Skylight Books Podcast Series

MIMI POND reads from OVER EASY

Over Easy (Drawn & Quarterly)

Artist and Los Angeles resident, Mimi Pond comes to Skylight Books with her sort-of memoir Over Easy, a brilliant portrayal of a familiar coming-of-age story.

After being denied financial aid to cover her last year of art school, Margaret finds salvation from the straightlaced world of college and the earnestness of both hippies and punks in the wisecracking, fast-talking, drug-taking group she encounters at the Imperial Cafe, where she makes the transformation from Margaret to Madge. At first she mimics these new and exotic grown-up friends, trying on the guise of adulthood with some awkward but funny stumbles. Gradually she realizes that the adults she looks up to are a mess of contradictions, misplaced artistic ambitions, sexual confusion, dependencies, and addictions.

Over Easy is equal parts time capsule of late 1970s life in California--with its deadheads, punks, disco rollers, casual sex, and drug use--and bildungsroman of a young woman who grows from a naive, sexually inexperienced art-school dropout into a self-aware, self-confident artist. Mimi Pond's chatty, slyly observant anecdotes create a compelling portrait of a distinct moment in time. Over Easy is an immediate, limber, and precise semi-memoir narrated with an eye for the humor in every situation.

Praise for Over Easy:

"As funny and warm-hearted as a memoir about a bunch of punks, drug dealers, hippies, and art school dropouts screwing in the 1970s can get. Mimi Pond's coming-of-age graphic novel, "Over Easy", is a delicious charmer." --Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins

Mimi Pond is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. She has created comics for the Los Angeles Times, Seventeen Magazine, National Lampoon, and many other publications too numerous to mention, and has written and illustrated five humor books. She has also written for television: her credits include the first full length episode of The Simpsons, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" in 1989, and episodes for the television shows Designing Women and Pee Wee's Playhouse. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the painter Wayne White.

BENJAMIN ROSS discusses his book DEAD END: SUBURBAN SPRAWL AND THE REBIRTH OF AMERICAN URBANISM

Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism (Oxford University Press)

Transportation activist Benjamin Ross discusses and signs his new book on urban development and sprawl.

More than five decades have passed since Jane Jacobs wrote her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and since a front page headline in the New York Times read, "Cars Choking Cities as 'Urban Sprawl' Takes Over." Yet sprawl persists, and not by mistake. It happens for a reason.

As an activist and a scholar, Benjamin Ross is uniquely placed to diagnose why this is so. Dead End traces how the ideal of a safe, green, orderly retreat where hardworking members of the middle class could raise their children away from the city mutated into the McMansion and strip mall-ridden suburbs of today. Ross finds that sprawl is much more than bad architecture and sloppy planning. Its roots are historical, sociological, and economic. He uses these insights to lay out a practical strategy for change, honed by his experience leading the largest grass-roots mass transit advocacy organization in the United States. The problems of smart growth, sustainability, transportation, and affordable housing, he argues, are intertwined and must be solved as a whole. The two keys to creating better places to live are expansion of rail transit and a more genuinely democratic oversight of land use.

Dead End is, ultimately, about the places where we live our lives. Both an engaging history of suburbia and an invaluable guide for today's urbanists, it will serve as a primer for anyone interested in how Americans actually live. 

Praise for Dead End:
"Ben Ross' Dead End is a highly personal account of a larger journey that we are embarked on as a nation -- from sprawl to walkable communities, from anoxic, sterile neighborhoods to vibrant, transit-served urban areas that are the wellspring of innovation, economic development and cultural richness." --John Porcari, Former Deputy Secretary, United States Department of Transportation  

Benjamin Ross was president for 15 years of Maryland's Action Committee for Transit, which grew under his leadership into the nation's largest grass-roots transit advocacy group. Professionally, he is a consultant on environmental problems and served on committees of the National Academy of Sciences and EPA Science Advisory Board. He writes frequently on political and social topics in Dissent magazine and is the author of The Polluters: The Making of Our Chemically Altered Environment. 

CARRIE ARCOS reads from THERE WILL COME A TIME

There Will Come A Time (Simon Pulse)

Mark knows grief. Ever since the accident that killed his twin sister, Grace, the only time he feels at peace is when he visits the bridge on which she died. Comfort is fleeting, but it's almost within reach when he's standing on the wrong side of the suicide bars. Almost. 

