Enjoy recent author events, interviews, and bookseller series. Visit our website to learn more: www.skylightbooks.com
Episodes
Thursday Feb 02, 2023
SKYLIT: Jessica Johns, ”Bad Cree”
Thursday Feb 02, 2023
Thursday Feb 02, 2023
Produced by Nat Freeman & Mick Kowaleski.
Music by Duck the Piano Wire
Saturday Apr 23, 2022
SKYLIT: Gregory D. Smithers, ”RECLAIMING TWO SPIRITS” w/ Raven E. Heavy Runner
Saturday Apr 23, 2022
Saturday Apr 23, 2022
Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí’skassi, miati, okitcitakwe, or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person.
Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism’s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed—and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century.
Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
SKYLIT: Lisa Bird-Wilson, ”PROBABLY RUBY”
Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
Given up for adoption as an infant, Ruby is raised by a white couple who understand little of her Indigenous heritage. This is the great mystery that hovers over Ruby’s life—who her people are and how to reconcile what is missing. As the novel spans time and multiple points of view, we meet the people connected to Ruby: her birth parents and grandparents; her adoptive parents; the men and women Ruby has been romantically involved with; a beloved uncle; and Ruby’s children. Taken together, these characters form a kaleidoscope of stories, giving Ruby’s life dignity and meaning.
Probably Ruby is a dazzling novel about a bold, unapologetic woman taking control of her life and story, and marks the debut of a major new voice in Indigenous fiction.
Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Monday Mar 14, 2022
Sasha LaPointe, ”RED PAINT”
Monday Mar 14, 2022
Monday Mar 14, 2022
With little more to guide her than a passion for the thriving punk scene of the Pacific Northwest and a desire to live up to the responsibility of being the namesake of her beloved great-grandmother—a linguist who helped preserve her Indigenous language of Lushootseed—Sasha throws herself headlong into the world, determined to build a better future for herself and her people.
Set against a backdrop of the breathtaking beauty of Coast Salish ancestral land and imbued with the universal spirit of punk, Red Paint is ultimately a story of the ways we learn to find our true selves while fighting for our right to claim a place of our own.
Examining what it means to be vulnerable in love and in art, Sasha offers up an unblinking reckoning with personal traumas amplified by the collective historical traumas of colonialism and genocide that continue to haunt native peoples. Red Paint is an intersectional autobiography of lineage, resilience, and, above all, the ability to heal.
Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Saturday Sep 18, 2021
SKYLIT: Darrel J. McLeod, ”PEYAKOW”
Saturday Sep 18, 2021
Saturday Sep 18, 2021
Weaving together the past and the present through powerful, linked chapters, McLeod confronts how both the personal traumas of his youth and the historical traumas of his ancestral line impact the trajectory of his life. With unwavering and heart-wrenching honesty, Peyakow--Cree for "one who walks alone"--recounts how one man carries the spirit of his family through the lifelong process of healing.
Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.
Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.
Wednesday Mar 18, 2020
SEAWITCHES, VOL. 4 w/ Olivia VanDamme & Margaret Seelie
Wednesday Mar 18, 2020
Wednesday Mar 18, 2020
Seawitches is a bi-annual print publication with the eternal theme of water. Within the water theme we’ve explored menstruation, mental health, white privilege, technology, environmental issues, and more.
Every issue has an Artist In Residence (AIR), including Leah Koransky (1), Caitlin Mattisson (2), and Savannah Rusher (4). Writers include Easkey Britton, Serena Renner, Kehinde Apara, Margaret Seelie, Maureen Murphy, Coco Peezy, and more. Artists include Amelia Coplan, Andrew Kaineder, Bleen Photography, Chris Duncan, Cristine Blanco, Elizabeth Pepin Silva, Rebecca Schillinger, Kaylee Savage-Wright, Kimberly Rose Wendt, Luke Allen, Marley Reynosa, Paige Laverty, Preston Richardson, Sarah Beeby, Susan Mattisson, Yoni Matatyaou, and more.
Whether you love oceans with wild waves, lakes that leave your skin smelling of fresh dirt, pools with sunlight slithering across blue paint, or a good soak in the tub – we think you'll like what you find with Seawitches.
Thursday Jul 04, 2019
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "AS LONG AS THE GRASS GROWS"
Thursday Jul 04, 2019
Thursday Jul 04, 2019
In As Long As Grass Grows, author and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker argues that colonization was not just an invasion of and domination over Indigenous populations by European settlers, but that a central harm of colonization was the environmental injustices it imposed. Gilio-Whitaker traces this systemic dispossession of sacred land from Indigenous peoples from early colonization through today, arguing that it represents the greatest form of environmental injustice for Indigenous populations in the United States.
Gilio-Whitaker traces how the new Red Power movement of the '70s and '80s, and other women-led movements for Indigenous environmental justice spurred cooperation between environmentalists, tribes, and the government. In 1991, the People of Color Environmental Justice Theory Leadership Summit produced the Principles of Environmental Justice with seventeen points that represented a greater level of inclusion for Indigenous concerns than the preceding studies had, framing environmental justice in terms of colonial histories and oppressive political domination.
Wednesday Apr 04, 2018
CINDY RINNE READS FROM LISTEN TO THE CODEX, WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
Wednesday Apr 04, 2018
Wednesday Apr 04, 2018
The Native Blossoms Chapbook Series embraces poetry of place, exploring connections to the natural landscape, the untamed, the indigenous. Each chapbook, while utilizing themes and concepts that comprise the contemporary American lyric, features at least one poem that takes the botanical name of a wildflower or other flora native to the poet's locale as its title. As Joy Harjo encourages, "See those sensitive hills? They need to be talked to, sung to. . . ."
