Skylight Books Podcast Series

Ruchika Tomar, "A PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS" w/ Xuan Juliana Wang

In her debut novel, A Prayer for Travelers, Ruchika Tomar melds artful prose with a haunting narrative creating an arresting and electric portrait of the dangers of girlhood in the American desert west and how small towns try–– and often fail–– to protect their own. Already hailed by Lit Hub as “an indelible portrait of love, grief, and trauma” and one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2019, A Prayer for Travelers illuminates the heat and fury of girlhood and one’s own memory.

The Nevada landscape––a sun-steamed, desert West that you can practically feel blistering off the page––serves as a harsh yet glittery, gritty yet stunning backdrop for this coming-of-age saga. Cale is our guide: a young bookish loner with a voice as markedly determined as it is vulnerable. Set adrift for the first time in her life, Cale begins waitressing at the local diner, where she reconnects with Penelope Reyes, a charismatic former classmate and all-around hustler. Penny exposes Cale to the reality that exists beyond their small town and the girls become inseparable until one terrifying act of violence shatters their world. When Penny vanishes without a trace, Cale sets off on a dangerous quest across the desert to find her friend.

Told in short, deftly interwoven chapters, the novel eases the story into a disorienting, devastating unraveling and seamlessly blends together a portrait of a memory under siege and a girl, unflinchingly, reclaiming herself. On the structure of the novel Tomar says, “I began thinking about the way I or my friends tell stories—elliptically, episodically. When you’re telling a story out loud it’s very hard to remember every detail in order. In particular, if you’ve ever had to tell a story of trauma, or hold one for one of your friends, you know just how ragged and disjointed that experience is. The nature of trauma and grief is fracturing.”

Tomar is in conversation with Xuan Juliana Wang, author of the debut short story collection, Home Remedies.

Sarah Rose Etter, "THE BOOK OF X" w/ Tommy Pico

THE BOOK OF X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday--school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents--with the surreal--rivers of thighs, men for slae, and fields of throats--Cassie's realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.

Author Sarah Rose Etter is in conversation with Tommy Pico, author of the books IRL (Birds LLC), Nature Poem (Tin House Books), and Junk (Tin House Books). 

INTERSECTIONALLIES

In poetic stanzas, IntersectionAllies introduces the stories of nine kids from diverse backgrounds. Authors Carolyn Choi, LaToya Council, and Chelsea Johnson use each character’s story to explain how children’s safety concerns are shaped by their intersecting identities, such as class, sexuality, dis/ability, race, religion, and citizenship—what is known in academic and activist circles as “intersectionality."

 

IntersectionAllies features introductions by law professor Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, and Dr. Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, author of Intersectionality: An Intellectual History, and artwork by illustrator Ashley Seil Smith. The stories in IntersectionAllies also suggest ways in which friends can support one another, or be an “ally,” despite different positions in life. The authors believe that forward-looking feminism must start with children, and IntersectionAllies shows that children’s literaturecan be the gateway to educating entire households.

Clark Allen, "MY MOVIE IDEAS"

A handful of years ago Clark Allen had an idea for a movie. Shortly after the first idea he had a second idea. The second was followed by a third, and then fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and so on. Having little interest in the silver screen himself, he never bothered to write any scripts or take any steps toward the actual filmmaking process. He did, however, continue to add to his catalog thinking that perhaps one day a hopeful screenwriter or director in need may cross his path, that he might pass along a few of his concepts, and then maybe in time he'd be able to trot down to the local cinematheque and check one out. His new book, My Movie Ideas, collects six hundred and ninety-one top notch, copyright free, suggestions prime for development at any time. 

Kristen Arnett, "MOSTLY DEAD THINGS" w/ Tommy Pico

One morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife— the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates—picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose—and the Mortons reach a tipping point. For the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them.

Kristen Arnett’s debut novel is a darkly funny, heart- wrenching, and eccentric look at loss and art and love.

Arnett is in conversation with Tommy Pico, author of the books IRL (Birds LLC), Nature Poem (Tin House Books), and Junk (Tin House Books).

Max Felker-Kantor, "POLICING LOS ANGELES" w/ David Stein

In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic history of policing, anti-police abuse movements, race, and politics in Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of the city's expansive police power through a range of previously unused and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.

Felker-Kantor is in conversation with David Stein, a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles.

Mickey Rapkin, "IT'S NOT A BED, IT'S A TIME MACHINE" w/ Sara Rue

In this clever picture book,  a young boy anxious for bedtime discovers his bed is a time machine!

Bedtime means lights out, with dark corners and spooky sounds. But it also means...

Adventure! Because it's not a bed, it's a time machine. Our hero rides it to the coolest time of all--the age of the dinosaurs. He makes a tyrannosaurus-sized friend, who helps him become the Boss of Bedtime.

While tonight's sleep will span millions of years, it'll feel like it's over in the blink of an eye.

Author Mickey Rapkin reads aloud with Sara Rue, an actor, writer and producer known for A Series of Unfortunate Events, Rules of Engagement, and Less Than Perfect.

Made in L.A., Vol. 2: Chasing the Elusive Dream

The Made in L.A. indie author co-op presents contributors to the latest installment of their annual fiction anthology series, Made in L.A. Vol. 2: Chasing the Elusive Dream. Join a publication party with local authors who have a passion for writing about their home.

While the first volume was rooted in Los Angeles, this second volume focuses on goals, dreams, and the distant horizon. It explores the fantasies people carry with them to L.A., as well as the dreams Angelenos dream while surrounded by this vast and evolving city.

