Skylight Books Podcast Series

KELLY HUDSON and DAN KLEIN discuss their book FUDS: A COMPLETE ENCYCLOFOODIA FROM TICKLING SHRIMP TO NOT DYING IN A RESTAURANT

FUDS: A Complete Encyclofoodia from Tickling Shrimp to Not Dying In A Restaurant (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Since the FUDS parody menu went viral through the Brooklyn foodie scene, then the broader food world and the even broader Internet in 2012, people have been clamoring for the recipes behind those menu items. (Well, actually, no, they haven't, because most of them consisted of baffling nonsense words [Mini-hrak cuddles with malonies] or otherwise sounded disgusting [Dead dog co-plated with yam clippings and a leafy sage dumping.] Oftentimes, both.)

BUT.

People HAVE been clamoring for more of the deliciously absurd humor that characterizes the FUDS brand. And since that spot-on menu send-up, the young comedians behind it have spun out an entire "cookbook and field guide." Here are tips on planning a seasonal menu that's likely to make your guests ill; tips on kitchen safety that could leave your sous-chefs badly charred. And, of course, recipes for all the FUDS classics: Roundeye Flank Stringers with a Yankee-Poisoned Marinara and Fuzzy Rice Curds, Shitty Chicken Spanked with Cinnamon-Garlic Dirt and Dimpled with a Freshwater Whale-Tit Sauce . . . and the cult classic Bill Clinton Sandwich! The cookbook is designed and illustrated with a straight face--with a foreword by master chef Mario Batali--perfectly balancing the anarchic humor suffusing this parody. Your pretentious foodie friend has been asking for it: introduce them to the wonderful world of FUDS.

Praise for FUDS:

"This is the greatest book about food ever written since "Food Moby Dick."" - Jimmy Fallon, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

"For anyone interested in culinary writing, I urge you to read it. I mean, you don't have to. I don't want to force you. No one has to do anything they don't want to." - Jenny Slate, Human Woman

"Take three teaspoons of genius, two cups of brilliance, and one pint of YES and you've got FUDS." - Aidy Bryant, Saturday Night Live

"I've been eating food for most of my life, but I never knew just how complicated, glorious, effervescent, and metaphysical it could be until I read FUDS.- David Rees, author, How to Sharpen Pencils

"I highly recommend this book to those who haven't read it yet, like me." - Robert Smigel, TV Funhouse

"I don't need this stinky little book." - Mario Batali, from the Foreword

Kelly Hudson is a writer and producer for AdultSwim.com.

Dan Klein is a writer for Funny Or Die.

ARTHUR BRADFORD reads from his collection TURTLEFACE AND BEYOND: STORIES

Turtleface and Beyond: Stories (Farrar Straus Giroux)

Please welcome back to Skylight Books, one of our favorite short story writers, Arthur Bradford!

 Paddling down a remote, meandering river, Georgie's friend Otto decides to do something both spectacular and stupid: He scales a sandy cliff that rises from the water and runs down its steep face, preparing for a triumphant running dive. As his friends look on, they watch something awful unfold: Otto lands with an odd smack and knocks himself unconscious, blood spilling from his nose and mouth. Georgie arrives on the scene first and sees a small turtle, its shell cracked, floating just below the water's surface.

Otto and the turtle survive the collision, though both need help, and Georgie finds his compassions torn. This title story sets the tone for the rest of Arthur Bradford's Turtleface and Beyond, a strangely funny collection featuring prosthetically limbed lovers, a snakebitten hitchhiker turned wedding crasher, a lawyer at the end of his rope, a menage a trois at Thailand's Resort Tik Tok, and a whole host of near disasters, narrow escapes, and complicated victories, all narrated by Georgie, who struggles with his poor decisions but finds redemption in the telling of each of his tales. Big-hearted and hilariously high-fueled, Turtleface and Beyondmarks the return of a beloved and unforgettable voice in fiction.

Praise for Turtleface and Beyond:

“Arthur Bradford’s work is uncategorizable and unprecedented, but if pressed, you could call it the improbable spawn of Raymond Carver and Roald Dahl. His stories are hilarious and strange, playful and deadpan, and often involve animals and strange injuries to these animals or their human friends. The world of Bradford’s fiction is populated by dreamers, doofuses, banalities, and mysteries, and somehow it’s a world you don’t want to leave.”—Dave Eggers

“Turtleface and Beyond is filled with glorious little fables that are both yummy and nourishing.”—Matt Stone, co-creator of South Park and The Book of Mormon

“Arthur Bradford has the strange, poetic humor of a real writer, but his outlandish plots involving animals and/or underachievers read like pulpy page-turners. While reading Turtleface and Beyond, I couldn’t wait to find out what happened to these injured reptiles and oversexed beach bums.”—Sarah Vowell

