properties and dimensions when read in conjunction. 

Dinah Lenney is the author of The Object Parade and Bigger than Life, and, with Judith Kitchen, edited, Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction. She serves as core faculty in the Bennington Writing Seminars and the Rainier Writing Workshop, and as the nonfiction editor at Los Angeles Review of Books.

Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir, and The Still Point of the Turning World, which was a New York Times bestseller. Her work has appeared in Salon, Slate, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Redbook, O the Oprah Magazine, and other publications. She lives in Palm Springs and teaches in the UCR Palm Desert MFA Program in Writing and the Performing Arts.

Chris Daley’s work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, DUM DUM ZINE, and The Collagist, where “Thoughts on Time After Viewing Christian Marclay's ‘The Clock’” first appeared. She teaches academic writing at the California Institute of Technology and, as Co-Director of Writing Workshops Los Angeles, offers creative nonfiction workshops for students at all levels. Chris has a Ph.D. in English from the City University of New York Graduate Center. 

Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, nonfiction and journalism. Her book of poems include Scattered at Sea (Penguin, 2015), and Dearest Creature (Penguin, 2009) which was named a New York Times Notable Book, and was short listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry. Her previous twelve books include Ghost Girl, Medicine, Crown of Weeds, Nerve Storm, and Bitter Angel, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. She was the 2010 guest editor of the yearly anthology Best American Poetry. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry several volumes of Best American Poetry and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of California at Irvine.

Tod Goldberg is the author of a dozen books, including, most recently, Gangsterland. His nonfiction, criticism, and essays have appeared widely, including in the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and Best American Essays. He lives in Indio, CA where he directs the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside. 

Jim Krusoe has published five novels and two books of stories, Blood Lake and Abductions. His first novel, Iceland, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2002. Since then, Tin House Books has published Girl Factory, Erased, Toward You,and Parsifal. Jim teaches writing at Santa Monica College as well as in Antioch's MFA Creative Writing Program. He has also published five books of poems. His latest novel, The Sleep Garden, is due out this winter from Tin House.

SAM ALDEN discusses his new comic book NEW CONSTRUCTION

New Construction (Uncivilized Books)

New Construction collects two newly expanded stories from cartoonist and Adventure Time contributor Sam Alden. In “Household,” a brother and sister deal with divergent memories of their father and grow closer than ever. In "Backyard," Vegans and anarchists share a house, small dramas and bizarre transformations (featuring a new, never before published ending). Designed as a companion volume for the critically acclaimed It Never Happened Again, New Construction cements Alden's reputation as one of the best cartoonists of his generation.

Praise for New Construction

"Alden's natural sense of framing and pace, his willingness to use silent panels to tell stories, and his beautiful (yes, beautiful) pencil images combined to open my eyes to a new idea of what a great comic can be. It helps that he's also an excellent writer--both stories sketch out lonely, lost characters efficiently, and put them each through very different quests for meaning."--Dan Kois, Slate

"Two thematically divergent, but devastatingly human portraits from an emerging cartoonist displaying the sort of storytelling and artistic restraint that often only comes after years of toiling away at the drawing board. Alden is a talent to watch."--Publishers Weekly

Sam Alden was born in 1988 in Portland, Oregon. He is the recipient of two Ignatz Awards, one for most promising new talent and another for best comic. Sam was an official guest at the BilBoLbul festival in Bologna, Italy. His work has been previously published in Best American Comics 2013, from Houghton-Mifflin. Sam now lives and works as an illustrator and cartoonist in Los Angeles.

KATRINA DODSON presents THE COMPLETE STORIES OF CLARICE LISPECTOR, with MAGDALENA EDWARDS

The Complete Stories (New Directions) by Clarice Lispector, ed. Benjamin Moster, trans. Katrina Dodson 

The recent publication by New Directions of five Lispector novels revealed to legions of new readers her darkness and dazzle. Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend: from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies to old people who don't know what to do with themselves. Clarice Lispector's stories take us through their lives and ours.

From one of the greatest modern writers, these stories, gathered from the nine collections published during her lifetime, follow an unbroken time line of success as a writer, from her adolescence to her death bed.