Grace's best friend, Hanna, says she understands what he's going through. But she doesn't. She can't. It's not just the enormity of his loss. As her twin, Mark should have known Grace as well as he knows himself. Yet when he reads her journal, it's as if he didn't know her at all. 

As a way to remember Grace, Hanna convinces Mark to complete Grace's bucket list from her journal. Mark's sadness, anger, and his growing feelings for Hanna threaten to overwhelm him. But Mark can't back out. He made a promise to honor Grace--and it's his one chance to set things right.

Carrie Arcos is the author of There Will Come a Time and Out of Reach, which was a National Book Award Finalist. She lives with her family in Los Angeles, California. Visit her at CarrieArcos.com.

WORLD BOOK NIGHT KICKOFF PARTY featuring DEREK KIRK KIM

World Book Night Kickoff Party 

Skylight Books has been chosen as one of twenty U.S. locations to host an official World Book Night launch event on April 22, 2014. Joining us to celebrate this great cause will be the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz Award Winning authorDerek Kirk Kim. Derek’s Same Difference is one of the 37 official WBN editions being distributed around the country by volunteers on April 23.

As part of this celebration, Derek Kirk Kim will speak briefly about reading and giving. Of special importance, all local givers are welcome to come share their giving stories.

Additionally, all attendees at our April 22 event will receive a free copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets in a special WBN edition.

Other official WBN launch events will take place in Seattle, Portland, Berkeley, Denver, Santa Fe, Houston, Chicago, Duluth, Lexington KY, Stone Ridge VA, Wilmington NC, Vero Beach FL, Buffalo and Ithaca NY, Barre VT, Washington DC, and New York City. 

 

Derek Kirk Kim is the award-winning author of the Tune series, Same Difference, The Eternal Smile (with Gene Luen Yang), and Good As Lily (with Jesse Hamm). He has also contributed to numerous anthologies including Flight, Volume 1, Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, and Bizarro World. 

 

World Book Night U.S. is an ambitious campaign to give a half million free, specially-printed paperbacks to light or non-readers across America on one day. 25,000 volunteer book lovers will go out into 6,000 communities to primarily seek out those without the means or access to printed books. The volunteers go to such diverse locations as hospitals, underfunded schools, military bases, women’s shelters, nursing homes, community centers, and more. 

World Book Night takes place on April 23, 2014 – Shakespeare’s birthday – and is in its third year in the U.S., after the UK launch in 2011. We hand out 500,000 books in the U.S. every April 23.

As part of World Book Night, 2,300 bookstores and libraries in all 50 states serve as community organizers for the book distribution to the volunteer givers.

MORLEY reads from IF YOU'RE READING THIS, THERE'S STILL TIME

If You're Reading This, There's Still Time (Cameron & Company)

Join us today for a very special event with a very special artist. Poetic and insightful, there's no mistaking the work of Morley.

Morley is a Los Angeles-based street artist that specializes in bold, typographic posters which he wheat pastes within the urban landscape. Blending humor, hope and his unique perspective on life, Morley's aim is to act as a friendly voice amongst the cacophony of billboarded messages and corporate slogans. This voice was given a face when he began including an image of himself in each of his pieces, looking to create a more intimate relationship between the artist and the audience than many of his anonymous contemporaries could allow.

In 2011, Morley's work caught the eye of Steve Lazarides whose Outsiders imprint began selling his work, describing it thusly: "His sympathetic statements give the tirelessly aspirational residents a welcome reminder of what's important in life: love, simple pleasures, making the world a slightly better place and not hating on yourself too much."

Today, he continues to paste his work in any city that doesn't enforce their vandalism laws through caning. Also he made us promise to include the fact that he can hold his breath for over an hour, and that "if anyone challenged him to a breath holding contest, they would totally lose," but he was probably lying about that.

