Skylight Books Podcast Series

Jerry Stahl - Bad Sex on Speed

Bad Sex on Speed (Barnacle Book/Rare Bird Books) and The Heroin Chronicles (Akashic Drug Chronicles)

Bad Sex On Speed is a savage, careening, hyper-real nightmare of a novel, taking us to the depths of Amphetamine America. Told with no concession to traditional narrative, in the voices of those in the grips and on the fringes, the stories that emerge are at once devastating, hysterical, and--perhaps most terrifying of all--going on all around you, all the time. Stahl digs deep into the psyche of the most demented and dispossessed among us, returning with a vision so unsparing that those not prepared to experience the screaming depths of speed psychosis up close and on the page should back slowly away and return to their lives unscathed.

In The Heroin Chronicles, Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch, and others join Stahl in mining the hazards of this deadly narcotic via original short fiction. Jerry Stahl is the author of six books, including the memoir Permanent Midnight, (made into a movie with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson) and the novels I, Fatty and Pain Killers. Formerly "Culture" columnist for Details, Stahl's fiction and journalism have appeared in Esquire, the New York Times, and the Believer, among other places. He has worked extensively in film and television and, most recently, wrote Hemingway & Gellhorn, starring Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman, for HBO. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://tinyurl.com/ajbyy8l THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 7, 2013.

Mark Z. Danielewski

THE FIFTY YEAR SWORD (Pantheon Books)

Author of HOUSE OF LEAVES and ONLY REVOLUTIONS will be reading, signing and discussing his third novel THE FIFTY YEAR SWORD. Skylight Books will be the final stop on his tour and has promised a "giveaway of some kind" at the event. Enigmatic and thrilling: classic Danielewski style. Mark Z. Danielewski was born in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of House of Leaves and Only Revolutions. Photo by Emma Montalvan THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 15, 2012. Copies of the books from this event can be purchased here: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780307907721

Panio Gianopoulos

A Familiar Beast (Nouvella Books)

In the wake of an affair that has cost him his marriage and career, Marcus is a lost man. Desperate for reprieve from his loneliness and regret, he accepts an invitation to go to the outskirts of North Carolina and visit Edgar, an old high school classmate burdened with mysterious troubles of his own. In Edgar’s beautiful, empty home, their separate sorrows draw Marcus into a series of unnerving situations, culminating in a proposed deer hunt. Marcus agrees, despite his inexperience and aversion to killing, and as the hunt draws closer, he must confront the violent prospect with a candor and recognition that have, until now, evaded him. Elegant and darkly moving, A FAMILIAR BEAST is a haunting tale of a man’s search for redemption. Panio Gianopoulos's writing has appeared in various publications, including Northwest Review, Tin House, The Rattling Wall, The Brooklyn Rail, Nerve, and FiveChapters. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for nonfiction literature, he has been included in the anthologies Cooking and Stealing: The Tin House Nonfiction Reader, The Bastard on the Couch, and The Encyclopedia of Exes: 26 Stories by Men of Love Gone Wrong. He lives with his family in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS ON NOVEMBER 13, 2013.

Scott Terry

Cowboys, Armageddon, and the Truth: How a Gay Child Was Saved from Religion (Lethe Press)

Join us to hear Scott Terry's compelling and touching memoir describing his journey from a fundamentalist Jehovah's Witness upbringing to embracing his sexuality and overcoming his fear of the apocalypse to eventually become a cowboy and rodeo bull rider.

Scott Terry is a freelance writer, watercolorist, installation artist and businessman. He has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, and his work has been covered by NPR, The Wall Street Journal, other popular media outlets. He lives in Northern California.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 11, 2012.

Copies of the book from this event can be purchased here: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9781590213667

Michelle Tea

Sister Spit: Writings, Rants and Reminiscence from the Road (City Lights Books)

