Enjoy recent author events, interviews, and bookseller series. Visit our website to learn more: www.skylightbooks.com
Episodes
Tuesday Jun 02, 2020
Mary Ann Cherry, "MORRIS KIGHT"
Tuesday Jun 02, 2020
Tuesday Jun 02, 2020
No matter how unlikely it is that an effective gay movement could have been born from an upper middle-class, law-abiding, conservative populace, there are those who refuse to identify gay history with a liberal ideology. Obtuse efforts are underway to deny the “hippie” element that makes up a large part of the DNA of gay rights. Activist Morris Kight, a unique force of nature and the grand panjandrum of post-Stonewall gay liberation, represents a large part of that hippie DNA. He was a complicated character with an instinct for social services and a tendency towards self aggrandizement. His ego stood out in a room full of egos. In a time before “gay pride,” Kight quite deliberately and openly shunned the shame that was expected of homosexuals. He created organizations, sat on boards, worked with committees, and lead seminal protests that created a new quality of life for homosexuals and, eventually, the first generation of never-closeted Gays. This book does not provide all the answers on the history of gay liberation; however, it may pose a few new questions.
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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Monday May 25, 2020
LIVE ON ZOOM: Porochista Khakpour, “BROWN ALBUM” w/ Myriam Gurba
Monday May 25, 2020
Monday May 25, 2020
Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian Revolution, giving up their successes only to be greeted by an alienating culture. Growing up as an immigrant in America means that one has to make one's way through a confusing tangle of conflicting cultures and expectations. And Porochista is pulled between the glitzy culture of Tehrangeles, an enclave of wealthy Iranians and Persians in LA, her own family's modest life and culture, and becoming an assimilated American. Porochista rebels--she bleaches her hair and flees to the East Coast, where she finds her community: other people writing and thinking at the fringes. But, 9/11 happens and with horror, Porochista watches from her apartment window as the towers fall. Extremism and fear of the Middle East rises in the aftermath and then again with the election of Donald Trump. Porochista is forced to finally grapple with what it means to be Middle-Eastern and Iranian, an immigrant, and a refugee in our country today.
Brown Album is a stirring collection of essays, at times humorous and at times profound, drawn from more than a decade of Porochista's work and with new material included. Altogether, it reveals the tolls that immigrant life in this country can take on a person and the joys that life can give.
Khakpour is in conversation with Myriam Gurba, a writer, spoken-word artist, and visual artist.
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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Saturday May 16, 2020
Handsell, Ep. 5, "Skylight Update, Ingrid, and Liz"
Saturday May 16, 2020
Saturday May 16, 2020
What a week! With social distancing measures beginning to relax a touch, Mick and Maddie talk about what it's going to be like for the Skylighters as they prep the store for curbside pickup. Mary comes on for an official Skylight Update and briefs us on a couple different ways we can support the store. Ingrid recommends a book, and Maddie comes back for a great conversation with Liz from Oakland's East Bay Booksellers.
Staff Pick:
Ingrid - Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso
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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Monday May 11, 2020
Lane Moore, "HOW TO BE ALONE"
Monday May 11, 2020
Monday May 11, 2020
Lane Moore is a rare performer who is as impressive onstage—whether hosting her iconic show Tinder Live or being the enigmatic front woman of It Was Romance—as she is on the page, as both a former writer for The Onion and an award-winning sex and relationships editor for Cosmopolitan. But her story has had its obstacles, including being her own parent, living in her car as a teenager, and moving to New York City to pursue her dreams. Through it all, she looked to movies, TV, and music as the family and support systems she never had.
From spending the holidays alone to having better “stranger luck” than with those closest to her to feeling like the last hopeless romantic on earth, Lane reveals her powerful and entertaining journey in all its candor, anxiety, and ultimate acceptance—with humor always her bolstering force and greatest gift.
How to Be Alone is a must-read for anyone whose childhood still feels unresolved, who spends more time pretending to have friends online than feeling close to anyone in real life, who tries to have genuine, deep conversations in a roomful of people who would rather you not. Above all, it’s a book for anyone who desperately wants to feel less alone and a little more connected through reading her words.
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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
MariNaomi, "DISTANT STARS" w/ Myriam Gurba
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
In the final volume of the Life on Earth trilogy, celebrated cartoonist MariNaomi concludes her tale of growing up, falling in and out of love, and possible alien interventions. Shy, self-deprecating Paula Navarro is coming into her own—and it's making her new girlfriend, Johanna, a little nervous. Paula's former friend Emily Baker is learning to look inward. Brett Hathaway, Emily and Paula's mutual ex-hook-up, is torn about reconnecting with his estranged dad. And Nigel Jones is smitten with his tutor, Claudia—whose disappearance and reappearance remains a mystery to everyone around her. As Claudia and her guardians put the final plan in motion, they'll reveal the truth that links everyone's fate.