“Arthur Bradford’s stories are told plainly yet seductively. You might call them funny and lovely and laconic until you get to the twist and damage that swims beneath them like an unseen snapping turtle. They take straight roads to crooked places and I would read them all day until I was done and you should too.”—John Hodgman

“Writer and filmmaker Bradford will appeal to David Sedaris fans willing to visit the wrong side of the tracks . . . With bad choices and bizarre situations aplenty, Turtleface and Beyond encourages the reader simply to laugh at the strange turns life can take.”—Booklist

Arthur Bradford is an O. Henry Award–winning writer and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. He is the author of Dogwalker, and his writing has appeared in Esquire, McSweeny’s, VICE, and Men’s Journal. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and serves as the co-director of Camp Jabberwocky, the nation’s longest-running residential summer camp for people with disabilities.

CHARLES BAXTER reads from his newest collection of stories THERE'S SOMETHING I WANT YOU TO DO

There's Something I Want You To Do: Stories (Pantheon Books)

From one of the great masters of the contemporary short story, here is an astonishing collection that showcases Charles Baxter'sunique ability to unveil the remarkable in the seemingly inconsequential moments of an eerie yet familiar life.

Penetrating and prophetic, the ten inter-related stories in There's Something I Want You to Do are held together by a surreally intricate web of cause and effect--one that slowly ensnares both fictional bystanders and enraptured readers. Benny, an architect and hopeless romantic, is robbed on his daily walk along the Mississippi River, and the blow of a baseball bat to the back of his knee feels like a strike from God. A drug dealer named Black Bird reads "Othello" while waiting for customers in a bar. Elijah, a pediatrician and the father of two, is visited nightly by visions of Alfred Hitchcock. Meanwhile, a dog won't stop barking, a passenger on a transatlantic flight reads aloud from the book of Psalms during turbulence, and a scream carries itself through the early-morning Minneapolis air.

As the collection progresses, we delve more deeply into the private lives of these characters, exploring their fears, fantasies, and obsessions. They appear and reappear, performing praiseworthy and loathsome acts in equal measure in response to the request--or demand--lodged in each story's center. The result is a portrait of human nature as seen from the tightrope that spans the distance between dreams and waking life--a portrait that could have arisen only from Baxter's singular vision. Readers will be stunned by his uncanny understanding of human attraction and left to puzzle over the meaning of virtue and the unpredictable and mysterious ways in which we behave.

Praise for There's Something I Want You To Do

“These accomplished stories of precarious marriages and family strife are so laced with paradox and the unexpected and so psychologically intricate, one turns them over and over in one’s mind, seeking patterns and gleaning insights…. Rooted in Minneapolis, its industrial ruins so poetically rendered, these ravishing, funny, and compassionate stories redefine our perceptions of vice and virtue, delusion and reason, love and loss.” —Booklist, *starred review*

“Bare storylines can’t convey the quickly captivating simple narratives…or the revealing moments to which Baxter brings the reader…Similarly, Baxter, a published poet, at times pushes his fluid, controlled prose to headier altitudes, as in ‘high wispy cirrus clouds threatening the sky like promissory notes.’ Nearly as organic as a novel, this is more intriguing, more fun in disclosing its connective tissues through tales that stand well on their own.” —Kirkus Reviews, *starred review*

 “Five stories named for virtues and five for vices make up this collection from a master craftsman….Baxter’s characters muddle through small but pivotal moments, not so much confrontations as crossroads between love and destruction, desire and death….The prose resonates with distinctive turns of phrase that capture human ambiguity and uncertainty: trouble waits patiently at home, irony is the new chastity, and a dying man lives in the house that pain designed for him.” —Publishers Weekly, *starred review*

“Baxter’s delightful stories will make readers hungry for more. Fortunately, there are more out there, and one hopes, more to come.” —Library Journal, *starred review*

“Charles Baxter is nothing short of a national literary treasure. To read these stories—hilarious, tragic, surprising, and indelibly human—is to receive revelation at the hands of a master. Who but this writer has such intimate knowledge of our most shameful depths, and who else can illuminate them with such stunning aptness of word and thought? These ten linked stories, fraught with loneliness, ultimately reveal the unbreakable ties between us all.” —Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Under Water

“With his latest collection, Charles Baxter has given us something altogether new in contemporary fiction: a series of moral tales that contain zero moralizing. At the center of each of these stories is a pivotal request—something I want you to do—and the ensuing narratives unfold with the nuanced complexity we’ve come to expect from Baxter, with a theological acumen few contemporary writers possess. Here is a cast of characters unparalleled since Sherwood Anderson’s Book of Grotesques, with a modern-day Minneapolis as tangible and strange as his Winesburg, Ohio. A stunning and unique work from one of the living masters of the story form.” —Jamie Quatro, author of I Want to Show You More

