Skylight Books Podcast Series

Walter Mosley, "JOHN WOMAN"

 John Woman recounts the transformation of an unassuming boy named Cornelius Jones into John Woman, an unconventional history professor—while the legacy of a hideous crime lurks in the shadows.

At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father’s job at a silent film theater in New York’s East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself—as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman’s teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past.

Lydia Kiesling, "THE GOLDEN STATE" w/ Edan Lepucki

In Lydia Kiesling's razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent--her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a "processing error"--Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity.

But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world.

Kiesling is in conversation with Edan Lepucki, the bestselling author of novels California and Woman No. 17.

Shabnam Samuel, "A FRACTURED LIFE"

Abandoned by her parents as a three-year-old, and ultimately leaving her home country India for a new life in America as a young mother of a three-year-old son, this is not only an immigrant's story, but a poignant and powerful memoir that is at first, one of sadness and continuing adversity, but ultimately one of strength, purpose, and the universal triumph of hope. It is a story of dislocation, disruption, and despair, and brings focus to the silencing of girlhood and womanhood and how with time, love, and support we can work our way out of that silence. Shabnam Samuel was twenty seven when she moved to the US, carrying with her a troubled marriage, an almost estranged husband, and a three-year-old son. Hoping to create a fresh start from everything that was holding her down, it took Shabnam twenty-five years of trials and tribulations to finally find her voice, her strength, and her place in this world. A Fractured Life is her story.

Peter Gadol, "THE STRANGER GAME"

The word ‘follow’ seems to have lost its meaning in the digital age. Now, when someone is following you on Instagram or Twitter, it’s hardly cause for alarm. But Peter Gadol begs an eerie question in his sixth novel, The Stranger Game: What if those ‘following’ you on social media brought back the literal meaning of the word… What if they started following you in real life?

In the age of social media, humanity is, at large, lonely. This includes Rebecca and her boyfriend, Ezra, a fan of the viral sensation “the stranger game"; The games, in which players literally follow strangers in their day-to-day lives has swept the nation and disappearances – including Ezra’s – are reported as players drift aimlessly from subject to subject. Hoping to find him, Rebecca tried the game and meets Carey. As their relationship and game play deepen, Rebecca uncovers an unsettling subculture that has infiltrated her world. Playing the stranger game may lead her closer to Ezra, but also further from the life she once lived.

Riddled with Patricia Highsmith-like anxiety and the alienation of Paul Auster, The Stranger Game is a haunting tale of literary suspense about a viral game spinning perilously – and criminally – out of control.

WNBA/LA: National Reading Group Month

WNBA/LA celebrates National Reading Group Month with a special Women in Media panel, featuring Gretchen Bonaduce (Surviving Agent Orange), Laura Dave (Hello Sunshin), and Robinne Lee (The Idea of You), with moderator Ezina Le Blanc.

Heather Havrilesky, "WHAT IF THIS WERE ENOUGH?" w/ Ann Friedman

Why do our modern lives feel more difficult despite the world’s promises of limitless opportunity? When things go wrong, why do we always blame ourselves? We live in a time of extreme delusion, disorientation, and dishonestly — yet despite our uncertainties, anxieties, and resentments, we’re nevertheless instructed to sweep all hesitations or doubts under the rug and continue to fearlessly conquer the future.

How did we get here? And more importantly — can we imagine a different way of living?

In What if this Were Enough?, Heather Havrilesky examines just how we’ve landed in this bewildering spot in our collective history — how traditions of forced cheer and optimism, along with our fixation on success and constant improvement have been ingested and metabolized to become a warped filter through which we see ourselves and others.

Havrilesky is in conversation with journalist and cultural critic Ann Friedman.

Anne-Marie Kinney, "COLDWATER CANYON" w/ Anthony Miller

Shep has been dealt a bad hand in life. Halfheartedly raised by a cold grandmother and chronically ill following his deployment in Desert Storm, he self-medicates with alcohol and daydreams of salvation at the hands of women—ultimately landing on one woman in particular: Lila, the young actress he believes is his daughter despite all evidence to the contrary. As Shep navigates the mystically rendered streets and strip malls of the San Fernando Valley with his only companion, his dog Lionel, he takes increasingly desperate measures to insinuate himself into her life. Anne-Marie Kinney’s precise and considered prose examines the insistence on reshaping the past through the lens of one’s own trauma and conceived desires as a means of moving forward. Why do we so often look for solace and redemption through others, pushing ourselves to do anything for them, even when it harms everyone involved?

Kinney is in conversation with writer, critic, and independent scholar Anthony Miller.

LAMBDA Litfest: "Queer Writing"

Young queer writers yearn for queer teachers for a variety of reasons: to be seen and acknowledged, to find role models, to work in spaces that include their voices. On this panel, queer writing teachers from UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program will read excerpts from their recent work, and then discuss how queerness factors into their teaching of both straight and queer students.

