Skylight Books Podcast Series

LAURENCE RICKELS DISCUSSES HIS NEW BOOK THE PSYCHO RECORDS

The Psycho Records (Wallflower Press)

Skylight Books and Villa Aurora are proud to present Laurence A. Rickels, reading from his newest book The Psycho Records.

The Psycho Records follows the influence of the primal shower scene within subsequent slasher and splatter films. American soldiers returning from World War II were called “psychos” if they exhibited mental illness. Robert Bloch and Alfred Hitchcock turned the term into a catch-all phrase for a range of psychotic and psychopathic symptoms or dispositions. They transferred a war disorder to the American heartland. Drawing on his experience with German film, Hitchcock packed inside his shower stall the essence of schauer, the German cognate meaning “horror.” Later serial horror film production has post-traumatically flashed back to Hitchcock’s shower scene. In the end, though, this book argues the effect is therapeutically finite. This extensive case study summons the genealogical readings of philosopher and psychoanalyst Laurence Rickels. The book opens not with another reading of Hitchcock’s 1960 film but with an evaluation of various updates to vampirism over the years. It concludes with a close look at the rise of demonic and infernal tendencies in horror movies since the 1990s and the problem of the psycho as our most uncanny double in close quarters.

Laurence A. Rickels is professor in art and theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe. He is the author of Aberrations of Mourning (1988), The Case of California (2001), Nazi Psychoanalysis (2002), The Vampire Lectures (1999), The Devil Notebooks (2008), Ulrike Ottinger: The Autobiography of Art Cinema (2008), I Think I Am: Philip K. Dick (2010), and Germany: A Science Fiction (2015).

JESS ROTTER LAUNCHES HER NEW BOOK I'M BORED

I'm Bored (Hat & Beard Press)

Jess Rotter: I'm Bored is a Gary-Larson-meets-The Muppets variety show, a terrific trip composed of drawings filled with recurring characters--ranging from walruses to wizards to life warriors, who are all, like the rest of us, seeking their daily salvation. A wizard paddles on a lonely sea, his flag proclaiming "I'm trying." An ostrich hitchhikes in the desert, holding up a sign with her destination--"Bliss." A walrus wearing an AC/DC shirt looks mellowly at the viewer underneath the refrain "I'm bored."

Part art book, part comic book compilation, and partly a skeptical but loving take on those Successories motivational posters for the office, this book (designed by the artist and with a foreword by Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte) features the whimsical, wonderfully whacked-out work of artist and illustrator Jess Rotter.

Informed by a deep knowledge and love for the world of 1970s rock 'n' roll, the work of Jess Rotter was inspired by her father's vinyl covers and comic books growing up. "Part Peter Max, part Fritz the cat" (as Rotter described an early aesthetic influence), Rotter's illustrations have appeared on everything from public murals to album covers (to name a few: Best Coast, Linda Perhacs, Wooden Shjips, Country Funk Volumes I & II and This Record Belongs To), and on projects for clients including MTV, Converse, Target, Red Bull, Indiewire and Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter. Her T-shirt label, Rotter and Friends (launched in 2006) resulted in collaborative capsule collections for The Gap and Urban Outfitters, and official band merchandising for acts such as the Grateful Dead, Sly Stone, Rodriguez, Big Star, Kurt Vile and more.

JOHN DARNIELLE READS FROM HIS NEW NOVEL UNIVERSAL HARVESTER

Universal Harvester (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa a small town in the center of the state, the first a in Nevada pronounced ay. This is the late 1990s, and while the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It s good enough for Jeremy: It s a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck.

But when a local schoolteacher comes in to return her copy of "Targets" an old movie, starring Boris Karloff, one Jeremy himself had ordered for the store, she has an odd complaint: There's something on it, she says, but doesn t elaborate. Two days later, a different customer returns "She's All That," a new release, and complains that there s something wrong with it: There's another movie on this tape.

Jeremy doesn't want to be curious. But he takes a look and, indeed, in the middle of the movie the screen blinks dark for a moment and "She's All That" is replaced by a black-and-white scene, shot in a barn, with only the faint sounds of someone breathing. Four minutes later, "She's All That" is back. But there is something profoundly unsettling about that scene; Jeremy's compelled to watch it three or four times. The scenes recorded onto "Targets" are similar, undoubtedly created by the same hand. Creepy. And the barn looks much like a barn just outside of town.

There will be no ignoring the disturbing scenes on the videos. And all of a sudden, what had once been the placid, regular old Iowa fields and farmhouses now feels haunted and threatening, imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding. For Jeremy, and all those around him, life will never be the same.

John Darnielle’s first novel, Wolf in White Van, was a New York Times bestseller, a National Book Award nominee, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction, and was widely hailed as one of the best novels of the year. He is the writer, composer, guitarist, and vocalist for the band the Mountain Goats. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and sons.