“Charles Baxter’s stories proceed with steady grace, nimble humor, quiet authority, and thrilling ingeniousness. In this his latest collection, all is on display—as are his honoring of the mysteries of love and his dramatic explorations of American manners, mores, family, solitude, and art. He is a great writer.” —Lorrie Moore, author of Bark

Charles Baxter is the author of the novels The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), The Soul Thief, Saul and Patsy, Shadow Play, and First Light, and the story collections Gryphon, Believers, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, andHarmony of the World.  The stories “Bravery” and “Charity,” which appear in There’s Something I Want You to Do, were included inBest American Short Stories. Baxter lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

DAVID VIENNA reads from his parenting book CALM THE F*CK DOWN

Calm the F*ck Down (Knock Knock)

Based on a no-holds-barred post that swept the internet, Calm the F*ck Down is for parents who desperately need a chill pill. This helpful how-to offers a diaperload of practical advice from parenting blogger David Vienna, and shows that common sense can get you through most parenting dilemmas. The guttural stepsister to Keep Calm & Carry On, Calm The F*k Down includes advice from actual experts and blends authoritative and humorous in equal parts.

Praise for Calm The F*ck Down:

“Step 1: Buy this book. Step 2: There is no second step.” —Farah Miller, editor Huffington Post Parents

“If Vienna's CTFD had been available four years ago, the money I could have saved on antacid and Grecian Formula would easily fund my daughter's first year of college.” —Dave Engledow, author of World's Best Father

“David Vienna is a singular voice of reason amidst the obnoxious echo chamber of parenting philosophies and self-help guru-dom. His humor will persuade you to let your guard down, and his honesty in the face of one of life’s greatest challenges—raising children—will have you feeling sane again.” —Charlie Capen, creator HowToBeADad.com

“We’ve become a nation of risk-averse, safety-obsessed, Purell-loving freaks, and David Vienna thinks it's time that we all just calmed the f*ck down. Hilarious, helpful and—most importantly—the antidote to the age of over-parenting.” —Melissa Sher, creator of Mammalingo.com

“I've been trying to calm the f*ck down since the minute I found out I was pregnant with my first baby. Literally. Like, I'm medicated for it now so I'm mostly okay, but this book is like yoga for my obsessed-mother mind. I feel so Zen after reading it! And I also got a great ab workout from all the laughs. I think it should be required reading for all parents. Heck, can it just be required reading for everyone? Because I think parents and non-parents alike could use a little CTFD when it comes to dealing with kids.” —Jill Krause, author of Baby Rabies

David Vienna is a father of twin boys, a former journalist and spent a few years writing for reality television. That one really awesome episode of House Hunters—yeah, that was his. He covers parenting issues at TheDaddyComplex.com and other questionable sites, and has also spoken at the Dad 2.0 Summit. His work also appears in exquisitely crafted drunken emails to his friends from high school. He loves E.L.O., ’70s horror films, Philly cheesesteaks and napping.

CECIL CASTELLUCCI reads from her young adult novel STONE IN THE SKY, and BEN LOORY reads from his new children's book THE BASEBALL PLAYER AND THE WALRUS

Stone in the Sky (Roaring Brook Press) The Baseball Player and the Walrus (Dial Books)

Please join us tonight as we celebrate the launch of Cecil Castellucci's Stone in the Sky, as well as the paperback release of Tin Star and the 10th anniversary of the release of Boy Proof, which was just named as one of the top 100 best YA Books of All Time by Time Magazine! For today's event Cecil will be joined by Ben Loory, who will be launching his first children's book The Baseball Player and the Walrus!

"Brother Blue.

His name, even the color, filled me with a furious fire of pure hatred."

Years ago, Tula Bane was beaten and left for dead on a remote space station far from Earth, her home planet. She started with nothing and had no one, but over time, she found a home, a family, and even love. When it's discovered that the abandoned planet beneath the station is abundant with a rare and valuable resource, aliens from across the galaxy race over to strike it rich. With them comes trouble, like the man who nearly killed Tula years ago—the man she has dreamed of destroying ever since.

In this sequel to Tin Star, Cecil Castellucci takes readers on an extraordinary adventure through space in a thrilling and thoughtful exploration of what it means to love, to hate, and to be human.

Cecil Castellucci is a two-time MacDowell Colony fellow and award-winning author of twelve books for young adults, including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes,First Day on Earth, Year of the Beasts, and Tin Star. She lives in Los Angeles.

. . .

From acclaimed short-story writer Ben Loory comes a sweet and poignant story of friendship.