This anthology series showcases a diverse range of voices and genres. Like the City of Angels where these stories were born, nothing is off-limits. Literary or contemporary, fantasy or science fiction, each story in this volume invites you to view this urban landscape through a different lens. The evening will include discussions about what we find inspiring about Los Angeles, how our stories came about, and a behind-the-scenes peek at indie publishing and the DIY production of hyper-local literary culture. 

Lisa Taddeo, "THREE WOMEN" w/ Clarissa Cruz

Lina, a homemaker in suburban Indiana, is a decade into a passionless marriage when she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life. Sloane, a glamorous entrepreneur in the northeast, is married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other men and women. Maggie, a high school student in North Dakota, begins a relationship with her English teacher that will have extraordinary consequences for them both—as well as the community in which they live.

For nearly a decade, Lisa Taddeo, an award-winning journalist and longtime contributor to New York magazine and Esquire, embedded herself with Three Women to write this deeply immersive account of their erotic lives and longings. The result—shocking, powerful, and timely—reads like George Packer’s The Unwinding, but for the state of female desire. Three Women is a major work from an exhilarating new voice.

Taddeo is in conversation with Clarissa Cruz, Features Editor at Entertainment Weekly.

Janet Fitch, "CHIMES OF A LOST CATHEDRAL"

The story of The Revolution of Marina M. continues in bestselling author Janet Fitch's sweeping epic about a young woman's coming into her own against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. 

After the events of The Revolution of Marina M., the young Marina Makarova finds herself on her own amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War---pregnant and adrift in the Russian countryside, forced onto her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child. She finds new strength and self-reliance to fortify her in her sojourn, and to prepare her for the hardships and dilemmas still to come.

When she finally returns to Petrograd, the city almost unrecognizable after two years of revolution, the haunted, half-emptied, starving Capital of Once Had Been, she finds the streets teeming with homeless children, victims of war. Now fully a woman, she takes on the challenge of caring for these civil war orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction.

But despite the ordeal of war and revolution, betrayal and privation and unimaginable loss, Marina at last emerges as the poet she was always meant to be.

Chimes of a Lost Cathedral finishes the epic story of Marina's journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century---as a woman and an artist, entering her full power, passion, and creativity just as her revolution reveals its true direction for the future.

Words Uncaged Reading

​​"When I first visited California State Prison, Lancaster what I saw there were not prisoners, but cages filled of hundreds of lights —lights of knowledge, wisdom, compassion, love, insight and remorse.
​It was as if hundreds of candles had been locked in a distant closet, or that the stars had been hidden behind the blanket of the desert night, denying us the light that they had to shine upon the world." --Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy

Words Uncaged is a creative platform, created by the men of A-Yard California State Prison, Lancaster, and CalState LA professor Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy. Its purpose is for incarcerated artists, writers, students and poets to dialogue and critically engage with you. We invite you to experience our voices--uncaged from the prison walls. We invite you to rethink who incarcerated men are. We invite you to explore our common humanity together. We invite you to imagine alternatives to our current system of mass incarceration in the United States.

David Marlett, "AMERICAN RED"

The men and women of American Red are among the most fascinating in American history. When, at the dawn of the 20th century, the Idaho governor is assassinated, blame falls on “Big Bill” Haywood, the all-powerful, one-eyed boss of the Western Federation of Miners in Denver. Close by, his polio-crippled wife, Neva, struggles with her wavering faith, her love for another man, and her sister’s affair with her husband. New technologies accelerate American life, but justice lags behind. Private detectives, battling socialists and unions on behalf of wealthy capitalists, will do whatever it takes to see Haywood hanged. The scene is set for bloodshed, from Denver to Boise to San Francisco. America’s most famous attorney, Clarence Darrow, leads the defense—a philandering U.S. senator leads the prosecution—while the press, gunhands, and spies pour in. Among them are two idealists, Jack Garrett and Carla Capone—he a spy for the prosecution, she for the defense. Risking all, they discover truths about their employers, about themselves and each other, and what they’ll sacrifice for justice and honor—and for love.

David Marlett is an award-winning storyteller and writer of historical fiction, primarily historical legal thrillers bringing alive the fascinating people and events leading to major historical trials.

Evening of Poetry with Red Hen Press

Join Red Hen Press for an evening of poetry readings, featuring Eloise Klein Healy, Ron Koertge, Kim Dower, and Francesca Bell.

Claudia D. Hernández, "KNITTING THE FOG" w/ Josie Méndez-Negrete

Weaving together narrative essay and bilingual poetry, Knitting the Fog is the complex self-portrait of a young Chapina girl who wakes up to find her mother gone. When her mother returns three years later, they begin a month-long journey to El Norte.

Once settled in California, Claudia has trouble assimilating--she doesn't speak English, and her Spanish is "weird"--but when back in Guatemala, she is startled to find she no longer belongs there either. Claudia Hernández alternates between lyrical prose and poetry, English and Spanish, to tell the human story of one girl—her struggles, her triumphs, and her growing sense of self—as she navigates a turbulent world in the eighties and nineties. It is a story told in unforgettable vignettes, and is a vivid portrait of immigration, both specific to its time and as timely as ever.

Hernández is joined in conversation by Josie Méndez-Negrete, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

SWITCHBLADE MAGAZINE: Live Reading

Join the writers of Switchblade Magazine, a quarterly noir fiction digest-sized magazine now going into its 10th issue, for a selection of readings. Readers include A.B. Patterson, Ashley Erwin, Andrew Miller, Jon Zalazny, Rex Weiner, Renee Asher Pickup, Lisa Douglass, Richard Risemberg, and Scotch Rutherford.