MariNaomi is in conversation with Myriam Gurba, a writer, a spoken-word artist, and a visual artist.
Wednesday Apr 08, 2020
Bernice Steinhardt, "MEMORIES OF SURVIVAL"
Wednesday Apr 08, 2020
Wednesday Apr 08, 2020
This stunning collection of fabric and embroidered panels depicts Esther Nisenthal Krinitz’s remarkable journey of living through the Holocaust in Poland. At the age of fifteen, she and her thirteen-year-old sister separated from their family and went into hiding, assuming the identities of Catholic farmgirls. Though untrained as an artist but a skilled seamstress, Esther picked up needle and thread forty years later to retell her childhood memories. At once naïve and infinitely complex, these images reveal both the extreme horrors of war, and the cherished family memories shared before the war began. Told in Esther’s own words, with commentary written by her daughter, Bernice Steinhardt, this is an unforgettable look back to a time and events that must never be forgotten.
Thursday Apr 02, 2020
Erin Khar, "STRUNG OUT" w/ Jen Pastiloff
Thursday Apr 02, 2020
Thursday Apr 02, 2020
Growing up in Los Angeles as the only child of divorced parents, Erin Khar, often consumed with loneliness, looked for an escape from the pervasive belief that she wasn't enough—not enough to keep her parents together or her mother from depression—and yet, she never shared with anyone this private sadness. Instead, she hid behind the façade of a perfect childhood filled with good grades, a popular group of friends, and horseback riding. By the time she was thirteen, the act becoming too difficult to keep up, and she started experimenting with her grandmother's expired valium, quickly followed by heroin. The drug allowed her to feel the calm she was missing from her life and suppress all the heavy feelings she couldn't understand. Heroin, while keeping her from other forms of self-harm, became the addiction that destroyed her.
Khar is in conversation with Jen Pastiloff, who travels the world with her unique workshop On Being Human, a hybrid of yoga-related movement, writing, sharing aloud, letting the snot fly, and the occasional dance party.
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
Jenn Shapland, "MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CARSON MCCULLERS" w/
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
Tuesday Mar 24, 2020
While working as an intern in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center, Jenn Shapland encounters the love letters of Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie—letters that are tender, intimate, and unabashed in their feelings. Shapland recognizes herself in the letters’ language—but does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her.
And so, Shapland is compelled to undertake a recovery of the full narrative and language of McCullers’s life: she wades through the therapy transcripts; she stays at McCullers’s childhood home, where she lounges in her bathtub and eats delivery pizza; she relives McCullers’s days at her beloved Yaddo. As Shapland reckons with the expanding and collapsing distance between her and McCullers, she sees how McCullers’s story has become a way to articulate something about herself. The results reveal something entirely new not only about this one remarkable, walleyed life, but about the way we tell queer love stories.
In My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of America’s most beloved writers, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.
Shapland is in conversation with Andy Campbell, PhD, an art historian, critic, and curator.
Thursday Mar 19, 2020
Sands Hall, "RELCAIMING MY DECADE LOST IN SCIENTOLOGY" w/ Maggie Rowe
Thursday Mar 19, 2020
Thursday Mar 19, 2020
In the secluded canyons of Hollywood, Sands Hall—a young woman from a literary family striving to forge her own way as an artist—finds herself increasingly drawn toward the certainty that Scientology appears to offer. Her time in the Church, the 1980s, includes the secretive illness and death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and the ascension of David Miscavige. In Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology, Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion—what she found intriguing and useful—and how she came to confront its darker sides and escape.
Hall is in conversation with Maggie Rowe, who has performed in and produced the Comedy Central stage show sitnspin, Los Angeles’s longest running spoken-word show, having taken the reins from creator Jill Soloway in 2002.
Thursday Nov 28, 2019
Alvin Orloff, "DISASTERAMA!" w/ Trebor Healy
Thursday Nov 28, 2019
Thursday Nov 28, 2019
In Disasterama!, Alvin Orloff recalls the delirious adventures of his youth—from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New York—where insane nights, deep friendships with the creatives of the underground, and thrilling bi-coastal living led to a free-spirited life of art, manic performance, high camp antics, and exotic sexual encounters. Orloff looks past the politics of AIDS to the people on the ground, friends of his who did not survive AIDS’ wrath—the boys in black leather jackets and cackling queens in tacky frocks—remembering them not as victims, but as people who loved life, loved fun, and who were a part of the insane jigsaw of his community. Includes more than 60 rare photos of the underground counterculture, club flyers, drag queens, and queer icons of era.