Once there was a famous baseball player who seemed to have it all. He made lots of money and had fans from around the world. But, he didn’t have the one thing he wanted most—happiness. That is until he went to the zoo. There the baseball player sees a walrus who “makes funny noises” and “flaps its flippers” in glee, and he decides he wants the walrus in his life.

When the baseball player leaves his job to spend more time with his new best friend, trouble arises in zoo paradise. Hopefully, the pair can find a compromise that will keep everyone happy and even leave a little time for one last game.

The Baseball Player and the Walrus brings the love of baseball and of friendship together in a humorous story of how we find happiness in the most surprising of places.

Author Ben Loory lives in Los Angeles and is the acclaimed author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, which Kirkus has called “one of kind.” His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker and on NPR’s This American Life. Visit him at www.benloory.com.

Illustrator Alexander Latimer lives on the outskirts of a national park, where rogue porcupines wander the nearby streets, though he has yet to find any walruses. He is also the author of The Boy Who Cried Ninja, Lion vs. Rabbit, Pig and Small, andPenguin’s Hidden Talent. Visit him at www.alexlatimer.co.za.

JONATHAN LETHEM reads from his new collection LUCKY ALAN: AND OTHER STORIES

Lucky Alan: And Other Stories (Doubleday Books)

The incomparable Jonathan Lethem returns with nine brilliant stories that prove he is a master of the short form as well as the novel.

Jonathan Lethem stretches new literary muscles in this scintillating new collection of stories. Some of these tales--such as "Pending Vegan," which wonderfully captures a parental ache and anguish during a family visit to an aquatic theme park--are, in Lethem's words, "obedient (at least outwardly) to realism." Others, like "The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear, " which deftly and hilariously captures the solipsism of blog culture, feature "the uncanny and surreal elements that still sometimes erupt in my short stories."

The tension between these two approaches, and the way they inform each other, increase the reader's surprise and delight as one realizes how cleverly Lethem is playing with form. Devoted fans of Lethem will recognize familiar themes and tropes--the anxiety of influence pushed to reduction ad absurdum in "The King of Sentences"; a hapless outsider trying to summon up bravado in "The Porn Critic;" characters from the comics stranded on a desert island; the necessity and the impossibility of action against authority in "Procedure in Plain Air." As always, Lethem's work, humor, and poignancy work in harmony; people strive desperately for connection through words and often misdirect deeds; and the sentences are glorious.

Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including Dissident Gardens, Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and Gun, with Occasional Music. He lives in Brooklyn.

JOHN HAMPSEY reads from his memoir KAUFMAN'S HILL

Kaufman's Hill (Bancroft Press)

A profound and intensely moving boyhood memoir, Kaufman's Hill opens with a prosaic neighborhood scene: The author and some other young boys are playing by the creek, one of their usual stomping grounds. But it soon becomes clear that much more is going on; the boy-narrator is struggling to find his way in a middle-class Catholic neighborhood dominated by the Creely bullies, who often terrify him. It's the Pittsburgh of the early and mid-1960s, a threshold time just before the counter-culture arrives, and a time when suburban society begins to encroach on Kaufman's Hill, the boy's sanctuary and the setting of many of his adventures. As the hill and the 1950s vanish into the twilight, so does the world of the narrator's boyhood.

Praise for Kaufman's Hill

"Kaufman's Hill is among the most touching, sensitive, and spellbinding memoirs I've encountered in many years. Beautifully and exactly written, this book will surely reach into the hearts of its readers. I was deeply moved."--Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried

“[Kaufman's Hill is] the best book on American boyhood in decades.”--Howard Zinn, author of People's History of the United States

"Kaufman's Hill is a vivid and unforgettable coming-of-age tale of boys and bullies on the edge of post-industrial America. Hampsey's haunting, lyrical world thrums with the dark, erratic rhythms that lie below the surface of our seemingly ordinary childhoods. He makes me remember mine differently, somehow." -- Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being

"Hampsey has written a gem of a memoir. As powerful, poignant, funny and deeply moving as anything I've read since Russell Baker's masterpiece, Growing Up. Someone should make a movie of this."--Mark Mathabane, author of Kaffir Boy

John C. Hampsey is professor of Romantic and Classical Literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he has won the University Distinguished Teaching Award. Previously, he taught at Boston University and MIT. He received his BA from Holy Cross College and his PhD from Boston College. He is currently working on a novel—Soda Lake, an existential mystery mixed with interconnected imaginary portraits. During his career, Hampsey has had more than thirty stories and essays published in such places as The Gettysburg Review (four times), The Midwest Quarterly, Antioch Review, The Alaska Quarterly, The Boston Globe, Arizona Quarterly, European Romantic Review, Witness, Colby Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and McNeese Review, among many others. His previous book Paranoia and Contentment: A Personal Essay on Western Thought was published by University of Virgina Press in 2005.