Praise for Clarice Lispector:

"Clarice Lispector had a diamond-hard intelligence, a visionary instinct, and a sense of humor that veered from a naif wonder to wicked comedy."--Rachel Kushner

"Lispector reads with lively intelligence and is terrifically funny. Language, for her, was the self's light."--Lorrie Moore

"The Complete Stories is bound to become a kind of bedside Bible or I Ching for readers of Lispector, both old and new." --Valeria Luiselli

"One of the hidden geniuses of the twentieth century."--Colm Tobin

"The elusive genius who dramatized a fractured interior world in rich, synesthetic prose."--Megan O'Grady

Clarice Lispector was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in western Ukraine. As a result of the anti-Semitic violence they endured, the family fledto Brazil in 1922, and Clarice Lispector grew up in Recife. Following the death of her mother when Clarice was nine, she moved to Rio de Janeiro with her father and two sisters, and she went on to study law. With her husband, who worked for the foreign service, she lived in Italy, Switzerland, England, and the United States, until they separated and she returned to Rio in 1959; she died there in 1977. Since her death, Clarice Lispector has earned universal recognition as Brazil's greatest modern writer.

Katrina Dodson is the translator of The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector. She lives in San Francisco and is finishing a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

Magdalena Edwards was born in Santiago, Chile, and raised in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. Her thesis on Raúl Zurita's Purgatorio (1979), written while an undergraduate at Harvard, led to a stint with the “Artes & Letras” section of Chile's leading newspaper El Mercurio. She received a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA with a dissertation titled "The Translator's Colors: Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil & Elsewhere." Her work has appeared in the Boston Review, The Paris Review Daily, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Rattle, The Critical Flame, Rewire Me, and The Millions. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her husband and three small children. More at magdalenaedwards.com.

THE HEART'S BLACKMARKET: A TRIBUTE TO JUSTIN CHIN

Justin Chin passed away on December 24th in San Francisco. Friends of and writers influenced by his perverse, hilarious, heartbreaking and fearless poetry gather to read works by, about and for him.  Readers include: Ali Liebegott, Beth Pickens, Tara Jepsen, Michelle Tea, Myriam Gurba, Ryka Aoki de la Cruz, Trebor Healey, Raquel Gutierrez and Clint Catalyst .

Ali Liebegott is the author of the book-length poem The Beautifully Worthless, and the novels The IHOP Papers and Cha-Ching! She writes for the Emmy award-winning television show Transparent. She is former Managing Director of RADAR Productions, and the founder of Writers Among Artists, a San Francisco-based queer literary non-profit which supported Justin's work.

Beth Pickens is the former Managing Director of RADAR Productions and oversaw Justin's time at the organization's writers' retreat and the awarding of a completion grant to Justin for his book 98 Wounds. She is a consultant to artists.

Tara Jepsen is the former host of K'Vetch, a weekly queer open mic hosted in a gay male bathhouse in San Francisco, which Justin was a frequent guest at. Her debut novel, Like a Dog, is forthcoming from Sister Spit Books / City Lights.

Michelle Tea is the author of the young adult books Mermaid in Chelsea Creek and Girl at the Bottom of the Sea, the memoir How to Grow Up, and other titles. She is the founder and former Executive Director of RADAR Productions. 

Myriam Gurba is the author of the story collections How Some Abuelitas Keep Their Chicana Granddaughters Still While Painting Their Portraits in Winter and Dahlia Season; the poetry collection Wish You Were Me and many self-published zines and chapbooks. 

Ryka Aoki de la Cruz is the author of the award-winning poetry chapbook Sometimes Too Hot the Eye of Heaven Shinesand the full-length volume Seasonal Velocities. She is a professor of English at Santa Monica College and of Queer Studies at Antioch University.

Trebor Healey is the author of A Horse Named Sorrow, Through it Came Bright Colors, Faun, and other works. He has received award from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Publishing Triangle and the Violet Quill.

Raquel Gutierrez is the author of the chapbooks Running in Place: poems about INSTITUTIONALITY, #whiteboo andBreaking Up with Los Angeles. She has long been a writer and live performer, and is the publisher of Econo Textual Objects.

Clint Catalyst is the author of Cottonmouth Kisses and the co-editor of Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person. He is a writer, actor, spoken word performer and stylist.

Irene Suico Soriano is a Filipina American poet, Film & Literary Independent Curator and shelter animal advocate that focuses on geriatric and terminally ill animals that enter the LA city and county shelter system. She lives in Silver Lake with her three rescued dogs Cadi, Maxon & Papoo and wishes they could have met Justin even just once.

ELISSA SUSSMAN discusses her new young adult novel BURN with SARAH ENNI

Burn (Greenwillow Books)

After helping to rescue Princess Aislynn, Elanor has finally rejoined the rebel camp she calls home. Stolen from her parents at a young age and forced into service by the Wicked Queen, Elanor now wants nothing more than to see the queen removed from power. But Elanor has secrets, mistakes she’s spent years trying to forget, and the closer the rebels get to the throne, the harder it is for Elanor to keep her past hidden away.

