Skylight Books Podcast Series

SMITH HENDERSON reads from FOURTH OF JULY CREEK in conversation wtih BRIAN MCGREEVY

Fourth of July Creek (Ecco)

Smith Henderson, author of one of the most anticipated debut novels of the season, discusses his work with novelist Brian McGreevy (Hemlock Grove).

In this shattering and iconic American novel, PEN prize-winning writer, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation's disquieting and violent contradictions.

After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.

But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the F.B.I., putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.

Praise for Fourth of July Creek:

“This book left me awestruck; a stunning debut which reads like the work of a writer at the height of his power…Fourth of July Creek is a masterful achievement and Smith Henderson is certain to end up a household name.”—Philipp Meyer, New York Times bestselling author of The Son

“Fourth of July Creek knocked me flat. This gorgeous, full-bodied novel seems to contain all of America at what was, in retrospect, a pivotal moment in its history...Smith Henderson has delivered nothing less than a masterpiece of a novel."—Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“Fourth of July Creek cannot possibly be Smith Henderson’s first book. Its scope is audacious, its range virtuosic, its gaze steady and true. A riveting story written in a seductive and relentlessly authentic rural American vernacular, this is the kind of novel I wish I’d written.”—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn

“Fourth of July Creek is an astonishing read. The writing is energetic and precise. Henderson has a mastery of scale that allows this particular place and these particular people to illuminate who we are as Americans...I could not recommend this book more highly.”—Kevin Powers, bestselling author of The Yellow Birds

“Tremendously satisfying—think Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone...or Jimmy McNulty...set...in...another kind of violent American wilderness...[a] mesmerizing accomplishment. I cannot think of a finer first novel; it’s hard, in fact, to think of a finer second, third, or fourth one, either.”—Antonya Nelson

Smith Henderson was born and raised in western Montana. His family were in the timber industry, ranching, and other trades, but he was the first to go to college, earning a Classics degree. He worked with traumatized children for a few years, and briefly as prison guard. He took writing jobs where he could find them, until he was admitted to the MFA program at the University of Texas. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of journals and been anthologized in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. In 2011 he was the Philip Roth Resident and Bucknell University and won the Emerging Writer Award in Fiction from the PEN Foundation. 

Brian McGreevy is the author of Hemlock Grove, which was adapted into a Netflix series of the same name. He is also a founding partner of the production company El Jefe, with multiple film and television projects in development. A former James Michener Fellow in fiction at the University of Texas, he currently lives in Los Angeles. 

BRITTANI SONNENBERG reads from HOME LEAVE

 Home Leave (Grand Central Publishing)

Chris Kriegstein is a man on the move, with a global career that catapults his family across North America, Europe, and Asia. For his wife, Elise, the hardship of chronic relocation is soothed by the allure of reinvention. Over the years, Elise shape-shifts: once a secretive Southern Baptist, she finds herself becoming a seasoned expat in Shanghai, an unapologetic adulterer in Thailand, and, finally, a renowned interior decorator in Madison. 

But it's the Kriegstein daughters, Leah and Sophie, who face the most tumult. Fiercely protective of each other-but also fiercely competitive-the two sisters long for stability in an ever-changing environment. With each new move, the girls find they can count on only one thing: the consoling, confounding presence of each other. 

When the family suffers an unimaginable loss, they can't help but wonder: Was it meant to be, or did one decision change their lives forever? And what does it mean when home is everywhere and nowhere at the same time? With humor and heart, Brittani Sonnenberg chases this wildly loveable family through the excitement and anguish of their adventures around the world.  

Praise for Home Leave

“It's hard to believe that this astonishing novel is Brittani Sonnenberg's first--she writes about family with such wisdom, humor, and native daring. Here is Persephone's journey, undertaken by an entire family, the Kriegsteins, who ricochet through time zones, moving from Berlin to Singapore to Wisconsin to Shanghai to Atlanta, together and alone. Sonnenberg's prose is so vital and so enchanting that you will read this book in the dilated state of a world-traveler, with all of your senses wide open. Her family members are so well-drawn and complex that you'll close this book certain they exist.”—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove

