Skylight Books Podcast Series

Dora Malech, "STET" w/ Michelle Brittan Rosado

In Stet, poet Dora Malech takes constraint as her catalyst and subject, exploring what it means to make or break a vow, to create art out of a life in flux, to reckon with the body’s bounds, and to arrive at a place where one might bear and care for another life. Tapping the inventive possibilities of constrained forms, particularly the revealing limitations of the anagram, Stet is a work of serious play that brings home the connections and intimacies of language.

Malech is in conversation with Michelle Brittan Rosado, author of Why Can't It Be Tenderness.

Brandy Colbert, "THE REVOLUTION OF BIRDIE RANDOLPH" w/

Dove "Birdie" Randolph works hard to be the perfect daughter and follow the path her parents have laid out for her: She quit playing her beloved soccer, she keeps her nose buried in textbooks, and she's on track to finish high school at the top of her class. But then Birdie falls hard for Booker, a sweet boy with a troubled past...whom she knows her parents will never approve of.

When her estranged aunt Carlene returns to Chicago and moves into the family's apartment above their hair salon, Birdie notices the tension building at home. Carlene is sweet, friendly, and open-minded--she's also spent decades in and out of treatment facilities for addiction. As Birdie becomes closer to both Booker and Carlene, she yearns to spread her wings. But when long-buried secrets rise to the surface, everything she's known to be true is turned upside down.

The Revolution of Birdie Randolph author Brandy Colbert is in conversation with Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World.

Madeline Stevens, "DEVOTION"

Ella is flat broke: wasting away on bodega coffee, barely making rent, seducing the occasional strange man who might buy her dinner. Unexpectedly, an Upper East Side couple named Lonnie and James rescue her from her empty bank account, offering her a job as a nanny and ushering her into their moneyed world. Ella’s days are now spent tending to the baby in their elegant brownstone or on extravagant excursions with the family. Both women are just 26—but unlike Ella, Lonnie has a doting husband and son, unmistakable artistic talent, and old family money.

Ella is mesmerized by Lonnie’s girlish affection and disregard for the normal boundaries of friendship and marriage. Convinced there must be a secret behind Lonnie’s seemingly effortless life, Ella begins sifting through her belongings, meticulously cataloging lipstick tubes and baby teeth and scraps of writing. All the while, Ella’s resentment grows, but so does an inexplicable and dizzying attraction. Soon Ella will be immersed so deeply in her cravings—for Lonnie’s lifestyle, her attention, her lovers—that she may never come up for air.

Devotion is inspired by the seven years Madeline Stevens spent working as a New York City nanny. Riveting, propulsive, and startling, this masterful debut novel incinerates our perceptions of femininity, lust, and privilege.

DRAG QUEEN STORYTIME w/ Sadie Pines

We hosted the oh-so-fabulous Sadie Pines, the woMAN behind writer/comedian H. Alan Scott. Sadie is the first and only drag queen fully inspired by The Golden Girls (it’s true, don’t bother Googling it). Sadie was born out of H. Alan’s years of interacting with Golden Girls fans through the podcast Out on the Lanai. Now she’s out living her golden life, and guess what?  She’s here to make yours a little brighter too. For more, follow her at @SadiePines.

Sadie will read Mary Wears What She Wants, by Keith Negley, and lead the kiddos in some fun activities. The event is free and open to the public. Any donations will go towards the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital. 

Skylight Books Staff Showcase

Ever wonder what your favorite booksellers do when we’re not ringing sales and recommending great books?

We play in bands. We write plays, poems, and short stories. We draw and paint and sculpt. We make films, zines and podcasts. We even tell jokes.

Come and see us do the things we do at the SKYLIGHT STAFF SHOWCASE!