With fellow rebels on her side—including Princess Aislynn, Thackery, and the handsome and mysterious Matthias—it is time for Elanor to make a decision. Will she protect her secrets? Or risk everything to save the people she loves?

Burn is the thrilling companion to Elissa Sussman’s masterful and original fairy tale, Stray, that will appeal to readers of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and fans of Wicked, Into the Woods, and the Disney princess movies.

Elissa Sussman received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College and in a previous life managed animators and organized spreadsheets at some of the best animation studios in the world, including Nickelodeon, Disney, DreamWorks, and Sony Imageworks. You can find her name in the credits of The Croods, Hotel Transylvania, The Princess and the Frog, andTangled. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and their rescue dog, Basil.

Sarah Enni is an author, journalist, and founder of the First Draft podcast. She's the palest girl in Los Angeles.

TARA ISON reads from her new short story collection BALL

Ball (Soft Skull Press)

Tara Ison's Ball is the thrilling and emotionally provocative debut collection of short fiction by the acclaimed author of the novels Rockaway  and A Child Out of Alcatraz and the essay collection Reeling through Life.

Ball explores the darker edges of love and sex and death, how they are intimately and often violently connected, with bright, vivid stories set mostly in contemporary Los Angeles. In "Cactus," a young girl comes to fear the outside world following the freakish, accidental death of her adventure-seeking, naturalist boyfriend in the California desert; in "Wig," a woman must help her best friend face life-threatening cancer while covering up an unseemly affair with her friend's husband; in "Fish," the narrator sits watch over a dying uncle, trying to pay for past sins while administering to his final needs, but distracted by the ravenous fish in the Koi pond near the hospital; and in the collection's stunning title story, the bonds of friendship and pet ownership collide in the most startling and unexpected ways. 

With a keen insight into the edges of human behavior and an assured literary hand, Ball is the new book by one of the West's most provocative stylists.

Praise for Ball 

"The stories in Ball take place at the far limits of obsession and desire and lust, exploring the dangers of turning toward the kinds of love we have tried always to refuse. Tara Ison is a fearless writer, and her bravery before the dark urges of the heart thrills on every page."--Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods 

"Tara Ison is the mistress of bad behavior. She divines the beauty in darkness. She twists the familiar--a friendship, an apology--till something fantastic cracks. And she will have you in thrall to her gorgeous language. The stories in Ball are exquisite and harrowing. Must read straight through. Must remember to breathe." --Dylan Landis, author of Rainey Royal

Tara Ison is the author of the novels The List, A Child Out of Alcatraz, a Finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, andRockaway, selected as a "2013 Best Books of Summer" by "O Magazine." Her short fiction and essays have appeared in "Tin House," "The Kenyon Review," Nerve.com, "Publishers Weekly," and numerous anthologies. She is the co-author of the cult film "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead."

ALEXIS KRASILOVSKY and JULIA STEIN discuss their new book SHOOTING WOMEN: BEHIND THE CAMERA, AROUND THE WORLD

Shooting Women: Behind the Camera, Around the World (Intellect UK)

Shooting Women takes readers around the world to explore the lives of camerawomen working in features, TV news, and documentaries. From first world pioneers like African American camerawoman Jessie Maple Patton who got her job only after suing the union - to China’s first camerawomen, who travelled with Mao – to rural India where poor women have learned camerawork as a means of empowerment, Shooting Women reveals a world of women working with courage and skill in a male-dominated field.

“In the end, although this book is many things, it is neither a report on work relations nor a work of feminist film theory. On the basis of what camerawomen say, we reach some analytical conclusions throughout the book as well as at the end, when we sum up what this history has taught us about strategic options available to increase women’s role in the media behind the camera. Along with a history of women’s involvement in camerawork, we provide information on how the professional camerawomen got to be where they are and what advice they have for women who would like to work professionally behind the camera.”- Harriet Margolis 

Alexis Krasilovsky is the writer/director of the global documentary, Women Behind the Camera(http://womenbehindthecamera.com) and Professor in the Department of Cinema and Television Arts at California State University, Northridge.

The winner of the 2011 Joe Hill Award for labor poetry, Julia Stein, as book editor, has published Walking Through a River of Fir: 100 Years of Triangle Poetry and Every Day is an Act of Resistance: Selected Poetry of Carol Tarlen. Her fifth and most recent book of poetry is titled What Were They Like?