Praise for If You're Reading This, There's Still Time

"Morley is the antithesis of street artists in Los Angeles. Where traditional taggers obscure their name in scrawled script only readable to their own, Morley prints big messages with his large bold lettering. Where most find it cool to be cryptic, Morley shares his wit in complete sentences. Where many street artists prefer anonymity or an empowered alter-ego, Morley includes a plain drawing of his unglamorous self writing each ironic aphorism. His humor veers from self-deprecating to sly, his insight ranges from soul searching to silly."-The Huffington Post

"Breaking the mold is exactly what street art needs today, and Morley seems to be that bit of unpretentious breath of fresh air."- Vandalog

"Morley's pieces are much more than slogans. He has something to make you think about, and he does this in a very effective and funny way"- Claude Crommelin (from New Street Art)

"Morley has a unique gift for what he does. When it comes to artists on the streets, nearly everyone uses words, but no one uses them so well. Morley's street poetry is poignant enough to cause a person to think, and packaged short enough to be consumed in a moment. Morley is a poet of the Streets. Those are our words, not his. Morley would probably find a better way to phrase it."- MelroseAndFairax

"Poetic and insightful, Morley's art captures truths, hardships, and the quirkiness of the human condition."- G. James Daichendt, Author of Stay Up! Los Angeles Street Art

Morley is a Los Angeles-based street artist that specializes in bold, typographic posters which he wheat pastes within the urban landscape. He can hold his breath for over an hour.

JUSTIN GO reads from THE STEADY RUNNING OF THE HOUR

The Steady Running of the Hour (Simon & Schuster)

In this mesmerizing debut, a young American discovers he may be heir to the unclaimed estate of an English World War I officer, which launches him on a quest across Europe to uncover the elusive truth.

Just after graduating college, Tristan Campbell receives a letter delivered by special courier to his apartment in San Francisco. It contains the phone number of a Mr. J.F. Prichard of Twyning & Hooper, Solicitors, in London--and news that could change Tristan's life forever.

In 1924, Prichard explains, an English alpinist named Ashley Walsingham died attempting to summit Mt. Everest, leaving his fortune to his former lover, Imogen Soames-Andersson. But the estate was never claimed. Information has recently surfaced suggesting Tristan may be the rightful heir, but unless he can find documented evidence, the fortune will be divided among charitable beneficiaries in less than two months.

In a breathless race from London archives to Somme battlefields to the Eastfjords of Iceland, Tristan pieces together the story of a forbidden affair set against the tumult of the First World War and the pioneer British expeditions to Mt. Everest. Following his instincts through a maze of frenzied research, Tristan soon becomes obsessed with the tragic lovers, and he crosses paths with a mysterious French girl named Mireille who suggests there is more to his quest than he realizes. Tristan must prove that he is related to Imogen to inherit Ashley's fortune--but the more he learns about the couple, the stranger his journey becomes.

The Steady Running of the Hour announces the arrival of a stunningly talented author. Part love story, part historical tour de force, Justin Go's novel is utterly compelling, unpredictable, and heartrending.

 Praise for The Steady Running of the Hour

"A wonderful time-slip story, beautifully written with a superb sense of place. Go captures the spirit of early 20th-century England perfectly, both in the past and the present, in a novel that is exciting, emotionally engaging and ambitious. I loved it!"--Kate Mosse

"Justin Go has written an astonishingly vast, meticulously plotted, and beautifully told novel. In elegant, haunting prose he tells a wartime story that is at once violent and lovely, hopeful and despairing. I won't soon forget Go's passionate, star-crossed lovers and their deeply moving story, set against the riveting, utterly realistic backdrop of the Great War."--Anton DiSclafani

Justin Go was born in Los Angeles and studied at the University of California, Berkeley and University College London. He has lived in Paris, London, New York City and Berlin, among other places. The Steady Running of the Hour is his first novel and is being translated into more than eighteen languages. 

SUSAN MINOT reads from THIRTY GIRLS

Thirty Girls (Knopf Publishing)

Skylight Books' is proud to present award-winnig novelist Susan Minot, and her first novel in over ten years. The long-awaited novel from the best-selling, award-winning author of Evening is a literary tour de force set in war-torn Africa.

Esther is a Ugandan teenager abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and forced to witness and commit unspeakable atrocities, who is struggling to survive, to escape, and to find a way to live with what she has seen and done. Jane is an American journalist who has traveled to Africa, hoping to give a voice to children like Esther and to find her center after a series of failed relationships. In unflinching prose, Minot interweaves their stories, giving us razor-sharp portraits of two extraordinary young women confronting displacement, heartbreak, and the struggle to wrest meaning from events that test them both in unimaginable ways.