Listen to the Codex (Yak Press)
The twenty-eight poems in this collection stitch a tale that interlaces ancient mythology with science fiction. The story we embark upon in these pages is one that is particularly feminine. Skillfully woven together, we encounter figures both mystical and ordinary, ranging from Native tribes and Zen practices to a futuristic self-healing robot. These poems bring together several disparate narrative threads and from them, reconcile an intricate whole. This is Cindy's second chapbook, and fourth poetry collection.
Praise for Listen to the Codex:
“Calling upon the energy of origins, Cindy Rinne’s sensuous Listen to the Codex parallels a woman’s journey with the cycles of the earth. These imaginative poems of opening, embodiment, and surprise bring the sacred to the everyday: lighting candles and sage, invoking meditation, chanting, dirt rituals, and the guidance of a self-healing robot. A book of flight and remembrance, Rinne shows how the act of losing and finding calls us to listen, root ourselves in the natural world, and ‘breathe a circular breath.’"~ Jennifer K. Sweeney author of Little Spells and How to Live on Bread and Music
“Cindy Rinne’s poems are ‘arms of flight,’ ceremonial offerings that create a reality both ancient and modern. In these pages, you’ll meet a feathered unicorn and a self-healing robot, visit planets and stars, and taste a seed that holds ‘the soul of burning earth.’"~ Cynthia Anderson, author of Waking Life
“Cindy Rinne’s chapbook, Listen to the Codex, presents an alternate universe side by side with the one we know. The world of the “codex” is peopled with deer goddesses, Maya gods, sacred spirit snakes, and my favorite, a ‘self-healing robot.’ Alongside, we find the California Interstates 10 and 15 intersecting freeway overpass and the city of Long Beach. Inventive, baroque with imagery, and yet spare, these poems are a striking sampling of Rinne’s gift for capturing mystical moments in ordinary time and space. We are in the mystical past, the real past, the present, and the mystical present all at once. The pristine structure of the collection contrasts with the surrealistic, sci-fi, preternatural content in the poems. Rinne’s talent cannot go unobserved as one journeys through these poems, finding that the Red Madonna meets the self-healing robot. Who knows where it goes from there?”~ Carla McGill, Ph.D., author of Writing Customs blog
Cindy Rinne creates art and writes in San Bernardino, CA. She brings myth to life in a contemporary context. Cindy is the author of Breathe in Daisy, Breathe Out Stones (FutureCycle Press), Quiet Lantern (Turning Point Press), spider with wings (Jamii Publishing), and co-author of Speaking Through Sediment with Michael Cooper (ELJ Publications). Cindy is a Finalist for the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and a founding member of PoetrIE, an Inland Empire-based literary community. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Sea Foam Magazine, Blue Heron Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Honest Ulsterman (Northern Ireland), The Whirlwind Review, Birds Piled Loosely, CircleShow and others.
This debut collection digs through the garden of the familiar “ties that bind” — family relationships — to unearth profound connections and upsetting loss. The nineteen poems included in this volume honor the memory of those lost with surprising honesty and emotional clarity. Presented in precise, yet musical language, these poems negotiate a complex landscape with contemplative grace.
“In Hover the Bones, burying a miscarried child looks like planting a seed in a garden, and trimming vines feels like taking the place of a dead mother. The book’s epigraph from Audre Lorde reminds us that “we were never meant to survive,” and the final poem leaves us with a peaceful benediction: ‘May we be well. / May we be happy. / May we be free from suffering.’ Melisa Malvin-Middleton has created beauty out of darkness.” ~ Katie Manning, Founding Editor-in-Chief of Whale Road Review, and author of Tasty Other and The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman
Melisa Malvin-Middleton is a Los Angeles poet, playwright, and musician who teaches writing at California State University, Northridge and College of the Canyons. Her poetry has appeared in Silver Birch Press, The Ofi Press, Quail Bell Magazine, Rogue Agent, Angel City Review, and Clear Poetry, while her plays have been performed by Fresh Produce’d and Savage Players.
Night Walks (Yak Press)
This collection of twenty-eight poems travels through backyards, art, myth and focuses on small, familiar moments of light and loss. Carroll’s feminine voice delivers place—carefully framed and exposed—and invites us to grab our maps and join the journey.
Praise for Night Walks:
"Nancy Carroll’s Night Walks is a beautifully crafted collection of tableax that take us on a sensational journey through time and diverse archetypes. From ‘midnight swims around islands and lakes’ to ‘night wanders,’ we visit different eras inhabited by a ‘vagabond moon’ under the poet’s ‘hidden hypnosis.’ Like a skillful architect, she uses ‘stone, geometry, splinters’ to ‘construct new language like whisper, brush, tiptoe.’ Gratefully we delight in her song, where ‘she hangs like rain, strung between two ventricles, two lyres’ and ‘maps every faint implausible dream.’ " ~ Hélène Cardona, poet, translator, actor, and author of Dreaming My Animal Selves
Nancy Carroll received her Master of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at CSUN. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches composition at LA Valley College. Her poems have appeared in national journals such as Borderlands, REDzine, California Quarterly, and Redheaded Stepchild.