Skylight Books Podcast Series

Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men (New York University Press)

 A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there’s fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other’s penises and stick fingers up their fellow members’ anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For Jane Ward, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can—and do—have sex with other straight white men; in fact, she argues, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity.

Ward illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead, Ward argues, they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. In the end, Ward’s analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality—not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege. Daring, insightful, and brimming with wit, Not Gay is a fascinating new take on the complexities of heterosexuality in the modern era.

Praise for Not Gay

“Clear-eyed and unsqueamish, Not Gay defiantly insists that sex between contemporary American straight white men is in fact meaningful sex that can't—and shouldn't—just be hand-waved away. Jane Ward provides a timely and convincing corrective.” —Hanne Blank, author of Virgin: The Untouched History

“Not Gay is nothing less than a breath of fresh air. This book is certain to change the way that we think about heterosexuality’s relations with the homoerotic.”—Roderick Ferguson, author of Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique

Jane Ward is associate professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of California Riverside, where she teaches courses in feminist, queer, and heterosexuality studies. Her published essays have focused on a broad range of topics including feminist pornography, queer parenting, gay pride festivals, HIV/AIDS organizing, same-sex marriage, and the social construction of heterosexuality. Her first book, Respectably Queer: Diversity Culture in LGBT Activist Organizations, was named by The Progressive magazine as a best book of 2008.  Her second book, Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, will be released by New York University Press in July 2015.

Ward is founder of the feminist blog FeministPigs.com and cofounder, along with CJ Pascoe and Tey Meadow, of SocialInqueery.com. She cofounded the queer burlesque troupe “The Miracle Whips” in 2004 and founded the parenting collective “L.A. Genderqueer Parenting” in 2009, both based in Los Angeles.  She is also a baker, an urban gardener, and a parent to one human child, four cats, and eight chickens.

Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure (Disney Lucasfilm Press)

 Join us today for a special Star Wars celebration! Show off your best Wookie roar! Compete in Star Wars trivia! And much much more! Costumes are encouraged! 

Princess Leia returns for an all-new adventure in this thrilling upper middle grade novel. Set between Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, the story follows the warrior princess as she leads a ragtag group of rebels on a dangerous mission against the evil Galactic Empire. Hidden in the story are also hints and clues about the upcoming film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, making this a must-listen for fans old and new!

Cecil Castellucci is the author of books and graphic novels for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, First Day on Earth, The Year of the Beasts, Tin Star, Stone in the Sky and the Eisner nominated Odd Duck. Her picture book,Grandma’s Gloves, won the California Book Award Gold Medal. Her short stories have been published in Strange Horizons, YARN, Tor.com, and various anthologies including, Teeth, After and Interfictions 2.  She is the Children’s Correspondence Coordinator for The Rumpus, a two time Macdowell Fellow and the founding YA Editor at the LA Review of Books. She lives in Los Angeles.

Lost Canyon (Akashic Books)

Four people on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada find more adventure than they ever imagined. Each of them is drawn to the mountains for reasons as diverse as their own lives. Gwen Foster, a counselor for at-risk youth, is struggling with burnout from the demands of her job and with the loss of one of her teens. Real estate agent Oscar Barajas is adjusting to the fall of the housing market and being a single parent. Todd Harris, an attorney, is stuck in a lucrative but unfulfilling career--and in a failing marriage. They are all brought together by their trainer, Tracy Cole, a former athlete with a taste for risky pursuits. 

When the hikers start up a pristine mountain trail that hasn't been traveled in years, all they have to guide them is a hand-drawn map of a remote, mysterious place called Lost Canyon. At first, the route past high alpine lakes and under towering, snowcapped peaks offers all the freedom and exhilaration they'd hoped for. But when they stumble onto someone who doesn't want to be found, the group finds itself faced with a series of dangerous conflicts, moral dilemmas, confrontations with nature, and an all-out struggle for survival. 