“Brittani Sonnenberg, like the best storytellers, shows us what we carry and what we leave behind as we travel across time zones (from America to Germany to Singapore), as we sit in airports, alone with the aloneness, as we love, live, grieve, and then try to live once more. Authentic, beautiful, bravely-told, Home Leave is alive with characters you want to protect and hold—characters you won’t want to leave behind.”—Nami Mun, author of Miles from Nowhere

“Home Leave is a remarkable debut, notable for the insightful intimacy of its characterization and a restless formal invention which perfectly evokes the uncertainties of expatriate life.”—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl 

Brittani Sonnenberg was raised across three continents and has worked as a journalist in Germany, China, and throughout Southeast Asia. A graduate of Harvard, she received her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan. Her fiction has been published in The O'Henry Prize Stories 2008 as well as Ploughshares, Short Fiction, and Asymptote. Her nonfiction has appeared in Time, the Associated Press, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NPR Berlin. She has taught creative writing at the University of Michigan, Carleton College, and the University of Hong Kong. She is currently based in Berlin. Home Leave is her debut novel.  

GREG SESTERO and TOM BISSELL present THE DISASTER ARTIST, together with JULIETTE DANIELLE, KYLE VOGT, ROBYN PARIS and JOSEPH SETELE

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made (Simon & Schuster)

Join us tonight for a very special event as we, along with cast and crew, step inside The Room, the movie Patton Oswalt referred to as "modern-day Plan 9 From Outer Space."

As part of tonight's event we'll be celebrating the release of the audiobook version of The Disaster Artist and will be screening a special behind-the-scenes, making-of documentary together with cast members Juliette Danielle (LISA),Kyle Vogt (PETER), and Robyn Paris (MICHELLE) and camera operator Joseph Setele. A can't miss event from a movie that redefines the term "cult classic."

In 2003, an independent film called "The Room"--starring and written, produced, and directed by a mysteriously wealthy social misfit named Tommy Wiseau--made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as "like getting stabbed in the head," the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Ten years later, it's an international cult phenomenon, whose legions of fans attend screenings featuring costumes, audience rituals, merchandising, and thousands of plastic spoons.

Hailed by "The Huffington Post" as "possibly the most important piece of literature ever printed," "The Disaster Artist" is the hilarious, behind-the-scenes story of a deliciously awful cinematic phenomenon as well as the story of an odd and inspiring Hollywood friendship. Greg Sestero, Tommy's costar, recounts the film's bizarre journey to infamy, explaining how the movie's many nonsensical scenes and bits of dialogue came to be and unraveling the mystery of Tommy Wiseau himself. But more than just a riotously funny story about cinematic hubris, "The Disaster Artist is one of the most honest books about friendship I've read in years" ("Los Angeles Times)."

Praise for The Disaster Artist

"Finally, a hilarious, delusional, and weirdly inspirational explanation for the most deliciously awful movie ever made."--Rob Lowe, actor and author of Stories I Only Tell My Friends

"A great portrayal of hopefuls coming to Los Angeles to pursue their ambitions, and an even greater examination of what it means to be a creative person with a dream and trying to make it come true….In so many ways. Tommy c’est moi."– James Franco, VICE.com

"The Disaster Artist has to be one of the funniest, most deliciously twisted tales I have ever read. This extraordinary book is many things: a guide on how to succeed, sort of, in Hollywood; a life lesson in the virtues of deaf, dumb, and blind persistence; a very surreal variation on the archetypal American story of the immigrant dream. But at its heart lies the story of a deep and abiding friendship that survives against all odds, and the insanely bizarre film that stands as proof."--Ben Fountain, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

"The Disaster Artist doesnt just answer the question: How do awful cult movies get made? It also reminds us how confusing, hilarious, and wonderful it is to be in your 20s, and why youre glad you dont have to do it twice. Its like a wonderfully weird mash-up of a contemporary Candide and Sunset Boulevard.--Joel Stein, author of Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity

"One of the worst movies of all time has spawned one of the most entertaining books I've read in years. It's a happy ending worthy of Hollywood."--A. J. Jacobs, author of Drop Dead Healthy

Greg Sestero is an actor, producer, and writer. He was born in Walnut Creek, California and raised between the San Francisco Bay Area and Europe. He is fluent in both French and English. At the age of 17, Greg began his career in entertainment by modeling in Milan for such designers as Valentino and Armani. Upon returning to California, Greg went onto pursue acting and appeared in several films and television shows before co-starring in the international cult phenomenon The Room. Greg's many passions include film, sports, nutrition, animals, and traveling

Tom Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea, Extra Lives, Magic Hours, God Lives in St. Petersburg and the  winner of the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim  Fellowship.  He writes frequently for Harper’s and The New Yorker. Originally from Escanaba Michigan, he now resides in Los Angeles.