Michelle Tea (Valencia, Rose of No Man's Land) presents readings from her new anthology of writing and artwork from the irreverent, flagrantly queer, hilariously feminist, tough-talking, genre-busting ruffians who have toured with the legendary Sister Spit. This event features Tara Jepsen, Myriam Gurba, Blake Nelson, Harriet "Harry"Dodge, Tamara Llosa-Sandor, Sara Seinberg, and Cassie J. Sneider. Praise for Sister Spit: "Heartbreakingly beautiful writing; sometimes funny, sometimes shattering—always revolutionary. Truly amazing collection!"—Margaret Cho "Sister Spit is like the underground railroad for burgeoning queer writers. Not only in the van, but in the audiences trapped in the hinterlands of America and looking to escape. Sister Spit saves lives."—Justin Vivian Bond, author of Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels Michelle Tea is the author of four memoirs, a novel, a book of poetry and the young adult fantasy tale A Mermaid in Chelsea Creek. She has edited anthologies about class, fashion and literature, and is editor of Sister Spit Books, a City Lights imprint. Michelle is founder and Executive Director of RADAR Productions, a literary non-profit that oversees the Sister Spit international performance tours, the monthly RADAR Reading Series, the annual Radar LAB Retreat, and other programs. Tara Jepsen is a writer and performer from San Francisco, now living in Los Angeles. Her short stories have been published in the anthologies Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache and It's So You. Myriam Gurba is the author of Dahlia Season and Wish You Were Me, and was included in the anthologies Life As We Show It and Ambientes. She lives in Los Angeles. Blake Nelson is the author of many books for teenagers and adults who act like teenagers.   His novel Paranoid Park was made into a film by Gus Van Sant. Harriet "Harry" Dodge is a Los Angeles-based visual artist, filmmaker, writer, and performer whose work has shown in national galleries including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, P.S. 122, and The Getty. Tamara Llosa-Sandor is a former news reporter now exploring the murky terrain between memoir and fiction. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Her first book, As Filipino As Fruitcake, may or may not be published by 2018. Sara Seinberg is a writer and a photographer that makes up one half of Robinberg Photography with Ginger Robinson. In addition to her novel featuring Pandora, she is writing a book about finishing a graceless marathon and how sometimes failure is the best prize of all. Cassie J. Sneider is the author of the life-changingly hilarious book Fine Fine Music. She shares a birthday with Ted Nugent, Steve Buscemi, and Beth Lisick. She toured with Sister Spit in 2012. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 18, 2012. Copies of the book from this event can be purchased here: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780872865662

Robin Sloan

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Robin Sloan visits Skylight to read and sign his debut novel!  The fictitious Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore -- from Sloan's delightful book of the same name -- is pretty different from Skylight Books.  For one thing, most of the books are written in code; for another, no one ever buys anything (a thought that makes us shudder).  But it's also the San Francisco home of a super secret organization that goes back centuries. The novel has adventure, puzzles, computer wizardry, romance, and how can we forget to mention that much of it is set in a bookstore? Robin Sloan grew up near Detroit and now splits his time between San Francisco and the Internet. He graduated from Michigan State with a degree in economics and, from 2002 to 2012, worked at Poynter, Current TV, and Twitter. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is his first novel. You can learn more at www.robinsloan.com and follow along at @robinsloan.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 19, 2012.

Copies of the book from this event can be purchased here: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780374214913

Amanda Auchter and Kim Young

The Wishing Tomb (Perugia Press) by Auchter; Night Radio (University of Utah Press) by Young Two accomplished poets, Amanda Auchter and Kim Young, will visit Skylight to read and sign their new collections, The Wishing Tomb and Night Radio, respectively. "The Wishing Tomb is a lyric history of New Orleans’ beauty and brutality, both human and environmental. Amanda Auchter is a poet of rare elegance and dexterity who writes just as movingly about gunshot as she does the markings of brick-scratch left on the tomb of Marie Laveau. Every city deserves the subtle attention of such a poet, a poet brave and nimble enough to touch every line of the city’s rough, loved, and disastrous skin." --Katie Ford "The sounds of Night Radio move between hard-won revelation and pulsing music; they spread across the dry outlands of LA, a world of 'silt and turkey vultures' where men in trucks hunt for girls, and where girls kiss their 'practice-hopes,' then run like ambulances toward a 'slick gentleman lighting matches under a streetlight.' Watchful, vulnerable, quick, and shrewd. All this, joined in radiant waves to the 'little signal towers' of the body. A brave and accomplished first book." --David Gewanter Amanda Auchter is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review and the author of The Glass Crib, winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry, and the chapbook Light Under Skin. She has received awards and honors from Bellevue Literary Review, BOMB Magazine, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, and was a 2007 finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches creative writing and literature at Lone Star College. Kim Young is the author of Night Radio, winner of the 2011 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize (The University of Utah Press) and the chapbook Divided Highway (Dancing Girl Press, 2008). She is the founding editor of Chaparral—an online journal featuring poetry from Southern California. Her poems have appeared in Los Angeles Review, MiPOesias, No Tell Motel, POOL and elsewhere. She holds an MA at Cal State University Northridge and an MFA at Bennington College, where she received a Jane Kenyon Scholarship in poetry. She was born in Los Angeles and lives in LA with her husband and daughter. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 26, 2012.

Andrew Porter

IN BETWEEN DAYS (Knopf Publishing Group)

The Theory of Light and Matter transfixed us and became a Skylight Staff Pick.   Porter joins us to read from his debut novel, a work just as impressive and moving as his short story collection.