STEVE ERICKSON READS FROM HIS NEW NOVEL SHADOWBAHN

Shadowbahn (Blue Rider Press)

In Granta Jonathan Lethem called Steve Erickson’s forthcoming novel Shadowbahn "Jaw-dropping … Erickson weaves a playlist for the dying American century with his usual lucid-dreaming prose. I've read every novel he's ever written and I'll still never know how he does it: A tour-de-forcer's tour de force." A prescient book about a divided USA, Shadowbahn is a winding and reckless ride through intersections of danger, destiny, and the conjoined halves of a ruptured nation.

The sleep of reason produces monsters, said Goya—including monsters of architecture and history that meet, most uneasily, in the pages of Erickson's latest. It's a startling scenario, a kind of deus ex machina at the beginning instead of the end of a story: What would happen if, two decades after their collapse, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were to loom up in the South Dakota Badlands? Well, it being America, they turn into a tourist attraction made all the more alluring by the fact that there's a presence up on the top floors of the southern building—a presence that just happens to be the revenant brother of another American icon. It would be a spoiler to get too much into specifics of that fellow's identity and why on earth he happens to be inhabiting a building he never lived to see, but suffice it to say that with this book, perhaps his oddest yet, Erickson stakes a claim to be one of the most centrifugal writers at work today. Even then, he works his magic mostly by conjuring sci-fi-ish plotlines and then having characters move across them in more or less realistic ways: youngsters on their way to visit family on the coast are pulled down a dusty rabbit hole into a place that requires conversations on Adlai Stevenson, Elvis, the old folk song "Shenandoah," Dealey Plaza, Churchill, Wounded Knee, RFK ("Was his big brother being metaphorical now? Ironic? Literary?"), and the whole swirl, for better and worse, of American history. Whatever is normal is upended, but it's all oddly believable. Throughout, Erickson, a master of the mot juste, writes with archly elegant lyricism: "He heads toward a west that is the dreamer's true north, where the desert comes looking for us and curls at the door, a wild animal made of our ashes…." Think Philip K. Dick on smoother acid and with a more up-to-date soundtrack, and you've got something of this eminently strange, thoroughly excellent book.

Praise for Shadowbahn

“A great, great, great, great novel. I could say more -- about its big-world heartedness and old-world shadowness, about twins and towers, brothers and sisters, road trips and all the borders we design and transgress, and of course Erickson’s beautiful heart-bit music -- but it would still add up to the same thing: great.  Sung, of course.”–Mark Z. Danielewski, author of The Familiar

“Steve Erickson is one of America’s greatest living novelists.  He is always inventive, always engaging, always surprising. In Shadowbahn, Erickson combines the social novel, the science fiction novel, the pop music essay, the comedic set piece, and the family novel into a wild, idiosyncratic tour de force.”–Dana Spiotta

“Not sure whether Steve Erickson's off-kilter whoppers have gotten more plausible or the country gets more and more unhinged.  He and his book's bewitching nouns, from the Badlands to "La Bamba," are good company either way.”–Sarah Vowell

“Shadowbahn maps out an American counter-history where events that have touched all Americans, and people from all over the world, are given new shape and speak in new voices.  As both a revisioning of a national story and a family drama, the book has a simultaneous weight and lightness, an older person’s high seriousness and the ability of younger people to see right through it.”--Greil Marcus

Steve Erickson is the author of nine other novels, including Zeroville, which James Franco has adapted for film, Our Ecstatic Days, and These Dreams of You and two nonfiction books that have been published in ten languages. His work has appeared in numerous periodicals, such as Esquire, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, American Prospect, and Los Angeles, for which he writes regularly about film, music, and television. Erickson is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. Currently he teaches at the University of California, Riverside.

WHAT BOOKS PRESENTS CAROLIE PARKER, SARAH MACLAY, AND HOLADAY MASON

What Books Press is proud to present two new books of LA poetry-- Mirage Industry, by Carolie Parker and The " She" Series: A Venice Correspondence, which is a braided collaboration of poems by Sarah Maclay and Holaday Mason. 

Mirage Industry

Mirage Industry is a collection of poems suggested by the social landscape of Los Angeles. A fairly reckless experiment in rearranging the natural world to serve human needs, the city borrows from a broad inventory of cultural models, adopted with a heavy dose of fantasy and inaccuracy. Whether breathing fire or air, the poems issue from this freewheeling approach to building place, combining random methods of composition with more formal structures. Mirage Industry draws on the author’s practice in the visual arts, her background in comparative literature and her experiences teaching humanities and art history.

Carolie Parker has a background in visual arts and foreign languages. She was recently a MacDowell Fellow in poetry and a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. Her work has come out in The Denver Quarterly, Now Culture, River Styx and Trickhouse. She teaches humanities and art history at LA Trade Tech College in Central Los Angeles.

The "She" Series: A Venice Correspondence

This collaboration, The “ She” Series: A Venice Correspondence, is a unique exploration of the mysterious feminine aspects of human experience which “unfolds between the poetic voices of Holaday Mason and Sarah Maclay, revealing a multifaceted universe—almost painfully private—where “She” appears as a dream-like composite of sexuality, longing, awareness and courage” (Mariano Zaro).