USC MPW students read from their work

Please join us this afternoon as students in the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing program read from their work. Readers include Autumn McAlpin, Stephanie Abraham, Brianna J.L. Smyk, Annalouise Carter, and Mellinda Hensley. They will be joined by faculty member Dinah Lenney.

Hailing from Memphis, TN, Autumn McAlpin is now a writer, director, and producer working in LA as she completes her MPW degree at USC. Autumn has worked as a freelance columnist for The Orange County Register for nine years, and she is the author of Real World 101: A Survival Guide to Life After High School, Amazon's top-selling graduation gift book in 2011 and 2012. An award-winning filmmaker, Autumn is the writer and producer of the upcoming feature film Waffle Street, starring James Lafferty, Danny Glover, and Julie Gonzalo. She has two other features in development.

 

Stephanie Abraham is an essayist, media critic, blogger and business writer. Her writings have appeared in Bitch, Role Reboot and Mizna. She is currently working on her first memoir. Visit her at StephanieAbraham.com.

 

Brianna J.L. Smyk is the nonfiction editor of the Southern California Review and a student in USC’s Master of Professional Writing program. A fiction and nonfiction writer, Brianna holds a master's in art history and was the lead arts writer for NolaVie in New Orleans. 

AnnaLouise Carter is a prose and poetry writer living in South Los Angeles. Originally from Oregon, she graduated with a degree in English from Stanford University, and has also studied at Oxford and the University of Salamanca. She has been published in xoJane and Christianity Today, and shares a home with her husband, two housemates, and an overweight black cat.

Mellinda Hensley is a fiction writer at MPW and the Editor-in-Chief of the Southern California Review. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in Writing and Journalism at the University of Evansville in Indiana, and has been published in The Boiler Journal, LA Magazine, the Review Review, The Ohio River Review, and also currently contributes to the blog Smash Cut Culture.

Dinah Lenney is the author of a collection of essays, The Object Parade (Counterpoint Press), and Bigger Than Life: A Murder, a Memoir, published as part of the American Lives series at the University of Nebraska Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in a wide range of publications and anthologies including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, AGNI, Creative Nonfiction, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and Brevity.com. Dinah is the senior nonfiction editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books and serves as core faculty for the Bennington Writing Seminars, the Rainier Writing Workshop, and in the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California. www.dinahlenney.com (@dinahlenney on Twitter).

NICOLE MAGGI reads from her young adult novel THE FORGETTING

The Forgetting (Sourcebooks Fire)

Georgie's new heart saved her life...but now she's losing her mind.

When Georgie Kendrick wakes up after a heart transplant she feels...different. The organ beating in her chest isn't in tune with the rest of her body. Like it still belongs to someone else. Someone with terrible memories...memories that are slowly replacing her own. Georgie discovers her heart belonged to a teenage girl who lived a rough life on the streets. Everyone thinks she committed suicide, but only Georgie knows the truth. And now Georgie has to catch a killer--before she loses herself completely. Fans of Lisa McMann and April Hentry will devour this edgy, gripping thriller with a twist readers won't see coming!

Praise for The Forgetting

"An eerie mystery wrapped in a heart-wrenching romance, this breathless thriller will leave you wanting more from Maggi!" - Gretchen McNeil, author of TEN and the Don't Get Mad series

“From the tender moments to the thrilling climax, this one will keep your heart racing.” - Natalie D. Richards, author of Six Months Later

Nicole Maggi was born in the suburbs of upstate New York, and began writing poems about unicorns and rainbows at a very early age. She detoured into acting, earned a BFA from Emerson College, and moved to NYC where she performed in lots of off-off-off-Broadway Shakespeare. After a decade of schlepping groceries on the subway, she and her husband hightailed it to sunny Los Angeles, where they now reside, surrounded by fruit trees, with their daughter and two oddball cats.

SARAH GERARD reads from her debut novel BINARY STAR

Binary Star (Two Dollar Radio)

Join us tonight at Skylight Books for the brilliant debut from a rising "star" (couldn't help it)  of fiction, Sarah Gerard!

The language of the stars is the language of the body. Like a star, the anorexic burns fuel that isn’t replenished; she is held together by her own gravity. With luminous, lyrical prose, Sarah Gerard’s debut novel Binary Star is an impassioned account of a young woman struggling with anorexia and her long-distance, alcoholic boyfriend, John. On a road trip around the United States, they stumble into a book on veganarchism and believe they’ve found a direction.