Moving effortlessly between city and wilderness, Lost Canyon explores the ways that race, class, and culture shape experience and perception. It examines the choices good people must face in desperate situations. Set in the grand, wild landscape of the California mountains, Lost Canyon is a story of brewing social tensions and breathtaking adventure that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Praise for Lost Canyon

"Four unlikely Angelenos on a backpacking trip in the High Sierra discover that the perils of contemporary life don't stop at the trailhead. Rarely have the glories and hardship of backcountry travel, and the grandeur of this landscape, been so effectively portrayed. Revoyr strikes gold with this unexpected, fast-moving tale of high-altitude danger."--Janet Fitch, author of Paint It Black 

"Four urbanites from Los Angeles embark on an uncharted trail, invoking shadows of Deliverance in this fast-paced story which celebrates the mountain world of rock, sky, and woods. Nina Revoyr's wilderness thriller leaves readers as breathless as the hikers."--Ron Carlson, author of The Signal 

"Nobody knows Los Angeles like Nina Revoyr! Sharp-witted and big-hearted, Lost Canyon shows us what happens when the melting pot boils over. If you're brave enough to handle the truth about American race relations, this is the book for you."--Tayari Jones, author of Silver Sparrow 

Nina Revoyr is the author of five novels, including The Age of Dreaming, which was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize;Southland, a Los Angeles Times best seller and “Best Book” of 2003; Wingshooters, which won an Indie Booksellers’ Choice Award and was selected by O, The Oprah Magazine as one of “10 Titles to Pick Up Now”; and most recently, Lost Canyon. Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles. 

Eileen (Penguin Press)

A lonely young woman working in a boys' prison outside Boston in the early 60s is pulled into a very strange crime, in a mordant, harrowing story of obsession and suspense, by one of the brightest new voices in fiction.

"So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes--a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back. This is the story of how I disappeared."

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys' prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings. 

Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen's story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from Boston. She was awarded the Plimpton Prize for her stories in the Paris Review, and granted a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. She is currently a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford.

Eileen (Penguin Press)

A lonely young woman working in a boys' prison outside Boston in the early 60s is pulled into a very strange crime, in a mordant, harrowing story of obsession and suspense, by one of the brightest new voices in fiction.

"So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes--a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back. This is the story of how I disappeared."

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys' prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings. 

Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen's story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from Boston. She was awarded the Plimpton Prize for her stories in the Paris Review, and granted a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. She is currently a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford.

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) (Touchstone Books)

 From online entertainment mogul, actress, and "queen of the geeks" Felicia Day comes a funny, quirky, and inspiring memoir about her unusual upbringing, her rise to Internet-stardom, and embracing her individuality to find success in Hollywood. 

The Internet isn't all cat videos. There's also Felicia Day--violinist, filmmaker, Internet entrepreneur, compulsive gamer, hoagie specialist, and former lonely homeschooled girl who overcame her isolated childhood to become the ruler of a new world...or at least semi-influential in the world of Internet geeks and Goodreads book clubs.  After growing up in the south where she was "homeschooled for hippie reasons," Felicia moved to Hollywood to pursue her dream of becoming an actress and was immediately typecast as a crazy cat-lady secretary. But Felicia's misadventures in Hollywood led her to produce her own web series, own her own production company, and become an Internet star. Felicia's short-ish life and her rags-to-riches rise to Internet fame launched her career as one of the most influential creators in new media. Now, Felicia's strange world is filled with thoughts on creativity, video games, and a dash of mild feminist activism--just like her memoir. 

Hilarious and inspirational, You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) is proof that everyone should embrace what makes them different and be brave enough to share it with the world, because anything is possible now--even for a digital misfit.

Praise for You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost):

“It's hard to keep up with Felicia Day.  She's an actress, a gamer, a screenwriter, a songwriter, a producer, a director, a webmaster, a costumer, and queen of the geek girls.   It's hard to imagine where such a prodigy could have come from.  Wonder no longer.  Felicia tells all . . . well, most . . . well, some . . . in her new book.  Reading this is like sitting down and having dinner with her, and hearing the story of her life between the clam chowder and the cheesecake.  I can't imagine a more charming or amusing dinner companion. Felicia is a lot of fun, and so is her book.”—GEORGE R. R. MARTIN 

“Reading Felicia Day’s memoir is like going on a road trip with an old friend you never knew you had. This is the perfect book to prove you aren't the only misfit in the world, and to remind you that that's a very good thing.” —JENNY LAWSON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened

“At last, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) finally reveals the secret origin story of everyone's favorite Geek Superheroine! Felicia Day's new memoir is honest, hopeful, and hysterical. It’s the story of a girl who grew up lost and lonely--then became a self-made Internet rockstar.  Reading it will make you feel like you can take on the whole Empire yourself.” —ERNEST CLINE, author of Ready Player One 