Sarah Maclay is the author of Music for the Black Room (2011), The White Bride (2008), Whore (2004), all from U of Tampa Press. A 2016 COLA Fellow and 2015 Yaddo resident, she’s also received a Pushcart Special Mention and the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. Her poems and criticism appear in APR, The Writer’s Chronicle, FIELD, The Best American Erotic Poetry: From 1800 to the Present, Ploughshares, Poetry International, where she’s long served as Book Review Editor, and many other spots. A native of Montana, graduate of Oberlin and VCFA, she lives in Venice, California, teaches poetry and creative writing at LMU, and conducts Mini-Master Classes at Beyond Baroque.

Holaday Mason is the author of The Red Bowl: A Fable in Poems, (Red Hen Press) 2016, The “She” Series: A Venice Correspondence (collaboration with Sarah Maclay, What Books Press, fall 016), Towards the Forest, 2007, Dissolve, 2011 (New River Press, University of Minnesota) & two chapbooks. “The Weaver’s Body”, was finalist with honorable mention for 014 Dorset Prize & her chapbook “Transparency” was finalist for the Snowbound 2015. Pushcart nominee, widely published, co- editor of Echo 68, poetry editor of Mentalshoes.com, she is also a fine art photographer & a psychotherapist since 1996. 

EDEN SHER DISCUSSES HER NEW BOOK THE EMOTIONARY: A DICTIONARY OF WORDS THAT DON'T EXIST FOR FEELINGS THAT DO, WITH JULIA WERTZ

The Emotionary: A Dictionary of Words That Don't Exist for Feelings That Do (Razorbill)

Feeling guilty about wanting to just stay home and see no one? Guiltroversion. Are you ever introduced to someone, and immediately forget their name, seconds after they’ve told you? Namenesia.

If you have ever struggled for the perfect word to describe a feeling or situation you were experiencing, The Emotionary: A Dictionary of Words That Don’t Exist for Feelings That Do by Eden Sher and illustrated by Julia Wertz, is your hilarious guide to those feelings.

All of her life, Eden Sher, has suffered from dyscommunicatia (n. the inability to articulate a feeling though words). She decided last year that whenever she had an emotion for which she had no word, she would make one up. The result of this is The Emotionary, which lives at the intersection of incredibly funny and very useful. Illustrated by acclaimed graphic novelist Julia Wertz, The Emotionary is chock full of words you always wanted/never knew you needed often accompanied by illustrations of hilarious and all-too- familiar situations.

From irredependent (adj. unable to ask for help under any circumstances) to fauxbration (n. the phenomenon of feeling your phone vibrate, often out of desperate expectation, when in fact no one is trying to contact you and you will probably die alone), The Emotionary will help you put all your complicated feelings into words, so you can recognize them for what they are.

Eden Sher is an actress best known for her role as Sue Heck on the nationally syndicated TV series The Middle. The Middle is the lead-in to Modern Family and has an average of 7.5 million viewers tuning in for the past 6 years. Eden has been nominated for a Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series four times, winning in 2013. She is also the voice of Star on the animated series, Star vs. The Forces of Evil. The Emotionary is her first book.

Julia Wertz has published five graphic novels, including Drinking at the Movies and The Infinite Wait, and does monthly history comics for the New Yorker and Harper's Magazine.

LIDIJA DIMKOVSKA READS FROM HER NOVEL A SPARE LIFE

A Spare Life (Two Lines Press)

It is 1984, and 12-year- old twins Zlata and Srebra live in communist Yugoslavia. In many ways their lives are like that of young girls anywhere, except for one immense difference: Zlata’s and Srebra’s bodies are conjoined at their heads.

A Spare Life tells the story of their emergence from girls to young adults, from their desperately poor, provincial childhoods to their determination to become successful, independent women. After years of discovery and friendship, their lives are thrown into crisis when an incident threatens to destroy their bond as sisters. They fly to London, determined to be surgically separated—but will this dangerous procedure free them, or only more tightly ensnare them?

In A Spare Life master poet and award-winning novelist Lidija Dimkovska lovingly tells the lives of two astonishing girls caught up in Eastern Europe’s transition from communism to democracy. A saga about families, sisterhood, and being outcasts, A Spare Life reveals an existence where even the simplest of actions is unlike any we’ve ever experienced.

Praise for A Spare Life

“A Spare Life uses the boldest of metaphors – the life of conjoined twins – to embody the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. This strange and wonderful novel brings to mind Elena Ferrante and Magda Szabó.”— Katie Kitamura, author of The Longshot and A Separation

“Dimkovska has an eye for detail befitting of a poet and the stark, unrelenting prose of a master storyteller. A Spare Life is a weird and wonderful book.”— Sara Nović, author of Girl at War, finalist for the LA Times Book Prize

Lidija Dimkovska is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2013 European Union Prize for Literature for A Spare Life. She is also the author of the poetry collection pH Neutral History (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), which was a finalist for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award, and Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2006). She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Christina E. Kramer is a professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto. She is the author of numerous books on the Macedonian language and the Balkans and is the translator of Freud's Sister, The Time of the Goats, and My Father';s Books. She lives in Toronto.