The teachers included in the panel: Noel Alumit, Antonia Crane, Seth Fischer, Charles Jensen, and Mathew Rodriguez.

LAMBDA Litfest: "Trumpocalypse"

Four writers and a renowned book editor discuss the role of books and those who write them in such desperate times as these. Is it worth writing books? If so, what kinds of books? If not, what shall we writers do with ourselves for the duration?

Panelists include: Melissa Chadburn, Dan Smentanka, Cindy Chupack, Natashia Deon, moderated by Meredith Maran.

Juan Gabriel Vasquez, "THE SHAPE OF THE RUINS"

The Shape of the Ruins is Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s highly anticipated, deeply personal masterpiece that is being heralded as the most ambitious novel of his career. For the first time Vásquez puts himself at the center of the story—the narrator is a novelist also named Juan Gabriel Vásquez—one that unspools a tangled mystery of political conspiracy, brutal assassinations, and dangerous secrets lost to memory.

Diana Arterian and Allie Rowbottom

Playing Monster :: Seiche is a book-length poem by Diana Arterian that incessantly dodges between two narratives: the speaker's childhood experiences with an abusive father and, as an adult, increasingly aggressive acts made toward her mother by strange men. It is a piece of noir poetics. It is also memoir and documentary. Through tight, spare poems, Arterian's unflinching descriptions of difficult life experiences fight aestheticization, engaging directly with the events as through the poetry of witness.

In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege - but they were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments. More than 100 years after that deal was struck, Allie's mother Mary was diagnosed with the same incurable cancer, a disease that had also claimed her own mother's life. Determined to combat what she had come to consider the "Jell-O curse" and her looming mortality, Mary began obsessively researching her family's past, determined to understand the origins of her illness and the impact on her life of Jell-O and the traditional American values the company championed. Before she died in 2015, Mary began to send Allie boxes of her research and notes, in the hope that her daughter might write what she could not. Jell-O Girls is the liberation of that story.

Bonnie Chau, "ALL ROADS LEAD TO BLOOD"

Unflinching and compelling portrayals of desire fill All Roads Lead to Blood, an award-winning story collection by Bonnie Chau. Chau explores the lives of young women, focusing on love, heritage, and memory, presenting fresh perspectives of second-generation Chinese-Americans.

Moving back and forth between California and New York, and ranging as far away as Paris, Chau’s exquisitely written stories are bold, highly imaginative, and haunting, featuring unique characters who defiantly exert their individuality.

Grady Chambers, "NORTH AMERICAN STADIUMS" w/ Elizabeth Metzger

Max Ritvo Poetry Prize winner Grady Chambers brings us North American Stadiums, an assured debut collection about grace—the places we search for it, and the disjunction between what we seek and where we arrive.

“You were supposed to find God here / the signs said.” In these poems, hinterlands demand our close attention; overlooked places of industry become sites for pilgrimage; and history large and small—of a city, of a family, of a shirt—is unearthed. Here is a factory emptying for the day, a snowy road just past border patrol, a baseball game at dusk. Mile signs point us toward Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Salt Lake City, Chicago. And god is not the God expected, but the still moment amid movement: a field “lit like the heart / of the night,” black stars stitched to the yellow sweatshirts of men in a crowd.

A map “bleached / pale by time and weather,” North American Stadiums is a collection at once resolutely unsentimental yet deeply tender, illuminating the historical forces that shape the places we inhabit and how those places, in turn, shape us.

Chambers is joined in conversation by Elizabeth Metzger, Poetry Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal.

Jessica Hopper, "NIGHT MOVES" w/ Josh Kun

Written in taut, mesmerizing, often hilarious scenes drawn from 2004 through 2009, Night Moves captures the fierce friendships and small moments that form us all. Drawing on her personal journals from the aughts, Jessica Hopper chronicles her time as a DJ, living in decrepit punk houses, biking to bad loft parties with her friends, exploring Chicago deep into the night. And, along the way, she creates an homage to vibrant corners of the city that have been muted by sleek development. A book birthed in the amber glow of Chicago streetlamps, Night Moves is about a transformative moment of cultural history—and how a raw, rebellious writer found her voice.

Hopper is joined in conversation by Josh Kun, author and winner of a 2018 Berlin Prize.

Jeanne McCulloch, "ALL HAPPY FAMILIES" w/ Laurie Winer

A lifetime in the making, All Happy Families is Jeanne McCulloch’s entry into the other side of the literary process. As a former managing editor of the Paris Review and an editor at Tin House, she’s nurtured the early careers of an all-star roster of writers including David Foster Wallace, Ann Patchett, Jeffrey Eugenides, among others. Now she is ready to share her clear-eyed account of her struggle to find her own voice and finally tell her own story. Impressionistic, lyrical, at turns both witty and poignant, All Happy Families is an unforgettable look at a world where all that glitters on the surface is not gold, and each unhappy family is ultimately unhappy in its own unique way.

McCulloch is in conversation Laurie Winer, founding editor of the L.A. Review of Books.