Andrew Porter is the author of the story collection The Theory of Light and Matter, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has received a Pushcart Prize and a Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. His work has appeared in One Story andThe Threepenny Review. He teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

Photo Credit: Chris Krajcer THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 8, 2012. Books from this event can be purchased here: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/%5Bmodel%5D-167

Steven Weissman and Ron Rege Jr.

Barack Hussein Obama by Weissman; The Cartoon Utopia by Regé (both books published by Fantagraphics)

L.A.-based graphic novelists Steven Weissman (Yikes!) and Ron Regé, Jr. (Against Pain and the band Lavender Diamond) will discuss and sign their respective graphic novels, Barack Hussein Obama and The Cartoon Utopia. "Steven Weissman is a cartoonist who is so good, so funny, and so original that he doesn't have to be serious to be taken seriously." —Jaime Hernandez "To me, Ron Regé is unquestionably one of 'the greats.'" —Chris Ware Steven Knight Weissman, at various times known as "Steve," "Ribs," and "Weissman" (but never "Stevie Knight," as one potential employer threatened to call him in 1987), was born in California on June 4, 1968. He won the Harvey Kurtzman Award for "Best New Talent" in 1998 with his acclaimed, ongoing series, Yikes. He's written and drawn comics for Marvel Entertainment, Nickelodeon Magazine and, most TRIUMPHANTLY, Fantagraphics Books. He currently lives in the Los Angeles' "Little Armenia" neighborhood with his wife, Charissa, and their son, Charles. Ron Regé, Jr. was born in 1969 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. His first book, Skibber Bee-Bye, was published by in 2000 and has also authored the books Against Pain and The Awake Field. His comics and drawings have appeared in hundreds of zines and comics anthologies. Illustration clients have included Nike, Sony, Tylenol, HP, McSweeney’s, Vice, The New York Times, and Canada’s National Post. Ron currently lives in Los Angeles. His current project The Cartoon Utopia began in early 2008 as a series of 60 small drawings, but has expanded to include larger drawings, and longer comics pieces, including those presented here. Drawings from The Cartoon Utopia have been presented as solo gallery shows in Los Angeles, Montreal, Richmond VA, and Austin TX. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 28, 2012. Copies of the book from this event can be purchased here: http://tinyurl.com/aelqumg

Dan Joseffson

That's Not a Feeling (Soho Press) by Josefson Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation (McSweeney's) by Bissell Dan Josefson will discuss and sign his highly anticipated debut novel, That's Not a Feeling, with award-winning essayist and short story writer Tom Bissell (Magic Hours). "Dan Josefson is a writer of astounding promise and That's Not a Feeling is a bold, funny, mordant, and deeply intelligent debut." --David Foster Wallace "Every one of Bissell's pieces is like some great, transfixing documentary you stumble on while channel-surfing late at night--something you feel, in that moment, a kind of gratitude toward for redeeming your sleeplessness. Considered alongside his fiction, this new collection makes clear that Tom Bissell is one of our most interesting and ambitious writers." --John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead Dan Josefson has received a Fulbright research grant and a Schaeffer award from the International Institute of Modern Letters. He has an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and lives in Brooklyn. That’s Not A Feeling is his debut novel. Tom Bissell is the author of Extra Lives, Chasing the Sea, God Lives in St. Petersburg, and The Father of All Things. A recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Bay de Noc Community College Alumnus of the Year Award, he lives in Portland, Oregon. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 21, 2012. Copies of the book from this event can be purchased here: http://tinyurl.com/b3yrbrr

Antoine Wilson

Panorama City (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Acclaimed local author Antoine Wilson (The Interloper) will read and sign his highly anticipated new novel, Panorama City.  Booksellers have been buzzing about this book since advance copies went out in the spring, and with its strong early reviews, it has all the earmarks of a hit in the making! "Wilson's second novel (after Interloper) is fresh and flawlessly crafted as well as charmingly genuine." --Publishers Weekly "God bless Oppen Porter! His innocence and lack of pretense are our good fortune and our delight. Under his observation, our follies and schemes and manias go up in the brightest, funniest, heartrending flames. This is precisely (and artfully) because he does not judge them. Panorama City is charming and absurd, very funny and, best of all, humane through and through." --Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Tinkers Antoine Wilson is the author of the novel The Interloper, and his work has appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, and Best New American Voices. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is a contributing editor of A Public Space and the recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin. Wilson lives and surfs in Los Angeles.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS, OCTOBER 17, 2012.

COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE:  http://tinyurl.com/ba8a3u3

Richard Kramer

THESE THINGS HAPPEN (Unbridled Books)

Set among Manhattan’s high-powered liberal elite and told through an ensemble of endearing voices, These Things Happen is a not-quite-coming-of-age story about a modern family. Fifteen year old Wesley, a tenth grader, has moved from his mother and stepfather’s home to live with his father and his father’s male partner for a school term so that father and son might have a chance to bond again.  But when Wesley finds himself unexpectedly at the center of an act of violence, everyone around him must reexamine themselves, their assumptions and attitudes. “Emotionally resonant . . . The humanity and love between two people thrown together by circumstance is Kramer’s triumph” -Publishers Weekly “Richard Kramer’s These Things Happen is a jewel of a book: incisive, funny, wise, and moving. It prompted me, on almost every page, to ask the question I’m most glad to find myself asking of a novel, How did the writer know that?” - -Michael Cunningham

Richard Kramer is the Emmy and multiple Peabody award winning writer, director and producer of numerous TV series, including Thirtysomething, My So-called Life, Tales of the City, and Once and Again. His first short story appeared in the New Yorker while he was still an undergraduate at Yale. This is his first novel.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS, NOVEMBER 17, 2012.

Copies of the book from this event can be purchased here: http://tinyurl.com/ae42qa9

Carrie Arcos

Out of Reach (Simon Pulse)

CONGRATULATIONS TO CARRIE ARCOS! OUT OF REACH IS A FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD! L.A.-based writer Carrie Arcos will launch her debut young adult novel Out of Reach, about a girl's search for troubled older brother, who has suddenly gone missing. Carrie Arcos lives with her family in Los Angeles, California, where she is an adjunct professor. Visit her at CarrieArcos.com.

Photo of the author by Hank Fortener.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS ON OCTOBER 16, 2012.

Copies of the book from this event can be purchased here: http://tinyurl.com/avmy3tb

Joe Mozingo

The Fiddler on Pantico Run (Free Press)

Award-winning Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Mozingo will discuss and sign his book The Fiddler on Pantico Run, about his search for the history behind his African last name. Mozingo discovers that he is decended from a Jamestown slave who sued for his freedom, married a white woman, became a tobacco farmer, and fathered one of the country's first mixed-race family lines.  It's a uniquely American story, revealing the unusual history of race in our country.

"Vividly fascinating … [Mozingo] unpacks our mixed-race colonial history and its heartbreaking consequences…. Mozingo’s most revelatory finding—the fundamental arbitrariness of racial designations—implicitly raises another question: What, if anything, does our genealogy really say about us?” —Elle Magazine Joe Mozingo is a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He won a Robert F. Kennedy Award for his coverage of the earthquake in Haiti and helped lead a Miami Herald reporting team whose investigation into the crash of the space shuttle Columbia was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The Fiddler on Pantico Run was named a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, administered by Columbia University and Harvard Nieman Foundation.  He lives in Southern California with his wife and two children. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 15, 2012. Books from this event can be purchased here: http://tinyurl.com/b325kdt

Sammy Harkham

Sammy Harkham: Everything Together (PictureBox)

Comics artist and Kramers Ergot editor Sammy Harkham will discuss and sign the brand new anthology of his short story work, Everything Together. Sammy Harkham is regarded as one of the most influential cartoonist/editors of his generation. After a decade of work and groundbreaking anthologies, Everything Together collects his short stories. These comics condense vast amounts of emotion and information into nuanced cartoon narratives. Harkham's classic style is both articulate and expedient. At the center of the book are two vastly different tales: Poor Sailor, a sea-faring myth of a man gone to find wealth for his love; and Somersaulting, a kind of fever dream of teenagers in love, wiling away the summer. Around these stories shorter comic strips tackling everything from Napoleon (if he was a tortured artist) to touching examinations of Jewish mysticism and life in a shtetl, to satires of contemporary University life. Through all these works, Harkham maintains a light touch and emotive wit. The works in this book confirm his place among the best storytellers of his generation. Sammy Harkham was born in Los Angeles in 1980, moving to Sydney, Australia, at the age of 14. He soon started making his own comics and a zine, Kramers Ergot, which has evolved into one of the most influential comics anthologies published today. His comic strip Poor Sailor, originally published in Kramers Ergot 4, was subsequently included in Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2004 and has been published in French, Korean and Italian. Kramers Ergot has been on numerous “best of the year” lists including the LA Weekly, Time, The New York Times, Dazed and Confused, The Comics Journal and Publishers Weekly. In 2006 Harkham started the ongoing comic series, Crickets, and edited The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror, and most recently the eighth volume of Kramers Ergot. A partner in both the renowned bookstore Family, and the movie theater, Cinefamily, Harkham lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 11, 2012.

Copies of the book can be purchased here:  http://tinyurl.com/acdrgv6