With mesmerizing emotional intensity and stunning evocations of Africa's beauty and its horror, Susan Minot gives us her most brilliant and ambitious novel yet.

Susan Minot is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, poet, and screenwriter. Her first novel, Monkeys, was published in a dozen countries and won the Prix Femina Étranger in France. Her novel Evening was a worldwide best seller and became a major motion picture. She received her MFA from Columbia University and lives with her daughter in New York City and on an island off the coast of Maine.

MAX BROOKS reads THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS

The Harlem Hellfighters (Broadway Books)

From bestselling author Max Brooks, the riveting story of the highly decorated, barrier-breaking, historic black regiment--the Harlem Hellfighters

The Harlem Hellfighters is a fictionalized account of the 369th Infantry Regiment--the first African American regiment mustered to fight in World War I. From the enlistment lines in Harlem to the training camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, bestselling author Max Brooks tells the thrilling story of the heroic journey that these soldiers undertook for a chance to fight for America. Despite extraordinary struggles and discrimination, the 369th became one of the most successful--and least celebrated--regiments of the war. The Harlem Hellfighters, as their enemies named them, spent longer than any other American unit in combat and displayed extraordinary valor on the battlefield. Based on true events and featuring artwork from acclaimed illustrator Caanan White, these pages deliver an action-packed and powerful story of courage, honor, and heart.

LORRIE MOORE reads and signs her short story collection BARK

Bark: Stories (Knopf)

We're thrilled to present acclaimed writer Lorrie Moore (A Gate at the Stairs, Birds of America), who will visit Skylight to read and sign her new short story collection, Bark.

POETRY READING by members of POETS AT WORK

Come celebrate National Poetry Month with readings from Kim Dower, Yvonne M. Estrada, Dylan Cameron Gailey, Brett Guitar Hofer, Eric Howard, Kay Sundstrom, Sharon Venezio, Tina Yang, Helen Yeoman and Terry Wolverton for an explosion of forms and styles, moods and revelations.

KATE GALE reads from GOLDILOCKS ZONE

Goldilocks Zone (University of New Mexico Press)

Goldilocks Zone explores the inventions of bridges, condoms, fireworks, and glass weaved into the stories of creative people teetering on the brink of disaster. But those lives are also immersed in light, love, joy, and madness, all the elements of a rich and wild inventive life.

Dr. Kate Gale is managing editor of Red Hen Press, editor of the Los Angeles Review, and president of the American Composers Forum, LA. She teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska in Poetry, Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction. She is author of five books of poetry, a novel, and Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis. Her most recent projects include a co-written libretto, Paradises Lost with Ursula K. LeGuin and composer Stephen Taylor, and a libretto adapted from Kindred by Octavia Butler with composer Billy Childs. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.

STEVE EARLY reads from SAVE OUR UNIONS and RAND WILSON reads from JOBS WITH JUSTICE

Jobs With Justice (PM Press)     Save Our Unions (Monthly Review Press)

Meet Steve Early, author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress and Rand Wilson, union organizer and longtime Jobs With Justice activist.

MELISSA BRODER reads from SCARECRONE and KATE DURBIN reads from E! ENTERTAINMENT

Scarecrone (Publishing Genius Press) E! Entertainment (Wonder Press)

In Scarecrone, Melissa Broder deepens her self-aware and dark brand of poetry, which The Chicago Tribune says “risks the divine” and Flavorwire calls “unbelievable and overwhelming for its imaginative power alone.” Publishers Weekly says her work is "as funny and hip as it is disturbing."

The full-length version of Kate Durbin’s E! Entertainment sparkles with the static of TV personalities, the privileged dramas of MTV’s The Hills and Bravo’s Real Housewives, the public tragedies of Amanda Knox and Anna Nicole Smith.Kate Durbin traces the migratory patterns of the flightiest members of our televised demimonde, from the vacant bedrooms of the Playboy Mansion to the modern gothic set of Kim Kardashian’s fairytale wedding, rendering a fabulous, fallen world in a language of diamond-studded lavishness.