“Smart, brave, emotionally raw, and hysterically funny. This is one of the best books ever written about what it's like to be a human being on the internet.” —LEV GROSSMAN, author of The Magicians

“Everything Felicia creates seems to succeed. This book should be no different. It’s a great read–far from ‘horrible’ and worth every ‘Penny.’ See what I did there? It’s a play on…never mind.” —NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, author of Choose Your Own Autobiography and Felicia’s co-star in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

“What’s wonderful about Felicia Day isn’t how much she’s accomplished; it’s what a delightful, real person she’s remained along the way. She is a nerd heroine of the highest order: fiercely honest, refreshingly vulnerable, and unapologetically unique. Felicia kicks major ass.”—AISHA TYLER

“I came for the delightful snark, I stayed for the disarming frankness and the hard-won insights about the Internet. Felicia Day uses the Internet to distribute entertainment, but she understands that it's really there to be the nervous system of the twenty-first century.” —CORY DOCTOROW, Founder of BoingBoing.net

“You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) is exactly like Felicia herself: intriguing, funny, vulnerable, and uniquely cool. If you’ve ever been awkward, ever doubted yourself, ever second-guessed who you are, this book is for you. Reading it is like having the quirkiest, most hilarious, most brilliant person you’ve ever met grab you by the shirtfront and say, ‘HEY. IT’S OKAY TO BE YOU.’” —DEANNA RAYBORN, RITA award-winning and New York Times bestselling author  

“Smart, funny, endearing, nerdy and maybe also a little bit brave — in other words, very much like its author.”—JOHN SCALZI, Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Redshirts 

"You're Never Weird on the Internet is fun, hilarious, and impossible to put down. Reading it is like getting a mega-shot of courage -- to be exactly who you are and no one else, to pursue your dreams fearlessly, to embrace your weirdness and wield it like a superpower. If you want to live a life true to yourself and not what others expect of you, you won't find better inspiration than Felicia Day. If you're not one of Felicia's millions of fans yet—you will be."—JANE McGONIGAL, author ofSuperbetter and Reality is Broken

“Math nerd defies physics!  Felicia Day, who is woven from moonbeams, has written a book that seems lighter than air, but that ends up punching you firmly in the emotions.  Felicia lays out a hilarious tale of how her unique upbringing, eclectic skill set, and killer work ethic led to The Guild, one of the pioneering works of online creativity.  In the process, she pulls you inside her delicate skull, so that the final moving chapters aren’t as much read as they are experienced.  An excellent book.”  —JANE EPENSON, writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Once Upon a Time, and Husbands

“Day writes charmingly. . . . [She] is delightfully good company and has an interesting story to tell.”—KIRKUS REVIEWS

“A super (and superquirky) memoir.”—BOOKLIST

“Felicia Day gives us an achingly funny, honest, open look at being 'situationally famous' (I love that phrase), plus the vital art of finding your creative joy, and weathering the storms that follow. It's a wonderful book. Buy it before I grab all the copies.” —RACHEL CAINE, New York Times bestselling author of The Morganville Vampires series

Felicia Day is a professional actress who has appeared in numerous television shows, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, and Eureka.  However, Felicia is best known for her work in the web video world, behind and in front of the camera. She costarred in Joss Whedon’s Emmy Award-winning internet musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and also created and starred in the hit web series The Guild.

Felicia is the founder of the online digital channel Geek & Sundry, which was acquired by Legendary Entertainment in 2014. She continues to act as CCO and develop web content and television projects as a producer, writer, and performer. She is also extremely active on social media, has more than 2.4 million Twitter followers, and is the eighth most followed person on Goodreads, where she is also the founder of Vaginal Fantasy, a romance and fantasy book club with almost 14,000 members.

The Dying Grass (Viking)

 Over the last twenty-five years, National Book Award winner William T. Vollmann has been working on what is arguably one of the most ambitious literary projects currently being undertaken by any living novelist – a seven volume sequence of novels called “Seven Dreams” that examine the repeated collisions between native Americans and European colonizers. This summer, Viking will publish the long-awaited new installment in this acclaimed series, The Dying Grass, which tells the story of the epic fighting retreat of the Nez Perce Indians in 1877. 

Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces, whom Lewis and Clark liked best of all the Indians they met, and who were proud that under all provocations they had never killed any white people, finally went on the warpath. The battles they fought (there were eighteen engagements, including four major battles and four fiercely contested skirmishes) and their long (nearly 1200 miles) retreat from Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border before they finally surrendered, have been taught at West Point and poeticized by Robert Penn Warren.  Vollmann’s main character, however, is not Chief Joseph, whom the press dubbed “The Red Napoleon,” but his pursuer, General Oliver Otis Howard, the brave, shy, tormented, devoutly Christian Civil War veteran.  In this novel, we see him as commander, father, son, husband, friend and killer, in an ever altering myriad of relations with soldiers, scouts, and “hostiles.”

The Dying Grass teems with many other vivid characters on both sides of the conflict, including Chief Joseph’s twelve-year-old daughter Sound of Running Feet, his two wives Springtime and Good Woman, the shell-shocked Colonel  David Perry, who lost the war’s first battle (and his best friend), the Nez Perce war chief Looking-Glass, who trusted that treaties with the Americans would save him, the Three Red Blankets, who seem invulnerable against the Army, and Howard’s personally loyal but increasingly anti-war aide-de-camp, C.E.S. Wood.

In The Dying Grass, Vollmann brings a new chapter of North American history to life with stylistic daring, sardonic wit, rich imagination, and uncompromising intelligence.

Praise for The Dying Grass

“Peerless… an epic study of the Nez Percé War of 1877…Vollmann restores that history with an onrushing immediacy that takes on all the contours of a good Greek tragedy, complete with hubris born of supposed military superiority and an avenging angel taking wings in the form of the flight of an arrow… Vollmann's vivid reconstruction is believable and achingly beautiful, as often rendered in a kind of poetry as in ordinary prose: ‘he spies out the dark-tipped wings of the otherwise white snow goose, / the black beak and white breast of the long-billed curlew / but no brothers or enemies.’ Telegraphic and episodic—so much so that it recalls the later work of Eduardo Galeano—Vollmann's saga is a note-perfect incantation. Stunning.”—Kirkus Reviews

William T. Vollmann has written nine novels, four collections of stories, six works of nonfiction, and a memoir. He has won the National Book Award for Europe Central, the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in California.

Driving Hungry (Pantheon Books)

 Please join us today for a delicious memoir that takes us from Buenos Aires to New York to Berlin as the author, driven by wanderlust and an unrelenting appetite, finds purpose, passion, and unexpected flavor. 

 

After leaving a tango club following a terrible turn on the dance floor, Layne Mosler impulsively asks her taxista to take her to his favorite restaurant. Soon she's savoring one of the best steaks of her life, and in the weeks after, repeating the experiment with equally delectable results. So begins the gustatory adventure that became the basis for her cult blog, Taxi Gourmet. In New York City the author continues her food quests and meets a pair of extraordinary lady cab drivers who convince her to become a taxi driver herself. In Berlin she becomes as enchanted with the city's aura of restless transformation as she does with the spicy curries, and a certain fellow cabbie who knows as much about Nietzsche as he does about sausage. With her vivid descriptions of places and people and food, Mosler, who has a degree in anthropology and more than a decade of experience in the restaurant trade, has given us a beguiling book that speaks to the beauty of chance encounters and the pleasures of not always knowing your destination.

 

Layne Mosler is a writer living in Berlin. She has written for New York magazine, the Travel Channel, and numerous other venues. For more information, please visit: www.taxigourmet.com

Not Funny Ha-Ha (Fantagraphics)

 Not Funny Ha-Ha is a bold, slightly wry graphic novel illustrating the lives of two young women from different cultural, family, and financial backgrounds who go through two different abortions (medical and surgical). It does not address the events leading up to the pregnancy, or even the decision-making before choosing abortion as an option. It simply shows what happens when a woman goes through it, no questions asked. It follows them through the process of choosing a clinic, reaching out to friends, partners, and/or family…and eventually the procedure(s) itself.

Despite the fact that so many women and girls have abortions every day, in every city, all around us…it can be a lonely experience. Not Funny Ha-Ha is a little bit technical, a little bit moving, and often funny, in a format uniquely suited to communicate. The book is meant to be a non-judgmental, comforting, even humorous look at what a woman can go through during an abortion. Although the subject matter is heavy, the illustrations are light. The author takes a step back from putting forth any personal opinion whatsoever, simply laying out the events and possible emotional repercussions that could, and often do, occur.