SHOCK AND AWE: GLAM ROCK AND ITS LEGACY, FROM THE SEVENTIES TO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, WITH DEAN WAREHAM

Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century (Dey Street Books)

Following the musical innovations and cultural upheavals of the 1960s, rock music in the 1970s was in the doldrums: airwaves were dominated by mellow country-rock, earnest singer-songwriters, earth-toned hippie jam bands, and samey-sounding boogie outfits. Then flaring up against the drab denim-clad backdrop, there came glam: the first true teenage rampage of the new decade, a movement spearheaded by artists like David Bowie, Alice Cooper, T. Rex and Roxy Music, that reveled in artifice and spectacle.

For the first time, Shock and Awe offers an introduction to a period packed with amazing music and magnetic characters, but also an accessible and entertaining cultural history situating glam rock in its social and political context. Breaking with the long-haired liberation generation, seventies glam celebrated illusion and artifice over truth and sincerity; it shunned the natural, organic, and wholesome in favor of the constructed and artificial. With intelligent, thoughtful analysis and commentary, Simon Reynolds pursues fresh angles on the central figures of glam—who inspired new heights of stage persona and fandom, even inspiring concert audiences to dress like the star performer—as well as other major artists who caught the theatricality of 70s glimmer. 

Shock and Awe focuses on the classic glam rock period, 1971-1975, but also the wider repercussions: the musical leaps, sensation and glamour as social movement, and the personality cult of pop. Exploring the genre’s major themesfame, androgyny, decadence, science fiction—Simon Reynolds tracks glam’s legacy as it unfolded across subsequent decades, ultimately showing how it prophesied 21st-century pop culture, with its obsessions with celebrity, extreme fashion statements, and theatrical excess.
 
Simon Reynolds started his journalistic career in 1986 as a staff writer for the British weekly music paper Melody Maker. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Spin, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Artforum, The Wire, The Guardian, Slate, Frieze and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of four books and five collections of essays and interviews. His books have been translated into ten languages. Born in London, a resident of New York for most of the 90s and 2000s, he now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children. 

Dean Wareham is a musician and writer. He was a founding member of indie rock bands Galaxie 500 and Luna, and his memoir Black Postcards was published by Penguin Press. 

MIKE MASSIMINO DISCUSSES HIS BOOK SPACEMAN

Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe (Crown Archetype)

Mike Massimino’s childhood fascination with space was born the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, but his journey to actually becoming an astronaut was as unlikely as it is compelling. He grew up in a blue-collar Long Island town where going to college was a big deal; going to space was unthinkable. He was six-foot- three, with poor eyesight and a fear of heights, and (he’ll be the first to tell you) never the best athlete or smartest kid in the class. Even after he made it through Columbia and MIT, he was rejected three times by NASA before he finally made the cut. With his new book, Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe, Massimino has written an inspiring ode to following your dreams and finding your place in this world—or out of it.

Massimino is a celebrity astronaut, the closest thing his generation has to an Armstrong or a John Glenn. He has 1.3 million Twitter followers, and has appeared on The Big Bang Theory, The Late Show with David Letterman, and more. In Spaceman, he puts the reader in the flightsuit, catapults them into space, and shows them the ins and outs of life in microgravity. With humor, humility, and intelligence, Massimino narrates the arduous process of becoming an astronaut – from training on T-38 jets to preparing, physically and mentally, for the journey to the cosmos. He recounts the surreal beauty of his first spacewalk with awe and childlike wonder, and candidly describes the fascinating complexity (and paralyzing anxiety) of making an emergency repair to the Hubble Space Telescope. How do you remove one-hundred- and-eleven very tiny screws from a machine that was never designed to be fixed, in space, all while worrying if you’re about to slip up and inadvertently ruin humankind’s chance discover life on other planets?

Massimino praises the innovation and camaraderie of the space program, revealing the affable nature that helped get him picked for missions in the first place (“Very few jerks have ever been to space,” he jokes). He writes movingly about the tragedy of losing friends in the Columbia shuttle accident, and about his enduring love for the Hubble, which he and his fellow astronauts would be tasked with saving on his final mission. His voice is magnetic and singular, an ordinary guy who made it into one of the most elite clubs in the world – those who have left the planet and lived to tell about it. Spaceman invites us into a rare, wonderful world where the nerdiest science meets the most thrilling adventure, and pulls back the curtain on just what having “the right stuff” really means.