BEYOND LOLITA: LITERARY WRITERS ON SEX AND SEXUALITY

Please join us for the roundtable discussion, Beyond Lolita: Literary Writers on Sex and Sexuality. The proceeds will benefit PEN American Center and its Writers' Emergency Fund. Joining us will be Robin Rinaldi, Wendy C. Ortiz, J. Ryan Stradal, and Julia Fierro. 

Moderated by Anna March, these events will be taking place in Boston, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland this coming November and January. Cheryl Strayed, Audrey Niffenegger, Rachel DeWoskin, Cathi Hanauer, Megan Stielstra, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, Elissa Schappell, Daniel Jones, Luis Urrea, Ashley Ford, Lidia Yuknavitch and many others are participating around the country. The events will be free but attendees will be encouraged to join and support PEN, and an additional $500 will be donated to PEN for each event to support its emergency fund for writers.

Robin Rinaldi is a journalist and author of The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost. Before she left her day job to write a book, Robin was executive editor at 7x7, a San Francisco city magazine. Prior to that she wrote an award-winning food column for Philadelphia Weekly. Robin has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Oprah Magazine, Yoga Journal, and others. Robin grew up in a small Pennsylvania town but has spent most of her life in California. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she writes, reads, cooks peasant-style meals, does a lot of yoga, listens to a lot of music, watches a lot of premium cable dramas, and plays with her scruffy little terrier named Tengo (after the protagonist in 1Q84).

Wendy C. Ortiz is a Los Angeles native. She is the author of Excavation: A Memoir, Hollywood Notebook, and the forthcoming Bruja. Wendy holds an M.A. in Clinical Psychology and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. A Writer-in-Residence at Hedgebrook in 2007 and 2009, Wendy is also co-founder and curator of the Rhapsodomancy Reading Series. She has read and given talks at California State University Chico, University of California Santa Barbara, University of California Riverside's Low-Residency M.F.A. Program, and Lock Haven University. Wendy has been an adjunct faculty in creative writing and has also facilitated creative writing workshops with Los Angeles youth in juvenile detention facilities. While living in Olympia, Washington, she was a library worker, editor and publisher of 4th Street, a handbound literary journal, and an occasional mudwrestler. Wendy received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where she lived for eight years before returning to Los Angeles.She is at work on a book based on her Modern Love essay published in The New York Times, a short story collection, and other projects. Wendy is represented by Bridget Wagner Matzie of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. She parents and works as a registered marriage and family therapist intern in Los Angeles.

J. Ryan Stradal’s first novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, was published by Viking / Pamela Dorman Books on July 28th, 2015, and reached the New York Times Hardcover Best Seller list at #19 on its third week of release. In November 2014, the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society awarded Kitchens of the Great Midwest first prize in their annual novel competition. In September 2015, Warner Bros. optioned the film/TV rights. A selection of his short stories, compiled under the title "Nerd & Whore are Friends," was a 2013 finalist in the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition. His short fiction has also been anthologized, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and named a finalist for the James Kirkwood Literary Prize. He works as the fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown  and  as an editor-at-large at Unnamed Press in Los Angeles.  He was also editor of the 2014 California Prose Directory, an anthology of writing about California by California writers, published by Outpost19. He volunteers for & is on the advisory board of the educational non-profit 826LA. He also helps make products and materials for their affiliated store, the Echo Park Time Travel Mart. He likes books, wine, sports, root beer, and peas.

 Julia Fierro is the author of Cutting Teeth, which The New Yorker called “a comically energetic debut novel.” Her next novel, The Gypsy Moth Summer, will be published in 2017. Julia founded The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop in 2002, and it has since grown into a creative home to over 2,500 writers. She lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

ADRIAN TOMINE presents his new graphic novel KILLING AND DYING, with TUNDE ADEBIMPE

Killing and Dying (Drawn & Quarterly)

Kiling and Dying is a stunning showcase of the possibilities of the graphic novel medium and a wry exploration of loss, creative ambition, identity, and family dynamics. With this work, Adrian Tomine reaffirms his place not only as one of the most significant creators of contemporary comics, but as one of the great voices of modern American literature. His gift for capturing emotion and intellect resonates here: the weight of love and its absence, the pride and disappointment of family, the anxiety and hopefulness of being alive in the twenty-first century.

“Amber Sweet” shows the disastrous impact of mistaken identity in a hyper-connected world; “A Brief History of the Art Form Known as Hortisculpture” details the invention and destruction of a vital new art form in short comic strips; “Translated, from the Japanese,” is a lush, full-color display of storytelling through still images; the title story, "Killing and Dying", centers on parenthood, mortality, and stand-up comedy. In six interconnected, darkly funny stories, Tomine forms a quietly moving portrait of contemporary life.