 

EMMA STRAUB reads from THE VACATIONERS

The Vacationers (Riverhead Books) 

Skylight Books is proud to welcome back one of our favorite authors, Emma Straub!

For the Post family, a luxurious vacation to the island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is meant as a celebration of Franny and Jim’s thirty-fifth wedding anniversary and their daughter’s graduation from high school. 

The sunlit beaches, mountains, tennis and tapas also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan.  But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the trip, secrets come to light, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds reopen.  Written with Straub’s signature wry humor and tremendous heart,The Vacationers is the richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of change and the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again. 

Praise for The Vacationers: 

“I would read anything Emma Straub writes. She's a natural talent and a gorgeous and witty storyteller, who makes each sentence of The Vacationers look not only easy, but perfectly real. I came to care so deeply about every single character in this great travelogue of a novel that I found myself unable to go to sleep at night until I was certain they had all landed safely. And they will linger with me, this richly imagined family, long into the future.”—Elizabeth Gilbert

“Witty, big-hearted, and packed with wisdom, The Vacationers is a breezy read that sneaks in its emotional wallops and leaves you smiling for days.”—Maria Semple, author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette

“The Vacationers is a beautifully told story that walks the tightrope of family angst and connection with hilarity and truth. . .  Straub's writing is deft, clear and wise in ways that will surprise and delight you. It's a beyond the beach read. It's Ms. Straub at her dazzling best.”—Adriana Trigiani, author of The Shoemaker’s Wife

“Charming and absorbing, this is a novel that demands to be read in long, satisfying gulps.”—Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements

“We’re sure you’ll see armies of folks reading The Vacationers on the beach over the summer”—Flavorwire

Emma Straub is from New York City. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Vogue, Tin House, the New York Times, and the Paris Review Daily. She is a staff writer for Rookie. Straub lives with her husband and son in Brooklyn, New York.

WALLY RUDOLPH reads from FOUR CORNERS

Four Corners (Soft Skull Press)

Writing under the pen name of Wally Rudolph, writer/actor Walter Wong (best known for his role as Chris 'V-Lin' Von Lin on Sons of Anarchy) drops readers into the bare-knuckled world of Frank Bruce, a 37-year-old meth addict tangled up crime, drugs, and his far-too-young fiancé, Maddie. Struggling to be a decent man and leave his toxic life behind, Frank's attempt to save his best friend's son from the child's violent grandfather turns into nightmare of drugs, kidnapping, and corruption.

Set in the striking southwestern landscape of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona, Wally creates a cast of unfortunate, marginalized characters and tells their story with dignity, compassion, and in their own unflinching words.  

PRAISE FOR FOUR CORNERS

"Wally Rudolph's meth-and-cocaine-addled protagonists reel through a nonstop catastrophe of violence, flight, and revenge, too self-destructive to have anything more than a prayer--but they are real. They suffer and love and worship, however crazily. The action is urgent and compelling, the details are as crisp as the light that falls on Santa Fe. Wally knows the territory. And the territory is the human heart." --Jack Butler, Pulitzer Prize Nominee for Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock

"Four Corners is a book that will stay with me for a long time, an outstanding first novel by a writer unafraid to scrape the crud off the floor of the human psyche. The best kind of crime fiction." --Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest and Hop Alley

Born in Canada to Jamaican immigrant parents, Wally Rudolph smoked marijuana for the first time at the age of fourteen, beginning a fifteen-year affair with illicit drugs that had him drop out of college and took him back and fourth across the American Midwest. His fiction has been published in Milk Money, Lines+Stars, The Brooklyner, and others. A graduate of The Second City Conservatory in Chicago, he now resides with his family  in Los Angeles. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous films and TV shows including "Street Kings," "Bang Bang," and "Sons of Anarchy."

