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Episodes

Monday Jul 11, 2016
Monday Jul 11, 2016
The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine (Penguin Press)
From an award-winning journalist, a brave and necessary immersion into the everyday struggles of Palestinian life.
Over the past three years, American writer Ben Ehrenreich has been traveling to and living in the West Bank, staying with Palestinian families in its largest cities and its smallest villages. Along the way he has written major stories for American outlets, including a remarkable "New York Times Magazine" cover story. Now comes the powerful new work that has always been his ultimate goal, The Way to the Spring.
We are familiar with brave journalists who travel to bleak or war-torn places on a mission to listen and understand, to gather the stories of people suffering from extremes of oppression and want: Katherine Boo, Ryszard Kapuciski, Ted Conover, and Philip Gourevitch among them. Palestine is, by any measure, whatever one's politics, one such place. Ruled by the Israeli military, set upon and harassed constantly by Israeli settlers who admit unapologetically to wanting to drive them from the land, forced to negotiate an ever more elaborate and more suffocating series of fences, checkpoints, and barriers that have sundered home from field, home from home, this is a population whose living conditions are unique, and indeed hard to imagine. In a great act of bravery, empathy and understanding, Ben Ehrenreich, by placing us in the footsteps of ordinary Palestinians and telling their story with surpassing literary power and grace, makes it impossible for us to turn away.
Praise for The Way to the Spring
"Ben Ehrenreich's rendition of the Palestinian experience is powerful, deep and heartbreaking, so much closer to the ground than the Middle East reporting we usually see. I wish there were more writers as brave."--Adam Hochschild
"As heart-breaking as it is, The Way to the Spring is also a strangely joyful book, because Ehrenreich grasps the essence of the Palestinian struggle: not Islam, or even nationalism, but the stubborn refusal of injustice, the restless search for how it would feel to be free, as Nina Simone said. The Way to the Spring is more than a work of journalism. It is a freedom song, burning with humanity."--Adam Shatz
Ben Ehrenreich is a journalist whose writing has appeared in LA Weekly, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. He lives in Los Angeles.

Monday Jul 11, 2016
PEN CENTER USA PRESENTS: THE EMERGING VOICES MEET AND GREET
Monday Jul 11, 2016
Monday Jul 11, 2016
The Emerging Voices Meet and Greet
PEN Center USA will present an informational evening with current and former Emerging Voices fellows and mentors for the benefit of interested applicants. The Emerging Voices Fellowship is a literary mentorship that aims to provide new writers who are isolated from the literary establishment with the tools, skills, and knowledge they need to launch a professional writing career.
Readings/ Fellowship Overview/ Q & A/ Summer Cocktails
Victoria Chang writes poetry and children's books. Her latest poetry book is The Boss, which won a PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. Her picture book Is Mommy? was a New York Times Notable Book. She lives in southern California with her family.
Rayne Gasper's work has appeared in The New Statesman, The Adirondack Review, and Word Riot, and has been selected for Long Form Fiction's Pick of The Week. In 2012, she was named a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. Rayne is a Massachusetts native and currently resides in Los Angeles, where she is at work on her debut collection of stories.
Mehnaz Sahibzada was born in Pakistan and raised in Los Angeles. She holds an MA in Religious Studies from UC Santa Barbara, and she was a 2009 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. Her poetry chapbooks, Tongue-Tied: A Memoir in Poems (2012) and Summer Forgets to Wear a Petticoat (2016), were published by Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared in publications such as Asia Writes, The Rattling Wall, and Pedestal Magazine. An English teacher, she lives in southern California.
Nonfiction writer Sylvia Sukop grew up in rural Pennsylvania and lived in Boston and New York City before settling in Los Angeles. She was a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow in 2009, and her work has since been published in the anthologies Emerge (Lambda Literary Foundation, 2016), LAtitudes: An Angeleno’s Atlas (Heyday, 2015), and Strange Cargo (PEN Center USA, 2010). She is a 2016 Fellow in NewGround: The Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change, and a longtime volunteer and writing coach for the Posse Foundation. She will be entering the Washington University in St. Louis creative writing MFA program this fall.
For a full list of benefits and application details visit: penusa.org/programs/emerging-voices