Praise for Spaceman

“Every generation of astronauts needs a storyteller—a person with wit, humor, and passion who has lived our collective dreams of space exploration and returned to tell us all about it. Mike Massimino is that person. He's that Astronaut. And this is his story.”—Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Mike Massimino writes about space with an astronaut’s eye and an engineer's precision. You'll be impressed with his journey and his perspective on where a well-developed space program can take us in the future.”—Senator John Glenn

“Inspired by moonwalkers, Mike grew up, became an astronaut, and fixed the Hubble Space Telescope, all while remaining some kinda’ humble. You can’t help but follow him from Long Island to the bottom of the spacewalk practice pool, then 350 miles up and back. He’s a spaceman through and through; he tells how hard work can take you out of this world.”—Bill Nye, the Science Guy, CEO of the Planetary Society

“Like Mike Massimino, I was a kid in the 1960s who dreamed of being an astronaut. But I get seasick in a row boat, so turned to math. Massimino made it to space.  And his incredible journeys, filled with grit, courage, suspense and thrills, are told with such candor and delight, that for a brief moment I felt I’d finally made it to space too. Read this book and be inspired to reach for the impossible.”—Brian Greene, Columbia University, author of The Fabric of the Cosmos

“A smooth combination of personal history and immersive storytelling…Massimino makes having "the right stuff" both breathtaking and formidable. A vivid, engrossing, and enthusiastically written memoir of aeronautic ambition.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

“Readers will be delighted and moved by retired astronaut Massimino’s almost childlike wonder and enthusiasm, coupled with his humility, as he recounts the magnificence of space, the camaraderie of NASA in good times and bad, and a genuine gratitude for his good fortune…This is an engaging and uplifting memoir that’s sure to give readers a deeper appreciation for the U.S. space program and inspire some future astronauts.”—Publishers Weekly

Mike Massimino served as an astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1996 to 2014. He is the veteran of two NASA space flights, STS-109 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in March 2002 and STS-125 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in May 2009. A graduate of Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massimino currently lives in New York City.

VANESSA HUA READS FROM HER DEBUT COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES DECEIT AND OTHER POSSIBILITIES, WITH NAOMI HIRAHARA

Deceit and Other Possibilities (Willow Books)

In this powerful debut collection, Vanessa Hua gives voice to immigrant families navigating a new America. Tied to their ancestral and adopted homelands in ways unimaginable in generations past, these memorable characters straddle both worlds but belong to none.

From a Hong Kong movie idol fleeing a sex scandal, to an obedient daughter turned Stanford imposter, to a Chinatown elder summoned to his village, to a Korean-American pastor with a secret agenda, the characters in these ten stories vividly illustrate the conflict between self and society, tradition and change. In “What We Have is What We Need,” winner of The Atlantic student fiction prize, a boy from Mexico reunites with his parents in San Francisco. When he suspects his mother has found love elsewhere, he fights to keep his family together.

With insight and wit, she writes about what wounds us and what we must survive. Her searing stories explore the clash of cultures and the complex, always shifting allegiances that we carry in ourselves, our family, and our community. Deceit and Other Possibilities marks the emergence of a remarkable new writer.

Praise for Deceit and Other Possibilities

"Vanessa Hua inhabits in graceful and heartbreaking detail the people of her stories: strivers and betrayers, lovers and the landless, all of them on their way to transcendence in her hands. – Susan Straight, author of Between Heaven and Here and Highwire Moon   

"Fast-paced, dazzling, smart, and fun, Vanessa Hua's debut collection illustrates the insanities and heartbreaks on both sides of the Pacific." – Gary Shteyngart, author of  Little Failure and  Super Sad True Love Story

"Deceit and Other Possibilities gives us characters whose lives are constrained and yet also enriched by different borders, cultures, and traditions. A bracing and beautiful debut, full of fire and light."–Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account

"Complicated, cosmopolitan and utterly contemporary, Deceit and Other Possibilities is a richly enjoyable collection.  Hua is expert at creating both empathy and suspense whether it's in the emptiness of a national park or the crowded space of an international flight.  These stories will jump right off the page into the reader's imagination."–Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

For nearly two decades, Vanessa Hua has covered Asia and the diaspora in journalism and in fiction, writing about the ways immigrants bring their traditions, their histories, and their ambitions to America. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award for Fiction, and is a past Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing at San Jose State University. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, FRONTLINE/World, Washington Post, Guernica, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. A former staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, she has filed stories from China, South Korea, Panama, Burma and Ecuador. She is a graduate of Stanford University and UC Riverside's MFA program. She lives in the Bay Area with her family.

Naomi Hirahara is an award-winning novelist and nonfiction writer. Her Mas Arai mystery series, which features a Southern California-based gardener and Hiroshima survivor, has been published in Japanese, Korean and French. The sixth in the series, Sayonara Slam, was released in May of this year. Her short stories have been included in Los Angeles Noir, Asian Pulp and Hanzai Japan. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo, she also is involved in the preservation of Japanese American and regional history in the form of books and exhibitions.

 

DIANA WAGMAN READS FROM HER NOVEL EXTRAORDINARY OCTOBER AND FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK READS FROM HER NOVEL THE ELEMENTALS

With the launch of her first young adult novel, Diana Wagman along with Francesca Lia Block will discuss crossover between the YA genre and adult fiction.