STEPHEN GRECO reads from NOW AND YESTERDAY

Now and Yesterday (Kensington Publishing)

In the three decades since Peter first moved into his Brooklyn apartment, almost every facet of his life has changed. Once a broke, ambitious poet, Peter is now a successful advertising executive. He's grateful for everything the years have given him--wealth, friends, security. But he's conscious too of what time has taken in return, and a busy stream of invitations doesn't dull the ache that remains since he lost the love of his life.

Will is a young, aspiring journalist hungry for everything New York has to offer--culture, sophistication, adventure. When he moonlights as a bartender at one of Peter's parties, the two strike up a tentative friendship that soon becomes more important than either expected. In Peter, Will sees the ease and confidence he strives for, while Peter is suddenly aware of just how lonely his life has become. But forging a connection means navigating very different sets of experience and expectations, as each decides how to make a place for himself in the world--and who to share it with.

Beautifully written, warm yet incisive, Now and Yesterday offers a fascinating exploration of two generations--and of the complex, irrefutable power of friendship--through the prism of an eternally changing city. 

Stephen Greco has contributed features on the arts and entertainment, style and fashion, youth culture, and new media to publications such as The Advocate, American Way, aRude, Art News, Casa Vogue, Dancemagazine, Elle, Elle Decor, Empire, France, HX, Harper's Bazaar, Latina, the London Observer, the Journal of Movement Research, Manhattan File, New York magazine, the New Yorker, the New York Times online, Opera News, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. 

CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN reads from SINGAPORE NOIR

Singapore Noir (Akashic Books)

Skylight Books is excited to welcome Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan as she presents the latest installment in Akashic Books' excellent Noir series. Tonight's event is co-sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association.

From the introduction by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan:

"Say Singapore to anyone and you’ll likely hear one of a few words: Caning. Fines. Chewing gum. For much of the West, the narrative of Singapore—a modern Southeast Asian city-state perched on an island on the tip of the Malay Peninsula—has been marked largely by its government’s strict laws and unwavering enforcement of them . . . As much as I understand these outside viewpoints, I have always lamented that the quirky and dark complexities of my native country’s culture rarely seem to make it past its borders . . . 

Beneath its sparkling veneer is a country teeming with shadows . . . And its stories remain. The rich stories that attracted literary lions W. Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling to hold court at the Raffles Hotel (where the Singapore Sling was created) are still sprinkled throughout its neighborhoods. And in the following pages, you’ll get the chance to discover some of them . . .

You’ll find stories from some of the best contemporary writers in Singapore—three of them winners of the Singapore Literature Prize, essentially the country’s Pulitzer: Simon Tay,  writing as Donald Tee Quee Ho, tells the story of a hard-boiled detective who inadvertently wends his way into the underbelly of organized crime, Colin Cheong shows us a surprising side to the country’s ubiquitous cheerful “taxi uncle,” while Suchen Christine Lim spins a wistful tale of a Chinese temple medium whose past resurges to haunt her . . .

As for mine, I chose a setting close to my heart—the kelongs, or old fisheries on stilts, that once dotted the waters of Singapore but are gradually disappearing. I have a deep sense of romance about these kelongs, along with the many other settings, characters, nuances, and quirks that you’ll see in these stories. They’re intense, inky, nebulous. There is evil, sadness, a foreboding. And liars, cheaters, the valiant abound.

This is a Singapore rarely explored in Western literature—until now. No Disneyland here; but there is a death penalty."

About Singapore Noir:

Launched with the summer ‘04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

BRAND-NEW STORIES BY: Colin Goh, Simon Tay/Donald Tee Quee Ho, Philip Jeyaretnam, Colin Cheong, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Monica Bhide, S.J. Rozan, Lawrence Osborne, Suchen Christine Lim, Ovidia Yu, Damon Chua, Johann S. Lee, Dave Chua, and Nury Vittachi. 

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is the New York–based author of A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family. A native of Singapore, she is working on her second book, a novel. A former staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, her work has also appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other publications. She has been an artist in residence at Yaddo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. 