Though she has misgivings about their newfound ideology, the narrator’s involvement becomes critical to the couple’s plan to “take down the sick system.” Trapped in a self-destructive constellation of lies and self-defining, superficial obsessions, she forces herself to complete the semester while preparing the political “action” she and John have planned for the summer. Meanwhile, John’s drinking is spiraling out of control with dangerous results, and they’re closer together than ever.

Sarah Gerard’s Binary Star is an intense, fast-moving saga of two young lovers and the culture that keeps them sick; a society that sells diet pills and sleeping pills, magazines that profile celebrities who lose weight, or too much weight, or put on weight; and books that pimp diet secrets or recipes for success—a cataclysmic story of the quest for perfection.

Praise for Binary Star

"Sarah Gerard's star is rising."--The Millions

"A bold, beautiful novel about wanting to disappear and almost succeeding. Sarah Gerard writes about love and loneliness in a new and brilliantly visceral way."--Jenny Offill

"I felt a breathless intensity the whole time I read Sarah Gerard's brilliant Binary Star. I sped through it, dizzy, devastated, loving all of it."--Kate Zambreno

"Two lost souls hurtle through a long dark night where drug store fluorescents light up fashion magazine headlines and the bad flarf of the pharmacy: Hydroxycut, Seroquel, Ativan, Zantrex-3. Gerard's young lovers rightly revolt against the insane standards of a sick society, but their pursuit of purity--ideological, mental, physical--comes to constitute another kind of impossible demand, all the more dangerous for being self-imposed. Binary Star is merciless and cyclonic, a true and brutal poem of obliteration, an all-American death chant whose chorus is 'I want to look at the sky and understand.'"--Justin Taylor

"By now I've read Binary Star twice, and I've become so entwined with it that I'm reluctant to talk about the subject at length. Let me just say that I've never read anything like it."--Harry Mathews

"Allegorized by the phenomena of binary stars, Sarah Gerard's first novel confronts the symptoms of modern living with beauty and courage."--Simon Van Booy

Sarah Gerard's work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine's "The Cut," Paris Review Daily, Slice Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum, and other journals. She is the author of the chapbook Things I Told My Mother and a graduate of The New School's MFA program for fiction.

MICHAEL LOCKE and VINCENT BROOK discuss their book SILVER LAKE CHRONICLES: EXPLORING AN URBAN OASIS IN LOS ANGELES

Silver Lake Chronicles: Exploring an Urban Oasis in Los Angeles (History Press)

Situated between Los Feliz and Echo Park a few miles from downtown Los Angeles, Silver Lake thrives as a perennially avant-garde and enchanting enclave. From mansion builders and movie stars to bohemians, visionaries and just plain folk, discover Silver Lake's illustrious past and a fantastic cast of characters sure to enrich contemporary experience and inform the past. Colorful anecdotes about early movie magnates William Selig and Mack Sennett and silent-screen idols Mabel Normand, Antonio Moreno and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle flesh out these famous figures' lives in new and surprising ways. Other lesser-known but richly deserving stories about the area's pioneer families are shared perhaps for the first time. Authors Michael Locke and Vincent Brook present a rich tapestry of this unique urban oasis whose appeal seems only to grow.

Michael Locke is a longtime resident of Southern California. He served on the first Silver Lake Neighborhood Council, as the Region One representative and vice chair, and was founder of the Beautification Committee. Since 2003, he has edited and published The Silver Lake News, an online community newspaper. He is also a regular contributing writer and photographer for the Los Feliz Ledger, the Los Feliz Observer and the Los Angeles City Historical Society Newsletter. He lives in the Durex Model Home (Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument Number 1025) in Los Feliz with his wife, Donna Jean. 

 

Vincent Brook has a PhD in film and television from UCLA. He teaches media studies at the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Southern California; California State University, Los Angeles; and Pierce College. He has authored or edited five other books, most recently: Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles and Woody on Rye: Jewishness in the Films and Plays of Woody Allen (both 2013). Born in Van Nuys, he has lived in Silver Lake with his wife Karen since 1978. 

RICHARD LANGE reads from his newest short story collection SWEET NOTHING

Sweet Nothing: Stories (Mulholland Books)

Richard Lange is one of our most highly acclaimed literary mystery writers. He has been hailed as a “natural-born storyteller” and compared to great masters like Raymond Carver and Denis Johnson. His debut, Dead Boys, was called “one of the best short story collections of the past 50 years” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and it put his name on the literary map. Now he returns to the form that started it all with his latest collection, Sweet Nothing.