Extraordinary October (Ig Publishing)

October is an ordinary girl. From her plain looks to her average grades, there seems to be nothing special about her. Then, three days before her eighteenth birthday, she develops a strange itch that won t go away, and her life is turned upside down. Suddenly, she can hear dogs talk, make crows fly, and two new and very handsome boys at school are vying for her affections. After she starts transplanting herself through solid rock, October learns that she is not ordinary at all, but the daughter of a troll princess and a fairy prince, and a pawn in a deadly war between the trolls and the fairies. Now October will have to use all of her growing powers to save her family, and stop a mysterious evil that threatens to destroy the fairy world. 

In the fantastical vein of authors such as Julie Kagawa and Holly Black, Extraordinary October takes us on a magical journey from the streets of Los Angeles to the beautiful and mythical underground fairy kingdom. 

Praise for Extraordinary October

"In an auspicious debut for teens, adult author Wagman proves particularly adept at mixing genres and maintains a terrific balance between fantastical (and occasional macabre) happenings and genuine teen perceptions."--Kirkus Review

Extraordinary October is author Diana Wagman’s first novel for Young Adults. She has written five novels for adults, most recently Life #6.  Her stories and essays have been published in The LA Times, Conjunctions, The Colorado Review and elsewhere and included in the anthologies LA Noir and MFA vs. NYC.  

The Elementals (Griffin)

From a star YA writer Francesca Lia Block, author of the Weetzie Bat books, comes an adult novel about a student, haunted by the disappearance of a friend, who must face the truth

The Elementals is on one level a contemporary story about a young woman, Ariel Silverman, facing the challenges of her first years away at college in Berkeley, California, while her mother battles cancer at home in Los Angeles. But the book takes on deeper, stranger meanings when we contend with Ariel's obsession with the disappearance of her best friend, Jeni, who vanished without a trace a few years before. Her emptiness of spirit seems finally to find some healing with three mysterious, beautiful and seductive young people living in a strange old house in the Berkeley hills. But at what price? 

Praise for The Elementals

“The uniqueness of Ariel as a character as well as the mystery that unravels during the course of the book will make [The Elementals] appealing to both teen and adult readers… An engaging portrait.” – BUST Magazine  

"The late great Diana Wynne Jones would approve of Lia Block's The Elementals, a hypnotic account of a girl's first years in college following the disappearance of her best friend on a school trip and the diagnosis of her mother's cancer. As a portrait of a troubled and impressionable girl, Ariel Silverman shimmers in the very air between page and eyelashes. Tam Lin meets the tabloids." —Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Out of Oz

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly. She was named Writer-in-Residence at Pasadena City College in 2014. Her work has been translated into Italian, French, German Japanese, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Portuguese. Francesca has also published stories, poems, essays and interviews in The Los Angeles Times, The L.A. Review of Books, Spin, Nylon, Black Clock and Rattle among others. In addition to writing, she teaches fiction workshops at UCLA Extension, Antioch University,  and privately in Los Angeles where she was born, raised and currently still lives.

JON KLASSEN LAUNCHES HIS NEW CHILDREN'S BOOK WE FOUND A HAT

We Found a Hat (Candlewick Press)

Hold on to your hats for the conclusion of the celebrated hat trilogy by Caldecott Medalist Jon Klassen.

Two turtles have found a hat. The hat looks good on both of them. But there are two turtles, and there is only one hat. . . . Evoking hilarity and sympathy, the shifting yes tell the tale in this brilliantly paced story in three parts, highlighting Jon Klassen’s visual comedy and deceptive simplicity.

The delicious buildup takes an unexpected turn that is sure to please loyal fans and newcomers alike.

Praise for We Found A Hat

*“In this concluding volume of a thematic trilogy, Klassen employs all his trademark dry wit and deadpan humor to tell the story of a hat-related caper. . . . The conclusion might surprise even those familiar with Klassen’s twist endings, and the growing tensions, simple narrative, and  intriguing details will endear this to many.” – Booklist (starred review)
 
*“Readers who think they know what's coming will be wrong... Instead, Klassen considers the instant at which a decision to act can break either way, depending on who's tempted and whether anyone else is watching. In contrast to the first two books, which relied on a certain conspiratorial menace, this one ends with a moment of grace and a sky full of stars. All three stories are about justice. It's just that justice doesn't always mean the same thing.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
*“A different but wholly delightful and thought-provoking capper to Klassen’s ingenious series.” – School Library Journal (starred review)
 
*“The tenderness in this book (with its uplifting ending) is just as surprising  as the black humor in the earlier ones. While the book is richer in the context of the two previous volumes, Klassen leaves enough space for uninitiated readers to make their own meaning out of this story about a hat—but, here, also about an enduring and precious friendship.” – The Horn Book (starred review)

Jon Klassen is the author-illustrator of I Want My Hat Back, a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book, and This Is Not My Hat, winner of the Caldecott Medal. He is the illustrator of two Caldecott Honor Books, Sam and Dave Dig a Hole and Extra Yarn, both written by Mac Barnett, as well as House Held Up by Trees, written by Ted Kooser. Originally from Niagara Falls, Ontario, Jon Klassen now lives in Los Angeles.