Monday Jun 27, 2016
Monday Jun 27, 2016
Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from A White Rapper Who Almost Made it Big (Crown)
After Vanilla Ice, but before Eminem, there was "Hot Karl," the Jewish kid from the L.A. suburbs who became a rap battling legend and then almost became a star.
When 12-year old Karp got his first taste of rapping for crowds at his friend's bar mitzvah in 1991, little did he know that he was taking his first step on a crazy journey— one that would end with a failed million-dollar recording and publishing deal with Interscope Records when he was only 19, but along the way would also include feuding with Fred Durst, opening for Snoop Dogg, blacking out with Mark McGrath, and recording with a young Kanye. He also introduces his rap partner, Rickye, who constitutes the second half of their group XTra Large; his supportive mom, who performs with him onstage; and the soon-to-be-household-name artists he records with, including Kanye West, Redman, Fabolous, Mya, and will.i.am. Finally, he reveals why his album never saw the light of day (two words: Slim Shady), the downward spiral he suffered after, and what he found instead of rap glory. Karp’s hilarious yet surprisingly poignant memoir is the ultimate fish-out-of-water story about a guy who follows an unlikely passion—trying to crack the rap game—despite what everyone else says. It’s 30 Rock for the rap set; 8 Mile for the suburbs; and quite the journey for a white kid from the valley.
Praise for Kanye West Owes Me $300
“The funniest person I follow on Twitter finally got smart and wrote about his unlikely—and hilarious—odyssey as teenage rapper Hot Karl. Karp’s sharp wit and gossipy giggles keep you turning pages, but what lingers is the story of a survivor. This book should be mandatory reading for or anyone who has ever wanted to be famous.”—Kevin Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Tough Sh*t
“If I had kids, I'd read passages from this to them at night. Rap careers definitely haven't been explored from this perspective, and I'm excited to see the ripples. Jensen’s gonna make some enemies, though. I’ve been on television.” —Hannibal Buress
“I remember hearing faint whispers about a white kid on the west coast who got like the craziest deal ever from some radio freestyles or some shit. But we never saw anything concrete, so I assumed he was hip-hop's Bigfoot and left it at that. Who knew it was real??!!! This is the story of the rap game's Sasquatch.”—Bun B, Grammy-nominated rapper
“Jensen's story is so funny and so well-written that it's impossible there's any truth to it.” —Kay Cannon, writer, Pitch Perfect and 30 Rock
“Sure, everyone is curious to know what it's like to be a white rapper, but only Jensen Karp has the wit and humility to reveal what it was like to get knocked down by the music industry, dust off his Cross Colours, and keep moving.”—Paul Scheer
Jensen Karp, formerly known as Hot Karl, is an LA-based writer, comedian, and co-owner of Gallery 1988, the nation’s leading destination for pop-cultured themed artwork. He hosts the “Get Up On This” podcast on the Earwolf Network, co-hosts the web series “Baby Talk,” and has written and produced for Funny or Die, the MTV VMAs, HelloGiggles, Rolling Stone, WWE Raw, The Hundreds, and the ESPYs. As an actor, he’s appeared on VH1’s “Barely Famous” and “Candidly Nicole.” You can find him at jensenkarp.com or follow him at @Jensenclan88.
Greg Behrendt is a comedian, author, musician and sometime screen printer. He’s is the co- author of the New York Times bestselling books He’s Just Not That Into You and It’s Called A Breakup Because It’s Broken. Greg is a veteran standup whose resume includes specials on HBO, Comedy Central, Netflix and a recent imaginary special performed in the underground garage at Madison Square Garden. He has appeared on Conan, The Tonight Show and some cancelled stuff as well as being cut out of the film Jerry Maguire. Greg currently spends time over parenting his two lovely daughters, touring as a standup, recording his popular podcast Just Keep Them Alive, and playing with his timely surf, punk, reggae, ska band The Reigning Monarchs. He some day hopes to own a pillow and two chickens.

Monday Jun 27, 2016
LISA HANAWALT DISCUSSES HER BOOK HOT DOG TASTE TEST
Monday Jun 27, 2016
Monday Jun 27, 2016
Hot Dog Taste Test (Drawn + Quarterly)
Hot Dog Taste Test serves up Lisa Hanawalt's devastatingly funny comics, saliva-stimulating art, and deliciously screwball lists as she skewers the pomposities of foodie subculture. Join the James Beard Award-winning cartoonist and production designer/producer of Bojack Horseman as she presents a selection of food-related excerpts from Hot Dog Taste Test.
"Frankly speaking, you should get off your buns and go buy this book you'll relish it." Amy Sedaris
"Lisa Hanawalt has an amazing ability to make the mundane disturbing and the strange seem normal. Also, her baking tips are solid." David Chang, Founder of Momofuku Restaurants & Lucky Peach Magazine
"We are so lucky to get these peeks into Lisa Hanawalt's brain and stomach. The amount of joy in her gleefully pervy illustrations makes me happier to be alive. I aspire to the level of enthusiasm she seems to derive from examining how stupid it is to be a person!" Tavi Gevinson, Editor of Rookie
"Lisa Hanawalt is the Matisse of the buffet line, the O'Keefe of the fish ball, and the Vermeer of the pigeon with a hot dog in its beak. Also: horses." Jonathan Gold, food critic and Pulitzer Prize Winner
"Lisa Hanawalt is my favourite funny artist. Her special brand of humor hits me directly where I live, even though I never told her where I live." Jaime Hernandez, author of Love and Rockets.
Lisa Hanawalt is an artist living in Los Angeles and is the production designer/producer of the Netflix original series Bojack Horseman. Hanawalt has worked on illustrations, book covers, animations, comics, murals, and textile patterns, and exhibits her work in galleries. She writes and draws a James Beard Award–winning quarterly food column for Lucky Peach magazine, and cohosts the podcast Baby Geniuses with the comedian Emily Heller. Her first collection with Drawn & Quarterly was 2013's critically acclaimed My Dirty Dumb Eyes.

Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Blood, Bone and Marrow: A Biography of Harry Crews (University of Georgia Press)
On what would have been Harry Crews' 81st birthday, we celebrate the lasting literary legacy of one of the most singular voices in American letters.
In 2010, Ted Geltner drove to Gainesville, Florida, to pay a visit to Harry Crews and ask the legendary author if he would be willing to be the subject of a literary biography. His health rapidly deteriorating, Crews told Geltner he was on board and would even sit for interviews and tell his stories one last time. “Ask me anything you want, bud,” Crews said. “But you’d better do it quick.” The result is Blood, Bone, and Marrow, the first full-length biography about one of the most unlikely figures in 20th Century American literature, a writer who emerged from a dirt-poor South Georgia tenant farm and went on to create a singularly unique voice of fiction.
With books such as Scar Lover, Body, and Naked in Garden Hills, Crews opened a new window into southern life, focusing his lens on the poor and disenfranchised, the people who skinned the hogs and tended the fields, the “grits,” as Crews affectionately called his characters and himself. He lived by a code of his own design, flouting authority and baring his soul, and the stories of his whiskey-and-blood soaked lifestyle created a myth to match any of his fictional creations. His outlaw life, his distinctive voice and the context in which Harry Crews lived combine to form the elements for a singularly compelling narrative about an underappreciated literary treasure.
Praise for Blood, Bone and Marrow:
"Harry Crews was a uniquely gifted and haunted storyteller. Novelist, journalist, memoirist he made each form his own in a way no one else had before or since. The pages that follow in this absorbing biography detail this and reach into the guts of the experiences that formed him and gave him a voice that was sad, brutal, and funny. Harry said that when it came to writing the truth about himself or anything for that matter he was not as interested in facts as he was in memory and belief."--Michael Connelly, from the Foreword
"In Blood, Bone, and Marrow Ted Geltner gives us a fast-paced narrative of the crazy, violent, tragic, and memorable life of Harry Crews. Geltner knew Crews and produces a book worthy of its subject. This is an excellent first-wave biography that will be a joy to all Harry Crews fans and will be an invaluable resource for scholars and enthusiasts alike.--Taylor Hagood, author of Faulkner, Writer of Disability
Ted Geltner is an associate professor of journalism at Valdosta State University, adviser to the campus newspaper, and author of Last King of the Sports Page: The Life and Career of Jim Murray. He worked for seventeen years as a writer and editor at a number of newspapers, including theGainesville Sun, the Scranton Times Tribune, and the Ocala Star-Banner. For more information, please visit www.bloodboneandmarrow.com.
Michael Connelly is the author of the recent #1 New York Times bestsellersThe Drop, The Fifth Witness, The Reversal, The Scarecrow, The Brass Verdict, and The Lincoln Lawyer, as well as the bestselling Harry Bosch series of novels. He is a former newspaper reporter who has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels. He spends his time in California and Florida.
Steve Oney was educated at the University of Georgia and at Harvard, where he was a Nieman Fellow. He worked for many years as a staff writer for theAtlanta Journal-Constitution Magazine. He has also contributed articles to many national publications, including Esquire, Playboy, Premiere, GQ and the New York Times Magazine. Oney lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Madeline Stuart. And The Dead Shall Rise is his first book.

Sunday Jun 26, 2016
MANU SAADIA DISCUSSES HIS NEW BOOK TREKONOMICS
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Trekonomics (Piper Text)
Star Trek is set in an amazing utopian universe of faster-than-light travel, of “beam me up, Scotty,” and Vulcan salutes. It’s also a universe where war and poverty have been eradicated, money doesn’t exist, and work is indistinguishable from leisure.
In this ground-breaking book, timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek’s first episode, Manu Saadia takes a deep dive into the show’s most radical and provocative aspect: its detailed and consistent economic vision.
Could we create such a utopia here on Earth? And why has Star Trek’s future had such staying power in our cultural imagination? Trekonomics looks at the morals, values, and hard economics that underpin the series’ ideal society, and its sources of inspiration both inside and outside the science-fiction canon. After reading this book, you’ll be able to answer the question: If you could live in Star Trek’s economic utopia, would you want to?
Manu Saadia was born in Paris, France, where he fell into science fiction and Star Trek fandom at the age of eight. He studied history of science and economic history in Paris and Chicago. His work on Trekonomics has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times,The Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider. He also appeared on the panel “The Amazing Economics of Star Trek” along with Paul Krugman at New York City’s Comic Con in 2015. Manu Saadia is a contributing writer for Fusion.net. He lives in Los Angeles with his son and his wife.

Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest (Catapult)
In Watchlist, some of today's most prominent and promising fiction writers from around the globe respond to, meditate on, and mine for inspiration the surveillance culture in which we live. With contributions from Etgar Keret, T.C. Boyle, Robert Coover, Aimee Bender, Jim Shepard, Alissa Nutting, Charles Yu, Cory Doctorow, and many more, Watchlist unforgettably confronts the question: What does it mean to be watched? By turns political, apolitical, cautionary, and surreal, these stories reflect on what it s like to live in the surveillance state.
Aimee Bender is the author of five books; the most recent, The Color Master, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2013. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and more, as well as heard on This American Life. She lives in Los Angeles, and teaches creative writing at USC.
Miles Klee is an editor for the web culture site the Daily Dot as well as author of Ivyland (OR Books, 2012) and the story collection True False (OR Books, 2015). His essays, reportage, fiction, and satire have appeared inVanity Fair, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Awl, Guernica, The Collagist, and elsewhere.
Bryan Hurt is the author of Everyone Wants to Be Ambassador to France, winner of the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction. His work has appeared in The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Recommended Reading, Tin House, TriQuarterly, among many others. He teaches creative writing at St. Lawrence University.

Sunday Jun 26, 2016
PAUL VANGELISTI READS FROM HIS LATEST COLLECTION OF POETRY BORDER MUSIC
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Border Music (Talisman House)
Border Music is Paul Vangelisti’s thirty-third book of poetry, bringing together work from the last ten years, in sundry forms from the personal lyric, to alphabet poems, to longer collage and hybrid projects, to musically inspired acrostics. Some of these poems first appeared in limited editions here and abroad, and are now made available in one volume. Border Music is Vangelisti’s second book from Talisman House, with the collectionTwo having appeared in 2011. As Bill Mohr noted in the Chicago Review, “If seemingly willful obscurity is often a deterrent in reading or viewing work from any avant-garde, Vangelisti's poems are replete with a sustained clarity that invites us to savor these moments without being penalized for letting go of that which seems inaccessible.”
Paul Vangelisti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, as well as being a noted translator from Italian. In 2015 his Solitude was published in a bilingual edition by Galleria Mazzoli Editore in Modena; and a new collection, Border Music, has just appeared from Talisman House in Greenfield, MA. In 2006, Lucia Re’s and his translation of Amelia Rosselli’s War Variations won both the Premio Flaiano in Italy and the PEN-USA Award for Translation; while in 2010, his translation of Adriano Spatola’s The Position of Things: Collected Poems, 1961-1992 received an Academy of American Poets Prize. From 1971-1982 he was co-editor, with John McBride, of the literary magazine Invisible City and, from 1993-2002, edited Ribot, the annual report of the College of Neglected Science. He worked as a journalist at the Hollywood Reporter (1972-1974), and as Cultural Affairs Director at KPFK Radio (1974-1982). Vangelisti was Founding Chair of the Graduate Writing program at Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles, and is currently a professor in that program.