ABDI NAZEMIAN reads from THE WALK-IN CLOSET

The Walk-In Closet (Booksparks)

Step into a world where glamour, money and family honor – no matter the cost – reign supreme in Abdi Nazemian’sThe Walk-In Closet. Fans of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City and Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians will love this debut novel from Los Angeles screenwriter Abdi Nazemian (The Quiet, Celeste in the City) about two best friends in Los Angeles juggling a fictional relationship and searching for true love. Hilarious, heartbreaking and edgy, with a shocking twist, The Walk-In Closet provides a glimpse into the lives of the Iranian-American elite.

Kara Walker has never found much glamour in her own life, especially not when compared to the life of her best friend Bobby Ebadi. Bobby, along with his sophisticated parents Leila and Hossein, is everything Kara always wanted to be. The trio provides the perfect antidote to what Kara views as the more mundane problems of her girlfriends and her divorced parents. And so when the Ebadis assume that Kara is Bobby’s girlfriend, she willingly steps into the role. She enjoys the perks of life in this closet, not only Leila’s designer hand-me-downs and free rent, but also the excitement of living life as an Ebadi.

As Kara’s 30th birthday approaches, Leila and Hossein up the pressure. They are ready for Kara to assume the mantle of the next Mrs. Ebadi, and Bobby seems prepared to give them what they want: the illusion of a traditional home and grandchildren. How far will Kara be willing to go? And will she be willing to pull the Persian rug out from under them when she discovers that her own secret is just one of many lurking inside the Ebadi closet?

Abdi Nazemian is the screenwriter of "The Quiet," "Celeste in the City," "Beautiful Girl," and the short film "Revolution," which he also directed. He is an alumnus of the Sundance Writer’s Lab, a mentor at the Outfest Screenwriter’s Lab, and has taught screenwriting at UCLA Extension. He lives in Los Angeles with his two children, and his dog, Hedy Lamar. Connect with Abdi at abdaddy.com, Facebook.com/AbdiNazemian and on Twitter @Abdaddy.  

LGBT WRITERS WHO INSPIRED US featuring NOEL ALUMIT, JERVEY TERVALON, ALI LIEBOGOTT, WENDY ORTIZ and NAOMI HIRAHARA

On the eve of Los Angeles Pride, Skylight Books presents its third annual celebration of LGBT writing.  The work of James Baldwin, Eloise Klein Healy, Oscar Wilde, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Jerome Stueart will be explored by some of our favorite writers including Jervey Tervalon, Naomi Hirahara, Ali Liebegott and Wendy Ortiz.  Curated by Noel Alumit

JON BOORSTIN reads from MABEL AND ME

Mabel and Me (Angel City Press)

Join us tonight for a very special event from local publisher and friend of the store, Angel City Press.

Mabel and Me is a novel about the Movies—a sharply observed, historically accurate, deliciously intimate story set in the earliest days of motion pictures. Beautifully told, this is a tale of Jack, his coming of age with the Movies, and his passionate, destructive, and ultimately liberating love for one of the very first movie stars, the sweetheart of slapstick—Mabel Normand. Theirs is the story of the birth of the modern movie age. It’s a story they lived together. Day in, day out. Until they didn’t.

Mabel Normand was the model for the modern woman: her brief life, from slapstick girl to box­office bonanza to drug addict to modern savvy star, embodied the evolution of the Movies. She was the Queen of Comedy, a flapper a decade before flappers, the first to have her name emblazoned in the title of a picture, the first director of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp—not to mention the person who convinced Mack Sennett to give Chaplin his first break, immediately recognizing his comic genius. Mabel was the first woman allowed to be both beautiful and funny, the model for the modern comedic star, and she was shockingly sexy at the time. Watching Mabel on screen was like “being slapped in the face with a perfumed glove.” Author Jon Boorstin portrays her love affairs—all fact­based, particularly her defining, explosive relationship with Mack Sennett—with humor, poignancy, and drama.