Adrian Tomine is a master of the small gesture, equally deft at signaling emotion via a subtle change of expression or writ large across landscapes illustrated in full color. Killing and Dying is a fraught, realist masterpiece.

Praise for Optic Nerve

“Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve [is] smart, understated and with a subtle yet pointed bite . . . Merging straight realism with an impressionistic sense of narrative, his stories are . . . highly structured and defined.” —Los Angeles Times

“[Optic Nerve] is a sumptuous showcase of Tomine’s precision draftsmanship.” —A.V. Club

Adrian Tomine was born in 1974 in Sacramento, California. He began self-publishing his comic book series Optic Nerve. His comics have been anthologized in publications such as McSweeney’s, Best American Comics, and Best American Non-required Reading, and his graphic novel Shortcomings was a New York Times Notable Book of 2007. Since 1999, Tomine has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.

Tunde Adebimpe is a musician, actor, director, and visual artist best known as the lead singer of the critically acclaimed band Tv on the Radio. In addition to releasing the band's most recent record "Seeds", he recently collaborated with Brooklyn's Kayrock Screenprinting to release "Tour Sketch Journos 2003-2014" a patchwork collection of drawings and writing from sketchbooks and journals kept during his years on the road with TVOTR from its inception to present day. 

JESSE EISENBERG reads from his debut collection of short stories BREAM GIVES ME HICCUPS

Bream Gives Me Hiccups (Grove/Atlantic)

Jesse Eisenberg is known for acclaimed acting roles in The Social Network, The Squid and the Whale, and other films, but his writing talents are no less impressive. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s and in the New Yorker and he is the author of three plays, including The Revisionist, which starred Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave.

Now in his whip-smart fiction debut Bream Gives Me Hiccups Eisenberg delivers a collection of forty-four hilarious, moving, and inventive stories that explore the various insanities of the modern world. 

NOTE: As with all Skylight Books in-store events, this reading is free and open to the public (first come, first served).  But because we're expecting a large crowd at this event, we'll be giving out numbered tickets to the signing line to keep things organized:

• To get a ticket to the signing line, you must purchase a copy of Bream Gives Me Hiccups here at Skylight Books.
• Starting September 8, you can buy books (and get your signing line ticket) in person, by phone, or via our website. Web pre-orders can also be picked up starting the 8th.
• For all website orders for this event, be sure to leave a note in the Order Comments field if you'd like a signing line ticket.
• Can't attend? If you would like a signed book but will not be able to attend, click Signed Copy after adding the book to your cart and we'll do our best to get it signed for you. You  may pick up this book in the store after the event, or have it shipped to you.
• Skylight's Friends with Benefits members get priority signing line tickets (and 20% off this and all other event books each month), so be sure to mention your membership (or join) when you order the book.
• Jesse Eisenberg will sign and personalize ONLY Bream Gives me Hiccups and his plays--no memorabilia, posters, DVDs, fan art, etc. Jesse Eisenberg will also take photographs while signing--no posed photographs.  Thank you for your cooperation! 

Bream Gives Me Hiccups gets its unusual title from the set of stories that begin the book, restaurant reviews written by a nine-year-old child who is taken out for expensive meals by his newly divorced mother. The stories then move from contemporary L.A. to the dorm rooms of an American college to ancient Pompeii, throwing the reader into a universe of social misfits, reimagined scenes from history, and ridiculous overreactions. In one piece, a tense email exchange between a young man and his girlfriend is taken over by the man’s sister, who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide (The situation reminds me of a little historical blip called the Karađorđevo agreement); in another, a college freshman forced to live with a roommate is stunned when one of her ramen packets goes missing (She didn’t have “one” of my ramens. She had a chicken ramen); in another piece, Alexander Graham Bell has teething problems with his invention (I’ve been calling Mabel all day, she doesn’t pick up! Yes, of course I dialed the right number – 2!). 

United by Eisenberg’s gift for humor and character, and grouped into chapters that open with illustrations by award-winning cartoonist Jean Jullien, the witty pieces collected in Bream Gives Me Hiccups mark the arrival of a fantastically funny, self-ironic, and original voice.