Sunday Jun 26, 2016
MARTIN POUSSON LAUNCHES HIS NEW NOVEL BLACK SHEEP BOY
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Sunday Jun 26, 2016
Black Sheep Boy (Rare Bird Books)
Meet a wild-hearted boy from the bayou land of Louisiana. Misfit, outcast, loner. Call him anything but a victim. Sissy, fairy, Jenny Woman. Son of a mixed-race Holy Ghost mother and a Cajun French phantom father.
In a series of tender and tough stories, he encounters gender outlaws, drag queen renegades, and a rogues gallery of sex-starved priests, perverted teachers, and murderous bar owners. To escape his haunted history, the wild-hearted boy must shed his old skin and make a new self. As he does, his story rises from dark and murk, from moss and mud, to reach a new light and a new brand of fairy tale. Cajun legends, queer fantasies, and universal myths converge into a powerful work of counter-realism. Black Sheep Boy is a song of passion and a novel of defiance.
Praise for Black Sheep Boy
“Beautifully impressionistic, and also raw, open and vulnerable. Pousson’s bayou is such a frightening and vibrant place, generous and punishing, and the narrator’s perspective pulls us in, and brings the reader close.”—Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"Electrical, convulsive, hallucinatory, elemental... A book to give you fevers, chills, and visions."—Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
Praise for No Place, Louisiana
finalist for the John Gardner Book Award in Fiction
“Setting out to capture the modern South, the first-time novelist confidently eschews the style of a Faulkner or the charm of a McCullers to evoke the prejudices and limitations of Cajun culture in its unique, enriching and destructive complexity.”—Publishers Weekly
“No Place, Louisiana is the Southern answer to The Ice Storm; from its sultry pages there emerges a chilling portrait of a family in the midst of a very deep freeze.”—The Los Angeles Times
“Powerful and empathetic...A beautiful ode to the lonely and unloved.”—New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Pousson has written a strong, confident novel... many veteran authors have yet to write a novel of this depth.”—BookReporter.com
“A remarkably sure-footed and rich first novel, admirable not only for the clarity of its voice and the fluidity of its style but for the coherence of its vision; its dramatic family saga, gradually unfolding in a deftly integrated Cajun universe, reveals the narrator to be a complex and acrobatic survivor. Pousson brings remarkable insight and literary power to the landscape of the American novel.” —Lis Harris, author of Rules of Engagement
Praise for Sugar
finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Awards for Poetry
“With Sugar, Martin Pousson returns to the territory that activated his novel, No Place, Louisiana, recharging that fertile ground with a shift from prose to poetry. The result is a series of compressed observations, by turns satiric and heartbreaking, languorous, outraged, and tender.” —Dave King, author of The Ha-Ha
“Here is the poet Louisiana has always wanted. Gulf Coast heat turns into huge trees and lush flora, which then turn into sex and dramatic dialogue. Desire so metamorphic inevitably slides toward hallucination. To convey experience at the edge, Martin Pousson has invented a new poetics that takes from the earlier art only its intense imagery and verbal economy. The few dozen pages of Sugar bring a tragic and sensuous bayou mindscape unforgettably to life.” —Alfred Corn, author of Stake and Contradictions
“...his sugar ain’t sweet, it’s scorched.” —Jake Shears, Scissor Sisters
Martin Pousson was born and raised in the bayou land of Louisiana. His short stories won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and have appeared in The Antioch Review, Epoch, Five Points, StoryQuarterly, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. He also was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Award, the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. He now lives in Los Angeles.

Thursday Jun 16, 2016
UC IRVINE MFA STUDENTS READ FROM THEIR WORK 2016
Thursday Jun 16, 2016
Thursday Jun 16, 2016
The UC Irvine MFA Reading Series is a program that provides current graduate students in fiction and poetry the opportunity to showcase their work to an audience of their peers and the greater community of Southern California.
The reading will feature pieces by poets Stefan Karlsson and Sarah Peace, and fiction writers Lara Fitzjerrald and William Hawkins.
Lara Fitzjarrald likes rivers and birds. She has a daughter who has two kittens. They're all from California.
Sarah Peace is from Geneseo, New York. She received her B.A. in English from SUNY Fredonia, where she also studied writing and dance.
Stefan Karlsson is a poet from Redlands, California. He completed his undergraduate studies at UCLA, where he served as editor for the literary journal, Westwind. His poems have appeared in The Great American Literary Magazine, Forklift, Ohio, and CIRCLE Poetry Journal.
William Hawkins is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His most recent publication, "Grandma's Sex Robot", can be found on Tinhouse.com.