A recent transplant from Brooklyn, Melissa Broder now lives in Los Angeles, CA where she continues her work as assistant director of publicity and social media at Penguin Random House. Broder's poems appear or are forthcoming in Guernica, Fence, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, et al. Her previous books are Meat Heart and When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother.

Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles based writer and artist. She is the author of The Ravenous Audience (Akashic), and co-author of Abra, an artist’s book and interactive iPad app created with the help of a NEA grant from Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Durbin is founding editor of the online pop cultural criticism journal, Gaga Stigmata; her tumblr project, Women as Objects, archives the teen girl tumblr aesthetic. 

DANIELLE KRYSA presents CREATIVE BLOCK with STEPHANIE VOVAS and JENNY HART

Creative Block (Chronicle Books)

Creative block presents the most crippling--and unfortunately universal--challenge for artists. No longer! This chunky blockbuster of a book is chock-full of solutions for overcoming all manner of artistic impediment. The blogger behind The Jealous Curator, Danielle Krysa interviews 50 successful international artists working in different mediums and mines their insights on how to conquer self-doubt, stay motivated, and get new ideas to flow. Each artist offers a tried-and-true exercise--from road trips to 30-day challenges to cataloging the medicine cabinet-- that will kick-start the creative process. Abundantly visual with more than 300 images showcasing these artists' resulting work, Creative Block is a vital ally to students, artists, and creative professionals.

For today's panel, Danielle Krysa will be joined by Stephanie Vovas (Photography) and Jenny Hart (Contemporary embroidery/drawing)

Danielle Krysa is the artist/curator behind The Jealous Curator, an art blog that celebrates the work of contemporary artists. Along with writing a daily post on her own site, Danielle has also written guest posts for West Elm, Style by Emily Henderson, Etsy, and many other blogs. She is a regular contributor to SFGirlByBay.com, and has written articles for Frankie Magazine, and Anthology Magazine. All of this writing has recently lead to Danielle becoming a published author - in February of 2014 her first book, Creative Block, was released by Chronicle Books. A second book, focused on contemporary collage, will be published in the fall of 2014. Danielle lives in British Columbia, Canada.
www.thejealouscurator.com

Stephanie Vovas is a fine art and editorial photographer. Her favorite thing to do is photograph people. She has won numerous awards including American Photography 29, Prix de la Photographie Paris, and the International Photography Awards. Her work has been published in Treats! Magazine, Playboy, Rooms and PDN. Her photography is held in many private collections and has been exhibited in several solo and group shows. She lives in Los Angeles with her fiancé Tom, and their dog Toadie.

Jenny Hart founded Sublime Stitching in 2001 as a new model for embroidery design and resources. She first began working in hand embroidery in the summer of 2000, creating portraits of the famous and infamous. Recognizing a need to update and expand embroidery design commercially led to the launch of Sublime Stitching a year later. Since then, Jenny has become an internationally recognized fine artist and designer with works appearing in Vogue, Nylon, Lucky, Rolling Stone, The Face, Juxtapoz, The New York Times Magazine and others. She is an award-winning author of seven titles on embroidery for Chronicle Books, and her drawings and works in embroidery have been exhibited and published internationally. In 2012, Hart's embroidered work "La Llorona" became a part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Jenny lives in Los Angeles, California.

RICHARD BLANCO reads from FOR ALL OF US, ONE TODAY: AN INAUGURAL POET'S JOURNEY

For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey (Beacon Press)

For All of Us, One Today is a fluid, poetic story anchored by Richard Blanco's experiences as the inaugural poet in 2013, and beyond. In this brief and evocative narrative, he shares for the first time his journey as a Latino immigrant and openly gay man discovering a new, emotional understanding of what it means to be an American. He tells the story of the call from the White House committee and all the exhilaration and upheaval of the days that followed. He reveals the inspiration and challenges behind the creation of the inaugural poem, "One Today," as well as two other poems commissioned for the occasion ("Mother Country" and "What We Know of Country"), published here for the first time ever, alongside translations of all three of those poems into his native Spanish. Finally, Richard Blanco reflects on his life-changing role as a public voice since the inauguration, his spiritual embrace of Americans everywhere, and his vision for poetry's new role in our nation's consciousness. Like the inaugural poem itself, "For All of Us, One Today" speaks to what makes this country and its people great, marking a historic moment of hope and promise in our evolving American landscape.