Mabel and Me takes us directly inside the world of the birth of the Movies, inside the world of Hollywood 1912. We become obsessed with motion pictures, in love with their mesmerizing power. Entertaining, heartfelt, and unexpected, Boorstin’s novel delivers us to the first moments of filmmaking and recreates the sense of all that was happening on film and behind the scenes for the very first time. Written in a voice that’s side by side with Hollywood’s premier female movie star, one that’s close to her, and from a perspective that’s often privy to what Normand is thinking—even when she starred with Chaplin in the first feature­length comedy ever made.

Jon Boorstin's first novel, Pay or Play, was called “the definitive send ­up of Hollywood” by Publishers Weekly in a coveted starred review. His second, The Newsboys’ Lodging-­House, won the New York Society Library Award for Historical Fiction. Boorstin has also written a book of practical film theory, Making Movies Work, which is used in film schools all over the world. The work of an Oscar®­nominated documentary filmmaker and longtime screenwriter and producer, Mabel and Me is the culmination of Boorstin’s lifelong affair with the Movies.

GEOFF NICHOLSON reads from THE CITY UNDER THE SKIN, in conversation with TOM LUTZ

The City Under The Skin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

 

A cartographic thriller with so many twists and turns it requires its own map.

 

A cartography-obsessed misfit clerk from an antique map store in a district that’s not quite trendy yet. A bold young woman chasing the answer to a question she can’t quite formulate. A petty criminal hoping the parking lot he’s just purchased is the ticket to a new life of respectability with his school-age daughter. A ruthless but vulnerable killer and his disgruntled accomplice. In The City Under the Skin, it’s not fate that will bind these characters together but something more concrete and sinister: the appearance of a group of mysterious women, their backs crudely and extensively tattooed with maps.

 

They have been kidnapped, marked, and released, otherwise unharmed. When one turns up on the doorstep of the map shop and abruptly bares her back, only to be hustled away by a man in a beat-up blue Cadillac, it’s the misfit clerk Zak, pushed by his curious new friend Marilyn, who finds himself reluctantly entering a criminal underworld whose existence he’d prefer to ignore.

 

In this haunting literary thriller, Geoff Nicholson paints a deft portrait of a city in transition. His sharply drawn characters are people desperate to know where they are but scared of being truly seen. A meditation on obsession and revenge, a hymn to the joys of urban exploration, The City Under the Skin is a wholly original novel about the indelible scars we both live with and inflict on others.

 

For tonight's reading, Geoff Nicholson will be joined by founder and editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books Tom Lutz.

  

Geoff Nicholson is the author of sixteen novels. His debut, Street Sleeper, was short-listed for the Yorkshire Post First Work Award; Bleeding London was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize; and Bedlam Burning was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year. His nonfiction titles include Sex Collectors and The Lost Art of Walking, and his journalism has appeared in, among other publications, The New York Times, Bookforum, Gastronomica, ArtReview, Black Clock, The Believer, McSweeney’s, The Los Angeles Times and Custom Car. He is a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. He was born in Sheffield, England, and currently lives in Los Angeles.

ROXANE GAY reads from AN UNTAMED STATE

An Untamed State (Grove Press)

Roxane Gay is a powerful new literary voice whose short stories and essays have already earned her an enthusiastic audience. In An Untamed State, she delivers an assured debut about a woman kidnapped for ransom, her captivity as her father refuses to pay and her husband fights for her release over thirteen days, and her struggle to come to terms with the ordeal in its aftermath.

Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti's richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father's Port au Prince estate. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. As it becomes clear her father intends to resist the kidnappers, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents.

An Untamed State is a novel of privilege in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. An Untamed State establishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent. 

Roxane Gay's writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Oxford American,American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, NOON, The New York Times Book Review, The Rumpus, Salon, and many others. Her first book, Ayiti, was a collection of poetry and short stories. She is the coeditor of PANK. She teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University.

KRISTIN NEWMAN reads from WHAT I WAS DOING WHILE YOU WERE BREEDING

What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding (Three Rivers Press)

 

Kristin Newman spent her 20s and 30s dealing with the stresses of her high-pressure job as a television comedy writer, and the anxieties of watching most of her friends get married and start families while she wrestled with her own fear of both. Not ready to settle down and yet loathe to become a sad-sack single girl, Kristin instead started traveling the world, often alone, for a few months each year, falling madly in love with attractive locals who provided moments of the love she wanted without the cost of the freedom she needed.  She introduces readers to the Israeli bartenders, Argentinian priests, Finnish poker players, and sexy Bedouins who helped her transform into "Kristin-Adjacent" on the road—a quieter, less judgmental, and, yes, sluttier version of herself at home.