Thursday Jun 16, 2016
NOAH HAWLEY DISCUSSES HIS NEW NOVEL BEFORE THE FALL, TOGETHER WITH BOB ODENKIRK
Thursday Jun 16, 2016
Thursday Jun 16, 2016
Before the Fall (Grand Central Publishing)
From the Emmy, PEN, Peabody, Critics' Choice, and Golden Globe Award-winning creator of the TV show "Fargo" comes "the" thriller of the year.
On a foggy summer night, eleven people--ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter--depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs--the painter--and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family.
With chapters weaving between the aftermath of the crash and the backstories of the passengers and crew members--including a Wall Street titan and his wife, a Texan-born party boy just in from London, a young woman questioning her path in life, and a career pilot--the mystery surrounding the tragedy heightens. As the passengers' intrigues unravel, odd coincidences point to a conspiracy. Was it merely by dumb chance that so many influential people perished? Or was something far more sinister at work? Events soon threaten to spiral out of control in an escalating storm of media outrage and accusations. And while Scott struggles to cope with fame that borders on notoriety, the authorities scramble to salvage the truth from the wreckage.
Amid pulse-quickening suspense, the fragile relationship between Scott and the young boy glows at the heart of this stunning novel, raising questions of fate, human nature, and the inextricable ties that bind us together.
Praise for Before the Fall:
"Before the Fall is an astonishing, character-driven tour-de-force. The story is a multi-layered, immersive examination of truth, relationships, and our unquenchable thirst for the media's immediate explanation of unfathomable tragedy."--Karin Slaughter, #1 internationally bestselling author
"This isn't just a good novel; it's a great one. I trusted no one in these pages, yet somehow cared about them all. Before the Fall brings a serrated edge to every character, every insight, and every wicked twist."--Brad Meltzer, bestselling author of The President's Shadow
"A masterly blend of mystery, suspense, tragedy, and shameful media hype...a gritty tale of a man overwhelmed by unwelcome notoriety, with a stunning, thoroughly satisfying conclusion."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Before the Fall is a ravishing and riveting beauty of a thriller. It's also a deep exploration of desire, betrayal, creation, family, fate, mortality, and rebirth. It's one part Dennis Lehane, one part Dostoevsky. I was spellbound from first page to last; I haven't fully recovered yet."--Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours
"I started and finished Before the Fall in one day. That begins to tell you what kind of smart, compellingly dramatic read it is. So read it."--James Patterson, #1 "New York Times" bestselling author of the Alex Cross and Michael Bennett series
"Like the successful screenwriter that he is, Hawley piles on enough intrigues and plot complications to keep you hooked."--Kirkus Reviews
"A pulse-pounding story, grounded in humanity."--Booklist (starred review)
Noah Hawley is an Emmy, Golden Globe, PEN, Critics’ Choice, and Peabody Award-winning author, screenwriter, and producer. He has published four novels and penned the script for the feature film Lies and Alibis. He created, executive produced, and served as show runner for ABC’s "My Generation" and "The Unusuals" and was a writer and producer on the hit series "Bones." Hawley is currently executive producer, writer, and show runner on FX’s award-winning series, "Fargo."
Bob Odenkirk has written for the TV shows "Saturday Night Live" (where he famously wrote "The Motivational Speaker" sketch), and "The Ben Stiller Show" (where he wrote the infamous "Manson Lassie" sketch), and then Bob went and created (and starred in) "Mr. Show with Bob and David," which has been called "the American Monty Python." He's also had a creative hand in creating "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" and "The Birthday Boys" sketch show on IFC. As an actor, Bob has had memorable roles as the agent Stevie Grant on "The Larry Sanders Show," the character of Saul Goodman on AMC's "Breaking Bad," and Director Alexander Payne’s Oscar-nominated film "Nebraska," as well as FX's award-winning series, "Fargo." Bob's comedy scripts and short essays have appeared in "The New Yorker," "Vice", and "Filter" magazine, among other publications.

Sunday Jun 05, 2016
Sunday Jun 05, 2016
Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday (Unnamed Press)
Debbie Graber’s debut short story collection, Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday is a trenchant and searing satirical look at office life that is as astute and hilarious as Joshua Ferris’s And Then We Came to the End.
These thirteen stories skewer corporate culture, as told through souls adrift in a khaki-clad purgatory. And Graber knows from what she writes – she has held a number of jobs in corporate America, which informed her gimlet-eyed writing. One of the aspects of the workplace that most interested her are the personas are forced to adopt. “It’s like they exist in a far flung area of the time space continuum where reason seems to always be taking a vacation day,” says Graber, “If we’re spending all these hours in make-believe land, what does that say about the work we are doing? What does it say about us?
In Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday, our hero Kevin Kramer is the new Senior Vice President of the Products Profit center at Production Solutions. He has worked hard for all his success, perfected the non-clammy handshake, and speaks “corporate” like a second language. But our Kevin Kramer harbors many dark secrets. As do many of the characters in Graber’s stories: An HR manager trying desperately to maintain order, even as the entire software department vanishes under mysterious circumstances. An estranged (and possibly deranged) sister devises her reunion by throwing together a DIY wedding shower. A man who wears a Chewbacca costume feels he is uniquely qualified to divide the world into winners and losers. And a call center representative tries to give himself a pep talk after a particularly egregious client interaction.
With a wit and voice all its own, with Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday, Debbie Graber announces herself as a literary talent to watch.
Praise for Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday
“The stories in Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday are funny and funny-sad, formally bold, and a total delight to read. Graber captures perfectly the absurdities of contemporary, corporate America and her fabulous debut reminds us that we are all searching for meaning and human connection, whether it be from friends, family, or reply-all emails.”-Edan Lepucki, author of California
“Debbie Graber's stories are crisp, sardonic, and funny—as antic and acerbic as they are intelligent and alert. A sly and incisive observer of human nature, Debbie Graber will win you over with this delightful debut.”-Sara Levine, author of Treasure Island!!!
"Evil, evil, evil stories-- If you know the devil, you should buy him this for Christmas."-Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
“Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday offers satirical fiction that causes you to howl with laughter at the same moment its sharply exposed horrors cut into you. Debbie Graber's stories capture the absurdities of the 21st century corporate workplace in which white-collar millenials find their inboxes always brimming with new incentives for betrayal and self-betrayal. Neither the powerless nor the powerful outrun their demons in these brilliantly funny and bruising tales of American "enterprise."-Kevin McIlvoy, author ofThe Fifth Station
“Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday skewers that place where so many of us spend our days and about which we spend the other hours of our lives complaining: the modern workplace. In this bitingly funny, precisely crafted collection, Debbie Graber takes on office excess: happy hours, overtime, trysts, and petty grievances. In doing so, she questions our societal notions of success and failure and invites us to laugh at our bosses and coworkers and, perhaps most of all, ourselves—knowing that if we don’t laugh, we just might cry. Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday is satire at its most incisive.”-Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade
"With laugh-out-loud humor and a wildly keen eye for detail, Graber doesn't just brilliantly satirize our heavily corporate and medicated world, she wonderfully eviscerates it."-J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest
Debbie Graber has performed at Second City, worked in an office, and received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from U.C. Riverside at Palm Desert. Her stories have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Harpers, Zyzzyva, Hobart, and elsewhere. Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday is her first collection of stories. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
Matt Flanagan began his career as a writer for The Late Show With David Letterman, wrote movies you haven't seen, and several shows that were canceled after 13 episodes. He currently writes for Disney Channel's Stuck In The Middle and co-hosts a storytelling podcast called Tell It Anyway with his wife Jennie Josephson.