Rob Zubrecky, "STRANGE CURES"

Strange Cures is a turbulent, against-all-odds memoir of self-discovery, success, failure, and reinvention, told by one of LA’s most interesting natives. With an unflinching gaze, musician/magician/actor Rob Zabrecky recounts his bizarre coming-of-age tale and his quest to find a place in the arts—and the world. The author reveals a young life filled with both physical miracles and subversive role models, including an uncle who impersonated an FBI agent and, in a drunken delusion, shot and nearly killed him. He takes readers on a roller coaster ride through the nascent days of Silver Lake’s music and art community, as seen through the lens of his critically acclaimed band, Possum Dixon. We explore the left-of-center landscape of Jabberjaw, LA’s independent coffeehouse which featured the early talents of Nirvana and Beck; Zabrecky’s own struggles with drug addiction, love, and recovery; and finally, his re-emergence as a magician venturing into the sacred world of Hollywood’s Magic Castle.

Tupelo Hussman, "gods with a little g" w/ Jim Krusoe

A vibrant, powerful literary novel, gods with a little g is the story of Helen Dedleder, a teen trapped in politically bright red and extremely religious town, Rosary, California, with a widower father who is a true believer. Helen’s mom lost her battle with cancer when Helen was a child and her dad is mired in his grief, lost to the consolation prize of prayer, or so he seems until he finds love with the mother of the leader of Rosary’s rebels (the Dickheads), who also happens to be Helen’s secret crush. Helen tries to escape her father’s burgeoning romance and her own confusing feelings for the king of the Dickheads by focusing on her work apprenticing her aunt, the county’s lone psychic and spiritual rebel. 

When Helen begins her first real friendship with Win and Rainbolene, siblings just arrived in Rosary with an urgent desire to depart—Rain in part because she’ll finally be able to get the hormones she needs to full become herself—she starts to see a future for herself for the first time outside of the tea leaves she tries and fails to read under her aunt’s tutelage, though it may be too late. 

Set in a near version of the current political apocalypse, gods with a little g is about how being a teenager is an apocalypse all its own: there must be destruction for there to be hope. 

Author Tupelo Hussman is in conversation with Jim Krusoe, who  has published six novels and two books of stories, Blood Lake and Abductions.

A Tribute to Toni Morrison

"The writing is — I'm free from pain. It's where nobody tells me what to do; it's where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I'm writing."

Join Skylight Books and friends as we celebrate the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison.

Jia Tolentino, "TRICK MIRROR" w/ Emma Carmichael

Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die.

Tolentino is joined in conversation with writer and editor Emma Carmichael, 

Chavisa Woods, "100 TIMES" w/ Michelle Tea

Lambda-nominated and Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Chavisa Woods presents one hundred personal stories of sexism, harassment, discrimination, and assault. Recounting her experiences with gender-based discrimination, unsolicited groping, and sexual violence--beginning in childhood, through the present--Woods lays out clear and unflinching vignettes that build in intensity as the number of times grows. Individually, and especially taken as a whole, these stories amount to powerful proof that sexual violence and discrimination are never just one-time occurrences, but part of a constant battle women and non-binary people face every day.

In these extraordinary pages, sexual violence and gendered-discrimination happen to people regardless of their age, in all parts of society, in rural and urban areas alike, in the US and abroad, from the time they are very young and through adulthood. Demonstrating how often people are conditioned to endure sexism and harassment, and how thoroughly men feel entitled to women’s spaces and bodies, 100 Times challenges the common, damaging belief that sexism and misogyny are no longer problems within our society.

Woods is in conversation with michelle tea, the author of the young adult novels Mermaid in Chelsea Creek and Girl at the Bottom of the Sea, as well as numerous books for grown-ups.

Susan Straight, "IN THE COUNTRY OF WOMEN" w/ Patt Morrison

In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self-proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close-knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne’s female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post-slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight’s mother-in-law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan’s family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California.

A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan—those who become your family. An entire community helped raise her daughters. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.” In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women.

Straight is in conversation with Patt Morrison, a Los Angeles Times writer and columnist with a share of two Pulitzer Prizes.