Praise for Bream Gives Me Hiccups

“Brilliantly witty, deeply intelligent, and just plain hilarious. If David Sedaris wrote about Carmelo Anthony, Bosnian genocide, and ramen-stealing college freshmen, it would probably come out something like Jesse Eisenberg’s Bream Gives Me Hiccups. A moving portrait of human beings at their weaker moments, and a wonderful send-up of the insanities of modern America.” —Sherman Alexie

“Eisenberg has a terrific ear, especially for adolescent inflections, absurdity, self-delusion, and insecurity. He also has a flair for off-the-wall ideas . . . With its panoply of neurotics and narcissists and its smart mix of stinging satire and surprising moments of sweetness, Bream Gives Me Hiccups brings to mind fellow comic actor/writers Woody Allen, Steve Martin and B.J. Novak. It also offers a youthful new twist on what one of Eisenberg’s hopeless dreamers refers to—ironically, of course—as the cruel ‘irony of life.’”—NPR Books

“Compelling . . . A fascinating look into the minds of misfits . . . Whether it’s Alexander Graham Bell bumbling through his first phone calls or Carmelo Anthony of the New York Knicks pacifying a fan, Eisenberg’s ability to create interesting and entertaining dialogue as if the exchange actually occurred is impressive . . . Eisenberg’s wit jumps off the page . . . Bream Gives Me Hiccups is a delightful collection of awkward scenarios twisted into humorous, witty and sometimes poignant life lessons. It’s simultaneously smart, clever and creative.”—Associated Press

“Eisenberg’s strength is in dialogue and monologue, and in writing miserable characters who alternately compel (like a 9-year-old from a broken home who writes restaurant reviews) and repel (like Harper, the footnote-obsessed freshman Eisenberg lovingly describes as ‘maladjusted’) . . . Eisenberg is uncannily good at capturing a specific breed of insincere teen girl.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Jesse Eisenberg is a deeply original comic voice. These stories are about the funniness, sadness, and strangeness of everyday life and they really made me laugh.”—Roz Chast

A great book . . . The first part of the book [is] a series of restaurant reviews Eisenberg writes in the voice of a privileged nine-year old. The reviews are hilarious but gradually reveal a moving portrait of a lonely boy’s bond with his single mom. All the stories seem to work on multiple levels like that.”—Arun Rath, “All Things Considered,” NPR

“[Eisenberg’s] jittery on-screen energy seeps onto the pages of this book.”—Wall Street Journal (15 Books to Read This Fall)

“Eisenberg’s 28 stories in Bream Gives Me Hiccups range from the diary of a nine-year-old food critic to letters about stolen ramen . . . Eisenberg’s characters are lively, and his awareness of universal neuroses (yours and his alike) shows he’s more than a hobbyist.”—Time 

“He’s a walking ball of neuroses, a fledgling playwright, and now a short-story writer, telling tales covering subjects as varied as Pompeii and ramen.”—New York Magazine 

 “Charming, deftly written, and laugh-out-loud funny.” —Publishers Weekly

“I’ve been a fan of Jesse Eisenberg’s plays for years and his prose is just as winning. Bream Gives Me Hiccups is hilarious, poignant and at times so self-deprecating it makes me want to give Jesse a hug. He’s taken decades of neurosis and spun it into comedy gold.”—Simon Rich

“Eisenberg proves to be a compassionate chronicler of absurdity in the realms of family life, romance, and history.”—Booklist

“Bream Gives Me Hiccups isn’t merely comic writing of the first order; it’s an often tender, highbrow-lowbrow mash-up that encompasses everything from Chomsky and Žižek to disastrous pickup lines and pubescent neuroses. Jesse Eisenberg writes with formidable intellect and verbal dexterity, but he also has something many deadeye satirists lack: empathy with his targets. To borrow his most unforgettable character’s line, you’ll want to give his debut collection 2000 out of 2000 stars.”—Teddy Wayne, author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

Jesse Eisenberg is an Academy Award–nominated actor, playwright, and contributor for the New Yorker andMcSweeney's. He is the author of three plays, Asuncion, The Revisionist, and The Spoils, which won the Theater Visions Fund Award. Eisenberg's acting credits include The Social Network, Now You See Me, Adventureland, The Squid and the Whale, The Double, and The End of the Tour. Forthcoming acting credits include Batman v. Superman.

THOMAS MALLON discusses his new novel FINALE, with JAMES ELLROY

Finale: The Reagan Years (Pantheon Books)

From the author of the acclaimed novel Watergate,  comes a galvanizing new novel about the tumultuous administration of the most consequential and enigmatic president of modern times. 