Orloff is in conversation with Trebor Healey, author of three novels, A Horse Named Sorrow, Faun and Through It Came Bright Colors
Thursday Nov 07, 2019
Monique Truong, "THE SWEETEST FRUITS" w/ Diep Tran
Thursday Nov 07, 2019
Thursday Nov 07, 2019
The Sweetest Fruits introduces readers to a trio of tenacious, brave, and inspiring women who have largely been left out of the historical record—until now. In her beautifully crafted and captivating work, Monique Truong retells the remarkable life story of 19th century writer, wanderer, and epicurean Lafcadio Hearn through the eyes of those who cared for him and made his work possible.
Truong is in conversation with Diep Tran, chef and former owner of Good Girl Dinette in Los Angeles.
Wednesday Nov 06, 2019
Amanda Yates Garcia, "INITIATED" w/ Pam Grossman
Wednesday Nov 06, 2019
Wednesday Nov 06, 2019
An initiation signals a beginning: a door opens and you step through. Traditional Wiccan initiates are usually brought into the craft through a ceremony with a High Priestess. But even though Amanda Yates Garcia's mother, a practicing witch herself, initiated her into the earth-centered practice of witchcraft when she was 13 years old, Amanda's real life as a witch only began when she underwent a series of spontaneous initiations of her own.
Descending into the underworlds of poverty, sex work, and misogyny, Initiated describes Amanda's journey to return to her body, harness her power, and create the magical world she longed for through witchcraft. Hailed by crows, seduced by magicians, and haunted by ancestors broken beneath the wheels of patriarchy, Amanda's quest for self-discovery and empowerment is a deep exploration of a modern witch's trials - healing ancient wounds, chafing against cultural expectations, creating intimacy - all while on a mission to re-enchant the world. Peppered with mythology, tales of the goddesses and magical women throughout history, Initiated stands squarely at the intersection of witchcraft and feminism. With generosity and heart, this book speaks to the question: is it possible to live a life of beauty and integrity in a world that feels like it's dying?
Garcia is in conversation with Pam Grossman, creator and host of The Witch Wave podcast and the author of Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power.
Monday Nov 04, 2019
Cyrus Grace Dunham, "A YEAR WITHOUT A NAME"
Monday Nov 04, 2019
Monday Nov 04, 2019
For as long as they can remember, Cyrus Grace Dunham felt like a visitor in their own body. Their life was a series of imitations--lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman--until their profound sense of alienation became intolerable. Beginning as Grace and ending as Cyrus, Dunham brings us inside the chrysalis of gender transition, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about who we are and how we are constituted. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely theirs, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved meditation on queerness, family, and desire.
Friday Nov 01, 2019
Friday Nov 01, 2019
Eve Babitz knew everyone, tried everything (at least once), and was never shy about sharing her thoughts on any subject, be it sex, weight loss, drug use, or her ambivalence toward New York City. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Babitz wrote on a wild variety of topics for some of the biggest publications around, from Esquire to Vogue to The New York Times Book Review. I Used to Be Charming brings together this nonfiction work. All previously uncollected, these pieces range from sharp personal essays on body image and the male gaze to playful meditations on everything from ballroom dancing to kissing to perfume. There are breathtaking celebrity profiles, too. In one, Nicolas Cage takes her for a ride in his '67 Stingray and in another she dishes about dragging Jim Morrison to bed before the Doors had even settled on a band name ("Jim was embarrassing because he wasn't cool, but I still loved him," she writes). In another essay, the author ponders her earliest days in the spotlight, posing nude with Marcel Duchamp, and in another, the never-before-published title essay, she writes about the tragic accident that compelled her to leave that spotlight behind forever.
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
Jennifer Croft, "HOMESICK" w/ Marisa Silver
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
Tuesday Oct 01, 2019
Sisters Amy and Zoe grow up in Oklahoma where they are homeschooled for an unexpected reason: Zoe suffers from debilitating and mysterious seizures, spending her childhood in hospitals as she undergoes surgeries. Meanwhile, Amy flourishes intellectually, showing an innate ability to glean a world beyond the troubles in her home life, exploring that world through languages first. Amy’s first love appears in the form of her Russian tutor Sasha, but when she enters university at the age of 15 her life changes drastically and with tragic results.
Jennifer Croft complements her stunning prose with beautiful color photography to tell her coming of age story. Homesick is about learning to love language in its many forms, healing through words and the promises and perils of empathy and sisterhood.