A gambler tries to hide his addiction on a date at the racetrack. An ex-con must decide between cashing in on a lucrative heist and staying the course as a small-time security guard. And a recovering drug addict yearns to connect with a beautiful woman during his graveyard shift at Subway. With the dark side of Los Angeles as a backdrop, these ten unforgettable stories artfully combine the honest characterization of Junot Díaz with the edge-of-your-seat energy of Dennis Lehane. They capture and crystallize the mistakes and poor judgments that truly make us human, and reveal how a moment’s misstep can irrevocably shape a life. 

Praise for Sweet Nothing:

“Skillfully constructed.…Lange portrays the lives of people struggling to survive, with the focus on families, both blood-related and chance-made.”—Booklist

“For all the darkness that runs through the stories…Lange maintains a disarmingly light touch, finding plenty of human comedy in the proceedings without sacrificing empathy.…Lange’s morality tales are not that far removed from the classic stories of O. Henry and Guy de Maupassant. With a distinctive style, Lange makes his downbeat tales of the underclass quirkily entertaining.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Utterly believable postcards from the edge; for those who like their realism not so magical but right there at street level.” —Library Journal

“The best stories are rabbit holes. You read the first lines, maybe a page, and you’re down there. Somewhere else. Another life. Richard Lange is one cwazy wabbit.”—James Sallis, author of Drive

“What makes this collection a wonderful read is that it’s only marginally akin to anything else. Swift, gut-wrenching, and sometimes cleverly disarming fiction by a master.”—Joe R. Lansdale, author of The Thicket and Edge of Dark Water

“I’ve been reading Richard Lange’s work since Dead Boys blew my doors off years ago, and goddamn, the man just keeps getting better. The stories in Sweet Nothing traffic in the vagaries of the human heart, those wants and needs that push us down dark paths. His vision is steely-eyed, yet you sense that Lange loves his characters—even the worst of them—and that compassion sharpensyour own emotional investment in this powerful brace of stories.”—Craig Davidson, author of Cataract City

Richard Lange is the author of the story collection Dead Boys and the novels This Wicked World and Angel Baby. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2004 and 2011. He lives in Los Angeles.

ROBERT S. LEVINSON reads from his novel THE EVIL DEEDS WE DO

The Evil Deeds We Do (Five Star)

The evil deeds we do are often the things we do for love.

Lainie Davis Gardner’s past comes back to haunt the one-time record industry powerhouse in the complex, gripping, often intense tale bestselling author Robert S. Levinson weaves in The Evil Deeds We Do, his twelfth mystery-thriller. First, she’s confronted by L.A. Assistant D.A Harry Roman, who promises he’ll soon prove Lainie was behind the murder of her husband, Roy. Next, the mayor’s chief advisor, Thom Newberry, Lainie’s one-time lover, offers her a permanent solution to her problem with Roman, but it comes at a steep price, one Lainie agrees to pay on Newberry’s guarantee it will keep her from ever losing custody of her troubled, trouble-inspiring teenage daughter, Sara.

She has six weeks to locate and steal a file secreted in heavily guarded quarters by brutish Leonard Volkman, who runs a vast financial empire and was, she believes, behind Roy’s financial downfall. She strikes a partnership deal with Volkman to create a label built around singer-songwriter Miranda Morgan and reluctantly accepts help from Rod Flynn, a gregarious Irishman operating Volkman’s bogus film production company. Events escalate to include fading movie star Lance Clifford; Chips Crandall, Lainie’s nemesis during her time behind bars; Berry Berryman, a notorious hoodlum; music impresario Benny Sugar; and Newberry’s teenage son, Jerry, whose relationship with Lainie’s daughter Sara causes a series of twists that culminate in multiple deaths and heartbreaking tragedy.

Robert S. Levinson is the bestselling author of twelve mystery-thrillers, among them Finders, Keepers, Losers, Weepers, Phony Tinsel, A Rhumba in Waltz Time, The Traitor in Us All, and Ask a Dead Man. His short stories appear frequently in the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines. He is a Derringer Award winner, a Shamus Award nominee, and regularly included in “year’s best” anthologies. Bob served four years on Mystery Writers of America’s (MWA) national board of directors. He wrote and produced two MWA Edgar Awards shows and two International Thriller Writers Thriller Awards shows. His work has been praised by Nelson DeMille, Clive Cussler, Joseph Wambaugh, Margaret Maron, David Morrell, Jeffery Deaver, T. Jefferson Parker, Willliam Link, John Lescroart, James Rollins, Joseph Finder, Margaret Maron, Thomas Perry, William Kent Krueger, and others. He resides in Los Angeles with his spouse, Sandra, and Rosie, their mixed-breed rescue pooch, who believes she rescued them. More atwww.robertslevinson.com.

CARMEN BOULLOSA reads from her novel TEXAS: THE GREAT THEFT

Texas: The Great Theft (Deep Vellum)

Please welcome to Skylight Books the author Roberto Bolaño calls "Mexico's best woman writer" Carmen Boullosa!