Finale takes readers to the political gridiron of Washington in 1986; the wealthiest enclaves of southern California; and the volcanic landscape of Iceland, where the president engages in two almost apocalyptic days of negotiation with Mikhail Gorbachev. Along with Soviet dissidents, illegal arms traders, and antinuclear activists, the novel's memorable characters include Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter, Pamela Harriman, John W. Hinckley, and even Bette Davis, with whom the president long ago appeared on screen. Several figures including a humbled, crafty Richard Nixon; the young, brilliantly acerbic Christopher Hitchens; and an anxious, astrology-dependent Nancy Reagan become the eyes through which readers see the last convulsions of the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, a clash of ideologies, and a political revolution. At the center of it all but forever out of reach is Reagan himself, whose genial remoteness confounds his subordinates, his children, and the citizens who elected him.

Thomas Mallon is the author of nine novels, including Henry and Clara, Dewey Defeats Truman, Fellow Travelers, andWatergate. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, and The Atlantic, and he was the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Vursell prize for exceptional prose style. He has been the literary editor of GQ and the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Washington, D.C.
 
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz,and the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s A Rover. These seven novels have won numerous honors and were international best sellers. His newest novel, Perfidia, is the first novel of the Second L.A. Quartet, Ellroy’s fictional history of Los Angeles during World War II. 

CHARLYNE YI launches her new book OH THE MOON

Oh the Moon (Harper Perennial)

From actress, comedian, musician, and writer Charlyne Yi comes this collection of illustrated, interconnected short stories and anecdotes that blends comedy, fantastic adventures, and a storm of feelings that will make you want to laugh and cry at the same time reminiscent of the works of Demetri Martin, Shel Silverstein and John Cassavetes.

Charlyne Yi takes readers from the beginning of time to the depths of a frog's stomach, and to Hell and back literally in this collection of short stories that showcases her unique style.Equal parts whimsical, hilarious, heartbreaking, and terrifying, these short stories both written and illustrated by Charlyne can be read separately, but are connected thematically following the difficulties of love at every age: Forgive Me: What happens when the tiniest boy of all time is the only thing standing between the world s largest baby and an angry mob? Who could ever love something so small? Or so big? The Particles: A love story that takes all the time in the universe to tell. She's All Legs: In this spicy, action-packed romance, Agatha, a woman who is literally just legs and a head, decides to hunt down and kill the Devil himself. Along the way she meets Cassady, an Elvis impersonator with his own, mysterious gripe with the Dark Lord.

Charlyne Yi is a struggling poet, comedian, musician, painter, and writer.  She can do ten pushups a day.  She wrote and starred in the fictionalized documentary Paper Heart, for which she won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance.  She has also been in Knocked Up, This is 40, and House.

YUMI SAKUGAWA discusses her new book THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO MEDITATE

There Is No Right Way to Meditate (Adams Media Corporation)

In There Is No Right Way to Meditate, award-winning artist Yumi Sakugawa helps you tap into your inner self and finally find the peace that you've been seeking. Each page offers a unique perspective on how to lead a more mindful life, with captivating ink illustrations and encouraging words like, "it's okay if the only thing you did today was breathe." From simple ways to get rid of a bad mood to instructions for making your intentions come true, her lessons will inspire you to become more aware of the present moment and find stillness no matter where you go.

Yumi Sakugawa is an Ignatz Awards nominated comic book artist and the author of I Think I Am in Friend-Love With You and Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One With The Universe. Her comics have also appeared in The Believer, Bitch, the Best American Non­Required Reading 2014, The Rumpus, Folio, Fjords Review, and other publications. A graduate from the fine art program of University of California, Los Angeles, she lives in Los Angeles.

TAVI GEVINSON presents the final issue of ROOKIE YEARBOOK

Rookie Yearbook Four (Razorbill)

Rookie is an online magazine for teenage girls with monthly-themed content that includes life lessons, diary entries, DIY projects, playlists and interviews with cultural icons like Mindy Kaling, Shailene Woodley, Laverne Cox, Lena Dunham, Morrissey, FKA Twigs, and Sofia Coppola.