Alan Sepinwall, "THE SOPRANOS SESSIONS" w/ Justin Halpern

On January 10, 1999, a mobster walked into a psychiatrist’s office and changed TV history. By shattering preconceptions about the kinds of stories the medium should tell, The Sopranos launched our current age of prestige television, paving the way for such giants as Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. As TV critics for Tony Soprano’s hometown paper, New Jersey’s The Star-Ledger, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz were among the first to write about the series before it became a cultural phenomenon.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show’s debut, Sepinwall and Seitz have reunited to produce The Sopranos Sessions, a collection of recaps, conversations, and critical essays covering every episode. Featuring a series of new long-form interviews with series creator David Chase, as well as selections from the authors’ archival writing on the series, The Sopranos Sessions explores the show’s artistry, themes, and legacy, examining its portrayal of Italian Americans, its graphic depictions of violence, and its deep connections to other cinematic and television classics.

Sepinwall is joined in conversation by Justin Halpern, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Sh*t My Dad Says, inspired by his massively popular Twitter feed.

Simon Hanselmann, "BAD GATEWAY"

Perpetually drunk and high, lovable degenerates Megg and Mogg have drifted through a life full of raucous antics and free of consequences. But their heavy drug use, once a gateway to adventure, has begun to take a grim psychological toll. As her unstable lifestyle finally catches up to her, Megg must turn to her past to uncover the roots of her self-destructive habits that have led her down this dark path.

Simon Hanselmann was born in 1981 in Launceston, Tasmania. His New York Times best-selling Megg & Mogg series has been translated into thirteen languages, nominated for multiple Ignatz and Eisner awards, and won “Best Series” at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2018. He currently lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and a rotating cast of small animals.

J. Ryan Stradal, "THE LAGER QUEEN OF MINNESOTA"

Edith Magnusson's rhubarb pies are famous in the Twin Cities--they were named the third-best in the state of Minnesota and St. Anthony-Waterside Nursing Home has quickly becomes the hottest dinner ticket in town. Still, she lays awake wondering how her life might have been different if her father hadn't left their family farm to her sister Helen, a decision that split their family in two. With the proceeds from the farm, her sister, Helen Blotz, built her husband Orval's family soda business into the top selling brewery in Minnesota. She singlehandedly created the light beer revolution and made their corporate motto ubiquitous: "Drink lots, it's Blotz." But Helen dismisses IPAs as a fad, and the Blotz fortune begins its inevitable decline. Soon, though, she finds a potential savior that's surprisingly close to home. . .

Diana Winter earns a shot at learning the beer business from the ground up just as the IPA revolution begins. The stakes couldn't be higher: just as she's launching her own brewpub, she's due to deliver a baby girl. When the unthinkable happens, it's up to Grandma Edith--and a delightfully surprising cadre of grandmother friends--to secure the next generation's chances for a better future. Can Grandma Edith's Rhubarb Pie In A Bottle Ale save Diana's fledgling brewery, and change their hearts and fortunes forever? 

The Lager Queen of Minnesota serves up a cast of lovable, quintessentially Midwestern characters eager to make their mark in a world that's often stacked against them. In this deeply affecting, humorous, emotional family saga, resolution can take generations, but when it finally comes, we're surprised, moved, and delighted.

Ed Brubaker, "BAD WEEKEND" w/ Paul Scheer and Nicholas Winding Refn

Comics won't just break your heart. Comics will just kill you.

Hal Crane should know, he's been around since practically the beginning. Stuck at an out-of-town convention, waiting to receive a lifetime achievement award, Hal's weekend takes us on a dark ride through the secret history of a medium that's always been haunted by crooks, swindlers, and desperate dreamers. BAD WEEKEND-the story some are already calling the comic of the year from its serialization in CRIMINAL #2 and #3-has been expanded, with several new scenes added and remastered into a hardcover graphic novel, in the same format as ED BRUBAKER and PHILLIPS' ( KILL OR BE KILLED, FATALE, CRIMINAL) bestselling MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES. This gorgeous package is a must-have, an evergreen graphic novel every true comics fan will want to own.

Brubaker is in conversation with actor/comedian Paul Scheer and film director Nicholas Winding Refn.