 

Ultimately, Kristin's adventures led her to a better understanding of what she was actually running away from at home and why every life hurdle seemed to put her on a transatlantic flight to the unknown. Equal parts laugh-out-loud storytelling; thoughtful, candid reflection; and wanderlust-inspiring travel tales, What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding is a compelling and hilarious debut that will have readers scrambling to renew their passports. 

 

Kristin Newman is a television writer who has worked in Hollywood for almost twenty years. She has written for That '70s Show, Chuck, and How I Met Your Mother. She currently writes for ABC's The Neighbors. 

ELIZABETH CANTWELL reads from NIGHTS I LET THE TIGER GET YOU

Nights I Let The Tiger Get You (Black Lawrence Press)

Elizabeth Cantwell's debut book of poems is a startling reminder of the range of voices to be found in the poetic landscape of Los Angeles. A can't miss reading for lovers of poetry.

Nights I Let The Tiger Get You is a neurotic journey through the surreal déjà vu of recurring dreams and the disorienting patterns of our own personal histories. The collection’s poems view the failures of a family’s internal structure through the distorted lens of the subconscious—but the language’s twists and turns ultimately open the narrator’s world to hope.

Praise for Nights I Let The Tiger Get You

“In her brilliant debut collection, Nights I Let the Tiger Get You, Elizabeth Cantwell excavates layers of contemporary anxiety to reveal that Blake’s Tyger has been, all along, that rough beast slouching toward us, and is in fact now living among us -- with an unsettling intimacy -- in both our unconscious and daily lives. Elizabeth Cantwell’s poems honor the disjunctions of voice and dislocations of consciousness present in our century, and their elegant and luminous shards glint in the darkness like the Tyger’s stripes. These exquisite reflections form a kind of handbook of post-apocalyptic forms, as the most psychologically fraught aspects of our dreams slowly emerge as the actual landscapes of our lives.”-- David St. John

“The surreal volleys in Elizabeth Cantwell's poems vividly capture the miniature catastrophes and cataclysms hidden within suburban America and its culture. Her poems 'Recess' and 'Interlude,' with their taut imagination, echo that horror in our lives to make something  happen. The tiger in these poems is real, synonymous with an unnamed anxiety, and roams at will through our haunted lives: ' we’re flying  / onto some other field of pistols. We have / more than one shot.' Her vision is unconventional and often brilliant.”--Mark Irwin

“Submerged in a burning sea of images, is the dreamer losing or finding herself?  "Fire self-replicates," yet she is "not a flame or a ripple."  Simultaneously bold and hermetic, these poems are ferociously interrogatory, seeking to distinguish between what can and cannot be saved.”--Claire Bateman

Elizabeth Cantwell is finishing her PhD in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her poems have recently appeared in such publications as Anti-, PANK, The Los Angeles Review, and the Indiana Review. Elizabeth’s first book of poetry, Nights I Let The Tiger Get You, was a finalist for the 2012 Hudson Prize and is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press. Her chapbook Premonitions is forthcoming from Grey Books Press. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son, and small dog.

AUSTIN STRAUS reads from THE LOVE PROJECT

The Love Project: A Marriage Made in Poetry (Red Hen Press)

There's plenty of love between Wanda Coleman and Austin Straus, but it has an edge: every kiss, every snuggle, every touch is political. How to make a marriage work under the unyielding pressures of racial bigotry and cultural bias? How to maintain their creativity and independence as poets and artists faced with the daily pressures of survival? For over three decades, Coleman and Straus have grappled with these questions--and with one another. Together, they have built a wall of desire, carnal and spiritual, to shield them from an often unwelcoming world. The Love Project sings their blood oath in an open and jazzy verse that holds nothing back, offering to the world some of the better that has flowered between them.

Austin Straus, poet and visual artist, makes beautiful unique books, now in many collections. He was married to Wanda Coleman for nearly 33 years.