MELISSA YANCY READS FROM HER NEW COLLECTION OF STORIES DOG YEARS

Dog Years (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Many of these richly layered stories juxtapose the miracles of modern medicine against the inescapable frustrations of everyday life: awkward first dates, the indignities of air travel, and overwhelming megastore cereal aisles. In “Go Forth,” an aging couple attends a kidney transplant reunion, where donors and recipients collide with unexpected results; in “Hounds,” a woman who runs a facial reconstruction program for veterans nurses her dying dog while recounting the ways she has used sex as both a weapon and a salve; and in “Consider this Case,” a lonely fetal surgeon caring for his aesthete father must reconsider sexuality and the lengths people will go to have children.

Melissa Yancy’s personal experience in the milieus of hospitals, medicine, and family services infuse her narratives with a rare texture and gravity. Keenly observed, offering both sharp humor and humanity, these stories explore the ties that bind—both genetic and otherwise—and the fine line between the mundane and the maudlin. Whether the men or women that populate these pages are contending with illness, death, or parenthood, the real focus is on time and our inability to slow its progression, and to revel in those moments we can control.

Praise for Dog Years

“The smart, intricate, carefully crafted stories in Dog Years reminded me of Lauren Groff’s Delicate, Edible Birds for both their ambition and extraordinary beauty.”—Richard Russo

“Melissa Yancy’s stories make me swoon with recognition. They’re funny and sad in the same breath; they’re incredibly well executed; they’re about the endlessly fascinating machinery of relationships, about the weird intersections of medical technology and human dignity, and about the ways time catches up with everyone in the end. I’ve been waiting a long time for her stories to be collected in a book; Dog Years is cause for celebration.”—Anthony Doerr

Melissa Yancy’s short fiction has appeared in One Story, Glimmer Train, Zyzzyva, and other publications. She is the recipient of a 2016 NEA Literature Fellowship. Stories in Dog Years have won the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, and received special mention in the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Los Angeles where she works as a fundraiser for healthcare causes.

PHOEBE ROBINSON DISCUSSES HER BOOK YOU CAN'T TOUCH MY HAIR WITH MICHAELA WATKINS

You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain (Plume Books)

A keenly observed, humorous essay collection from celebrated stand-up comedian and WNYC podcaster (2 Dope Queens) Phoebe Robinson, in which she discusses what it's like to be the black friend, how to cope with others who have white guilt, and, of course, why you can't touch her hair.

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 sizable 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 You Can't Touch My Hair here at Skylight Books. Tickets will be available starting Tues, October 4th, 2016, the book's publication date.  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. For further information on the signing guidelines, please be sure and check back, as we will be updating this listing as the date approaches. Thank you for your cooperation! 

Phoebe Robinson is a stand-up comic, which means that, often, her everyday experiences become points of comedic fodder. And as a black woman in America, she asserts, sometimes you need to have a sense of humor to deal with the nonsense you are handed every day. Robinson has experienced her fair share over the years: she's been unceremoniously relegated to the role of "the minority friend," as if she is somehow the authority on all things racial; she's been questioned about her love of U2 and Billy Joel ("isn't that...white people music?"); she's been called "uppity" for having an opinion in the workplace; she's been followed around stores by security guards; and yes, people do ask her whether they can touch her hair all. the. time. Now, she's ready to take these topics to the page. As personal as it is political, You Can't Touch My Hair is an utterly modern essay collection: one that examines our cultural climate and skewers our biases, all told from Robinson's singularly witty point of view.

Praise for You Can't Touch My Hair

"You Can't Touch My Hair is the book we need right now. Robinson makes us think about race and feminism in new ways, thanks to her whip-smart comedy and expert use of a pop culture reference. The future is very bright because Robinson and her book are in it." --Jill Soloway, creator of Transparent

"A must-read Phoebe Robinson discusses race and feminism in such a funny, real, and specific way, it penetrates your brain and stays with you."--Ilana Glazer, co-creator and co-star of Broad City 

"Phoebe Robinson has a way of casually, candidly rough-housing with tough topics like race and sex and gender that makes you feel a little safer and a lot less alone. If something as wise and funny as You Can't Touch My Hair exists in the world, we can't all be doomed. Phoebe is my hero and this book is my wife."--Lindy West, New York Times bestselling author of Shrill 

"You Can't Touch My Hair is one of the funniest books about race, dating, and Michael Fassbender. The world is burning, and Phoebe Robinson is the literary feminist savior we've been looking for."--Hasan Minhaj, senior correspondent onThe Daily Show 

"Phoebe Robinson says the things that need to be said, and does so eloquently and hilariously."--Mara Wilson, author of Where Am I Now?