A writer in the tradition of Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Cesar Aira, Carmen Boullosa shows herself to be at the height of her powers with her latest book. Loosely based on the little-known 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States, Texas: The Great Theftis a richly imagined evocation of the volatile Tex-Mex borderland. Boullosa views the border history through distinctly Mexican eyes, and her sympathetic portrayal of each of her wildly diverse characters—Mexican ranchers and Texas Rangers, Comanches and cowboys, German socialists and runaway slaves, Southern belles and dance hall girls—makes her storytelling tremendously powerful and absorbing. Shedding important historical light on the current battles over the Mexican-American frontier, while telling a gripping story with Boullosa's singular prose and formal innovation, Texas marks the welcome return of a major writer who has previously captivated American audiences and is poised to do so again.

PRAISE FOR CARMEN BOULLOSA

"A luminous writer . . . Boullosa is a masterful spinner of the fantastic." — MIAMI HERALD

"Carmen Boullosa writes with a heart-stopping command of language."— Alma Guillermoprieto

"A story and men armed by necessity and by caprice, a tale of indomitable women, a chronicle of cowboys and Indians, of African-Americans and immigrants from other parts, of captives and their keepers, of slavers and rebels." — LA JOURNADA

"I don't think there's a writer with more variety in themes and focuses in his or her writing. . . . Boullosa's style and range is unique for its versatility and its enormous courage."— Juan Villoro, author of La Casa Pierde and Aforismos

" . . . a cross between W. G. Sebald and Gabriel García Márquez."— El Pais

"The world of Carmen Boullosa is revealed as a sui generis form weathering the storms of history."— Letras Libres

"Carmen Boullosa is, in my opinion, a true master."— Alvaro Mutis, author of The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll

Carmen Boullosa (Mexico City, 1954) is one of Mexico's leading writers. The author of over a dozen novels that have received numerous prizes and honors, Boullosa has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. Also a poet and playwright, she has taught at New York University, Columbia University, CUNY, and Georgetown, among other universities, and she hosts a television show, Nueva York, on CUNY-TV, which has received five New York Emmys. Her work has been translated into several languages, and she is currently a FONCA fellow in Mexico. She lives in Brooklyn and Mexico City. You can visit her online atcarmenboullosa.net or follow her on twitter: @carmenboullosa.

PATTON OSWALT discuss his new book SILVER SCREEN FIEND

Silver Screen Fiend (Scribner)

Skylight Books welcomes back one of our favorite comedic minds --Patton Oswalt -- for a reading and signing of his new book,Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life From An Addiction to Film.

NOTE: As with all Skylight Books 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 Silver Screen Fiend here at Skylight Books.  Tickets will be available starting January 6th, 2015.  They will be available in-store, or you can order on our website and leave a note in the "Order Comments" field.  We will also hold a ticket for you if you order and pay for a book over the phone.  In addition to books, Patton Oswalt will sign one additional item and will pose for one photograph with individual attendees, though you are welcome to take photos during the event and from the line (no flash please). Lastly, we ask that you please refrain from making an audio or video recording of the event.  Thank you for your cooperation!

From New York Times-bestselling author, multifaceted comedian and actor, and social media genius Patton Oswalt, a memoir of coming of age as a performer and writer while obsessively watching classic films at the legendary New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles in the mid-90s: Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film.

In Patton Oswalt’s own words, Silver Screen Fiend is “the dorkiest addiction memoir ever.” It tells the story of his early days in the comedy scene of Los Angeles. After moving to LA, he started hanging out constantly at the New Beverly Cinema, absorbing classics, cult hits, and new releases. The movies he views inform his notions of acting, writing, comedy, and relationships, and the colorful cast of characters he meets at the New Beverly fill in the rest.

Praise for Silver Screen Fiend:

"Silver Screen Fiend is both a love letter to artistic obsession and string of caution tape around it. Patton describes the ecstatic demands of the arts (in this case, Stand-up and Film) with insight, fond pity, and unfailing humor. This is a book for anyone who strives to be great, or is bored in an airport."--Joss Whedon

"Patton Oswalt is one of the most brilliant comedy minds of a generation. This book confirms it."--Ricky Gervais

Patton Oswalt is the author of the New York Times bestseller Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. He has released five TV specials and five critically acclaimed comedy albums, including two Grammy-nominated releases, My Weakness Is Strong and Finest Hour. Oswalt has also appeared on many television shows and in more than twenty films, including Young Adult, Big Fan, and Ratatouille. Oswalt was the host of the 29th Independent Spirit Awards and the 18th Annual Webby Awards. He lives in Los Angeles.