NOTE: As with all Skylight Books in-store events, this reading is free and open to the public (first come, first served).  But because we're expecting a large crowd at this event, we'll be giving out numbered tickets to the signing line to keep things organized:

• To get a ticket to the signing line, you must purchase a copy of Rookie Yearbook Four here at Skylight Books.
• If you'd like to pre-order the book before its October 20th release date, you can do so on our website at any time (add the book to your cart, below) and we will reserve a signing line ticket for you.
• Starting October 20th, you can buy books (and get your signing line ticket) in person, by phone, or via our website. Web pre-orders can also be picked up starting the 20th.
• For all website orders for this event, be sure to leave a note in the Order Comments field if you'd like a signing line ticket.
• Can't attend? If you would like a signed book but will not be able to attend, click Signed Copy after adding the book to your cart and we'll do our best to get it signed for you. You  may pick up this book in the store after the event, or have it shipped to you.
• Skylight's Friends with Benefits members get priority signing line tickets (and 20% off this and all other event books each month), so be sure to mention your membership (or join) when you order the book

Rookie Yearbook Four exclusives will include a teen bedroom diorama and motivational posters written by Willow Smith, an adolescence survival guide by Rashida Jones; conversations between Donna Tartt and Florence Welch, Solange and Ed Droste, and Tracee Ellis Ross with Jamia; illustrated peeks into the closet of Charli XCX and the artistic influences of Dev Hynes and Ezra Koenig; and Friend Crushes between folks like Shamir and Chloe Chaidez and Amandla Stenberg and Kiernan Shipka. More exclusives to come!

Tavi Gevinson is the editor-in-chief and founder of Rookie, an online magazine for teenage girls. Tavi’s career in media began when she created the blog Style Rookie in 2008 at age 11. She was profiled by The New Yorker in 2010, and in 2011, at 15, launched Rookie. Six days after its debut, Rookie received more than one million pageviews. Tavi has since spoken at TEDxTeen, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sydney Opera House, the New Yorker Festival, the Commonwealth Club of California, the University of Wisconsin’s Distinguished Lecture Series, the Brooklyn Museum, the Melbourne Writers Festival, and the Economist's The World in 2011. Tavi is also an actress, having most recently starred in Kenneth Lonergan’s Tony-nominated This Is Our Youth on Broadway alongside Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin.

LINDA ROSENKRANTZ discusses her book TALK

Talk (New York Review of Books)

Friendships are built on chatter, on gossip, on revelations—on talk. Over the course of the summer of 1965, Linda Rosenkrantz taped conversations between three friends (two straight, one gay) on the cusp of thirty vacationing at the beach: Emily, an actor; Vince, a painter; and Marsha, a writer. The result was Talk, a novel in dialogue. The friends are ambitious, conflicted, jealous, petty, loving, funny, sex- and shrink-obsessed, and there’s nothing they won’t discuss. Topics covered include LSD, fathers, exes, lovers, abortions, S&M, sculpture, books, cats, and of course, each other.

Suffusing the characters’ banter are the feelings of freedom, indolence, and ennui that accompany summer. But despite its summery stillness, Talk takes place at a turning point for Emily, Marsha, and Vince, who are nearing 30 and for American culture at large. The sixties are in full swing, social mores are being thrown aside, and the three friends are fully caught up in this spirit of change. Talk was ahead of its time in recognizing the fascination and significance of nonfamily ties in contemporary life. It may be almost fifty years since Emily, Vince, and Marsha spent the season in East Hampton, but they wouldn’t be out of place on the set of Girls or in the pages of a novel like Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be?

Praise for Talk

"Cool, astringent...something new, something beyond black humor or pop fiction." --The New Republic

"Utterly hip, utterly frank, utterly amoral." --New Haven Register

"The rawest of raw material is hashed over in detail, but with such clinical openness and enthusiasm that one is far more often delighted and stimulated than embarrassed or shocked." --James Leo Herlihy, author of Midnight Cowboy 

"The three [main characters] mercilessly dissect themselves and each other. Ostensibly everything goes in, with sudden realistic swerves of attention from the state of their souls and their sex-lives to the cooking--from egos to eggs, so to speak, which is very much the way life is...The pattern of self-revelation is far from coarse: it is eloquent and convincing, with its insights suddenly stumbled upon, its slender bridges of nervous sympathy that join each private island to the threatening outside world." --Norman Shrapnel, The Guardian 

"The characters are defined by speech alone, and the talk is of a kind that has been missing from literature...Miss Rosenkrantz's importance as a writer is to have shown, right away in her first book, that exact data can go into a novel without the pressures of conventional plot and character requirements." --Vogue

Linda Rosenkrantz is the author of several books of fiction and nonfiction, including Telegram, a history of the telegraphic communication, and her memoir, My Life as a List: 207 Things About My (Bronx) Childhood, and the co-author of Gone Hollywood: The Movie Colony in the Golden Age. She was also the founding editor of Auction magazine, a long-time syndicated columnist, and a founder of the popular baby-naming site Nameberry.com. She currently resides in Los Angeles.