Sunday Jun 05, 2016
MARGARET GUROFF DISCUSSES HER BOOK THE MECHANICAL HORSE
Sunday Jun 05, 2016
Sunday Jun 05, 2016
The Mechanical Horse: How the Bicycle Reshaped American Life (University of Texas Press)
In this lively cultural history, the journalist Margaret Guroff reveals how the bicycle has transformed American society, from making us mobile to empowering people in all avenues of life.
Filled with lively stories, The Mechanical Horse reveals how the bicycle transformed American life. As bicycling caught on in the nineteenth century, many of the country’s rough, rutted roads were paved for the first time, laying a foundation for the in-terstate highway system. Cyclists were among the first to see the possibilities of self-directed, long-distance travel, and some of them (including a fellow named Henry Ford) went on to develop the auto-mobile. Women shed their cumbersome Victorian dresses—as well as their restricted gender roles—so they could ride. And doctors recognized that aerobic exercise actually benefits the body, which helped to modernize medicine. Margaret Guroff demonstrates that the bicycle’s story is really the story of a more mobile America—one in which physical mobility has opened wider horizons of thought and new opportunities for people in all avenues of life.
“A provocative, in-depth analysis of the two-wheeler’s shifting influence on American society. Highly recommended.” —David Herlihy, author ofBicycle: The History
"Guroff makes a solid case for the bicycle as transformative in times of war (it was useful during World War I, for example, as “unobtrusive, gasoline- and forage-free transport”), and she maintains that bicycles inspired the Wright brothers in their airplane design. A bright, enthusiastic cultural history."—Kirkus Review
Margaret Guroff is a magazine editor. She is also the editor and publisher of Power Moby-Dick, an online annotation of Herman Melville’s classic novel. She teaches writing at the Johns Hopkins University

Sunday Jun 05, 2016
Sunday Jun 05, 2016
Prostitute Laundry
In the winter of 2014, writer and sex worker Charlotte Shane sent out her confessional letter to a small but devoted mailing list. In the months that followed, readership grew to over 5,000 subscribers who followed her candid, unstinting, sometimes heartbreaking meditations. Word spread quickly, garnering the project recognition from outlets such as The Washington Post and NPR.
This intimate investigation is one young woman’s best attempt at understanding her own rich, conflicted life, and the forces that act upon it. The collection is a thoughtful serial memoir about love, sex, money, and identity—how those forces can break us, and how they can make us whole again.
Praise for Prostitute Laundry
"Every form of writing has an author whose work helped define it; for TinyLetter, that author is Charlotte Shane. I don’t think anyone understood what a TinyLetter really could be until Shane began her Prostitute Laundry series in February of 2014 . . . It felt like reading a novel in serial form, spiked with the knowledge that these experiences were drawn from someone’s daily reality. And then, there’s the prose, which is absolutely hypnotic—intimate, confessional, and even self-scouring in a way that’s unspeakably rare." — Brooklyn Magazine
"Her writing . . . is in turns incisive and tender, embracing human frailty with bracing honesty". — The Establishment
Charlotte Shane is an essayist and author best known for her lyric personal writing, which garnered national attention when distributed in the form of her letters-turned-book, Prostitute Laundry, which The Guardian likened to work by Charles Dickens, and Vice called "addictive [and] intimate."
Ann Friedman is a freelance journalist who writes about gender, politics, technology, and culture. She is a columnist for New York magazine and theLos Angeles Times, and a contributing editor to The Gentlewoman. She also co-hosts the podcast Call Your Girlfriend, makes hand-drawn pie charts, and sends a popular weekly email newsletter. Find her work at annfriedman.com.