"Moving, poignant, witty, and funny a promising debut by a talented, genuinely funny writer."--Publishers Weekly 

"Uproarious Robinson reflects on the annoying parts of black life in America with humor and soul."--RedBook 

Phoebe Robinson is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actress whom Vulture.com, Essence, and Esquire have named one of the top comedians to watch. She has appeared on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyersand Last Call with Carson Daly; Comedy Central’s Broad City, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and@midnight with Chris Hardwick; as well as the new Jill Soloway pilot for Amazon I Love Dick. Robinson’s writing has been featured in The Village Voice and on Glamour.com, TheDailyBeast.com, VanityFair.com, Vulture.com, and NYTimes.com. She was also a staff writer on MTV’s hit talking head show, Girl Code, as well as a consultant on season three of Broad City. Most recently, she created and starred in Refinery29’s web series Woke Bae and, alongside Jessica Williams of The Daily Show, she is the creator and costar of the hit WNYC podcast 2 Dope Queens as well as the host of the new WNYC podcast Sooo Many White Guys. Robinson lives and performs stand-up in Brooklyn, NY, and you can read her weekly musings about race, gender, and pop culture on her blog, Blaria.com (aka Black Daria).

Michaela Watkins hails from the Los Angeles main stage company, The Groundlings Theater, where many distinguished SNL alum have performed. Watkins joined the "SNL" cast mid-season of the 2008-09 season and made her mark with spot-on impressions of Arianna Huffington, Barbara Walters and Kathie Lee Gifford's sidekick Hoda Kotb. 

Watkins can currently be seen starring in the hit Hulu show Casual, now picked up for a third season.  She plays the lead role of "Valerie Cole", a newly divorced sex therapist who is just re-entering the world of casual dating.

Born in Syracuse, N.Y., and raised in Boston, Watkins pursued a career in regionaltheater before moving to Los Angeles. She studied acting and theater, and received her B.F.A. from Boston University.

MICAH PERKS READS FROM HER NEW NOVEL WHAT BECOMES US WITH MICHELLE TEA

What Becomes Us (Outpost 19)

In What Becomes Us, the new novel by Micah Perks, twin fetuses tell the story of their mild-mannered mother who abandons her controlling husband to start fresh in a small town in upstate New York. But her seemingly ideal neighbors are violently divided by the history Evie is teaching at the high school—the captivity and restoration of colonist Mary Rowlandson, a watershed conflict that leads our little narrators to ask big questions about love, survival, coveting the man next door and what exactly is a healthy appetite.

Praise for What Becomes Us

"Micah Perks' book has everything a reader could hope for -- her language is lively, her characters appealing. Set in a storied landscape, with themes of independence and community. Romance! History! Food! Plus a tale to tell and some surprising people to tell it. There is real magic here. Micah magic! Completely original, completely delightful."- Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Micah Perks is one of the most radiantly original writers around. What Becomes Us, exhilarating and terrifying, is a novel I love for its wild beauty, its offbeat inventiveness, it’s effervescent language, and the artfulness with which it has been shaped. This is a brilliant novel.”- Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen

"No matter where we come from, we all get born again American. Micah Perks is our literary doula working beside the midwives who haunt our American beginnings: Mary Rowlandson, Queen Weetamoo, and civil disobedient missionary Ma -- rebirthing us even as we are fetal captives in generational cycles of puritanical pioneering and savagery. We emerge with insatiable hunger, innocent and corruptible, and Micah Perks, with gentle wit and deft storytelling, coaxes us to love and song."- Karen Tei Yamashita, author of I Hotel

“Micah Perk's wonderful and surprising new novel proves that the life of a small-town schoolteacher can be by turns comic, dramatic, joyful, and violent. For one thing, its wise and observant narrators are unborn twins.”- Alison Lurie, author of Foreign Affairs and The Language of Houses

"I've been obsessed with Mary Rowlandson for 20 years, and was delighted to find that Micah Perks writes about her with fireworks. This is a warm, wild, hilarious, eccentric and moving book." - Lauren Groff

Micah Perks is the author of a novel, We Are Gathered Here, a memoir, Pagan Time, and a long personal essay, Alone In The Woods: Cheryl Strayed, My Daughter and Me. Her short stories and essays have won five Pushcart Prize nominations and appeared in Epoch, Zyzzyva, Tin House, The Toast, OZY and The Rumpus, amongst many journals and anthologies. Excerpts of What Becomes Us won a National Endowment for The Arts grant and The New Guard Machigonne 2014 Fiction Prize. She received her BA and MFA from Cornell University and now lives with her family in Santa Cruz where she co-directs the creative writing program at UCSC.

Michelle Tea is the author of twelve books, most recently the dystopic half-memoir Black Wave. She curates the Amethyst Editions series for Feminist Press. Her writing has appeared in Harpers, Cosmopolitan, The Believer, Marie Claire and other discordant publications.