Sunday May 15, 2016
ROBERT S. LEVINSON reads from his novel THE STARDOM AFFAIR
Sunday May 15, 2016
Sunday May 15, 2016
The Stardom Affair (Five Star Publishing)
Newspaper columnist Neil Gulliver and his ex-wife, "Sex Queen of the Soaps" Stevie Marriner, are back.
It's decades ago, when the internet was in its infancy. Neil is summoned to the apartment of actor Roddy Donaldson, leader of the "Diapered Dozen" gang of teenage movie stars, by condo manager Sharon Glenn. Roddy is in bed clinging to life alongside two dead girls, no memory of who they are or how they got there. Evidence points to him as their killer.
At the urging of Roddy's mother, a prominent casting director, Neil chases after the truth, encountering a motley cast of suspects: among them nasty Nicky Edmunds, co-starring with pal Roddy in Tough Times Two, and glamorous Jayne Madrigal, a high-powered press agent with whom Neil is smitten when Stevie introduces them at a lavish Stardom Magazine gala. Also: rap superstar Maxie Trotter and his manager, Roscoe Del Ruth; Gene Coburn and Knox Lundigan, millionaire partners in Stardom House companies revolutionizing the internet; model-songstress Aleta Haworth, who knows more than she's telling; fading film star Brian Armstrong, who harbors dark truths; and Stevie's mother, Juliet, and her fiancé, Bernie Flame, a computer whiz who may be able to find answers for Neil in the secret underground world of the Web.
More bodies fall and Neil faces an ugly death before the killer of the two girls is revealed in this fast-paced mystery-thriller by an author who knows Hollywood's many sins and secrets from the inside out.
Praise for The Stardom Affair
“The author has delivered a fast-paced, surprisingly dark, not-surprisingly witty thriller that includes a scene of movieland sex and violence more nightmarish than anything devised by Nathanael West or David Lynch”—Dick Lochte, award-winning author of Sleeping Dog, a New York Times Book of the Year
“When one of Hollywood's hottest young stars finds himself in a tangle with two dead bodies and almost dead of a drug overdose himself, Neil Gulliver's reporter's instincts are aroused, and he's plunged into an ever darker world of sex, drugs, and murder. The patter is snappy, the writing is sharp, and the observations are pointed as a dagger in another winner from Levinson.”—Bill Crider, award-winning author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes mysteries
“From big box office powerbrokers to L.A.'s seething underworld of designer drugs and porn movies, you're in for the roller-coaster ride of your reading life. But then, it's no surprise –Robert S. Levinson is a master of style and suspense. Buy this book and enjoy!” -- Gayle Lynds, New York Times best-selling author of The Assassins
“Robert S. Levinson handles the hardboiled style of storytelling with soft, sure hands. Neil Gulliver continues to be one of the most reliable main characters in the genre. And, along with his ex-wife, Stevie Marriner, they continue to channel Nick & Nora Charles. Reading The Stardom Affair is time well spent.”—Robert J. Randisi, best-selling author of the Rat Pack mysteries, founder of the Private Eye Writers of America and the annual Shamus Awards, co-founder of Mystery Scene Magazine
Robert S. Levinson, the best-selling author of fourteen crime thrillers, in The Stardom Affair brings back newspaper columnist Neil Gulliver and his ex-wife, “Sex Queen of the Soaps” Stevie Marriner, who co-starred in his first four novels. Bob’s background includes stints as a newspaper reporter, founder of what became the world’s largest PR firm specializing in rock-and-roll, and a television writer-producer of myriad music, awards, and comedy specials. A Shamus Award nominee and a Derringer Award winner, he served four years on the Mystery Writers of American national board of directors, two as president of the Los Angeles chapter, two years on the Writers Guild of America-West board, and four terms as president of the Hollywood Press Club.
Bob’s short stories appear regularly in the Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines and have carried for years in various mystery anthologies and “year’s best” collections. He was voted several times onto Queen’s annual Readers Poll of favorites. His non-fiction has appeared in Rolling Stone, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Written By Magazine of the Writers Guild of America West, Westways, and Los Angeles Magazine. Bob wrote and produced two MWA annual “Edgar Awards” shows and two International Thriller Writers “Thriller Awards” shows. His plays Transcript and Murder Times Two had their world premieres at the annual International Mystery Writers Festival.
Bob resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Sandra, and Rosie, their loveable, bossy Besenji Mix.