Praise for Not Funny Ha-Ha

“This graphic novel is the abortion story that needs to be heard.” — The Huffington Post

“I want everyone who is having, has had, or is considering abortion to have this book. I want everyone who is close to someone who has had, is having or is considering abortion to have this book. I want anyone who feels like they just don’t or can’t understand what it’s like to go forward with, or even think about, abortion as an option to have this book. Really, I just want everyone to have this book, period.” — Heather Corinna, founder and director, Scarleteen: sex ed for the real world

“Reading this book is like sitting down with your cool older sister and having her assuringly and frankly explain a really tough situation you’re facing, and then convince you that you’re going to get through it and be okay. Intimate and kind, straightforward and informative, Leah Hayes clarifies and personalizes the clinical experience a woman can expect when she decides to have an abortion. Even more impressive, the author makes the story a compelling read, with charming artwork and humor.” — Ellen Forney, author of Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me

Leah Hayes is an illustrator, musician, songwriter, and producer. She works out of New York City and Los Angeles.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest (Pamela Dorman Books)

From one of our favorite local authors comes a hotly anticipated debut--about a young woman with a once-in-a-generation palate who becomes the iconic chef behind the country's most coveted dinner reservation.

 When Lars Thorvald's wife, Cynthia, falls in love with wine--and a dashing sommelier--he's left to raise their baby, Eva, on his own. He's determined to pass on his love of food to his daughter--starting with pureed pork shoulder. As Eva grows, she finds her solace and salvation in the flavors of her native Minnesota. From Scandinavian lutefisk to hydroponic chocolate habaneros, each ingredient represents one part of Eva's journey as she becomes the star chef behind a legendary and secretive pop-up supper club, culminating in an opulent and emotional feast that's a testament to her spirit and resilience. 

Each chapter in J. Ryan Stradal's startlingly original debut tells the story of a single dish and character, at once capturing the zeitgeist of the Midwest, the rise of foodie culture, and delving into the ways food creates community and a sense of identity. By turns quirky, hilarious, and vividly sensory, Kitchens of the Great Midwest is an unexpected mother-daughter story about the bittersweet nature of life--its missed opportunities and its joyful surprises. It marks the entry of a brilliant new talent.

Praise for Kitchens of the Great Midwest:

"Kitchens of the Great Midwest is a big-hearted, funny, and class-transcending pleasure. It's also both a structural and empathetic tour de force, stepping across worlds in the American midwest, and demonstrating with an enviable tenderness and ingenuity the tug of war between our freedom to pursue our passions and our obligations to those we love." --Jim Shepard, author of Project X and National Book Award finalist for Like You'd Understand, Anyway

"Tender, funny, and moving, J. Ryan Stradal's debut novel made me crave my mother's magic cookie bars...and every good tomato I've ever had the privilege of eating. Kitchens of the Great Midwest manages to be at once sincere yet sharply observed, thoughtful yet swiftly paced, and the lives of its fallible, realistic, and complicated characters mattered to me deeply. It's a fantastic book."-- Edan Lepucki, bestselling author of California 

"In Kitchens of the Great Midwest, a charming, fast-moving round robin tale of food, sensuality and Midwestern culture, Mr. Stradal has delivered one extremely tasty, well-seasoned debut in what is sure to be a long and savory career."--Janet Fitch, author White Oleander

"From the quite literally burning passions of a lonely eleven-year-old girl with an exceptional palate, to the ethical dilemmas behind a batch of Blue Ribbon Peanut Butter Bars, J. Ryan Stradal writes with a special kind of meticulous tenderness--missing nothing and accepting everything. A superbly gratifying debut."--Meg Howrey, author of The Crane's Dance 

"An impossible-to-put-down, one-of-a-kind novel. The prose is beautiful, the characters memorable, and the plot is surprising at every turn. I have never read a book quite like this--and neither, I'll bet, have you. This stunning debut announces J. Ryan Stradal as a first-rate voice in American fiction. This is a wildly creative, stunningly original, and very moving novel. I can't wait to see what Stradal does next."-- Rob Roberge, author of The Cost of Living 

"A Great American Novel in the fullest sense of the term. Everything you want a book to be."--Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

J. Ryan Stradal is the author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest. Born and raised in Minnesota, he now lives in Los Angeles, where he is Acquisitions Editor at Unnamed Press and the Fiction Editor at The Nervous Breakdown. 

Julia Ingalls is primarily an essayist. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Salon, Guernica, and KCRW, among others. From David Mitchell to Alan Ball to Amelia Gray, she's had the pleasure of conversing with the world's finest imaginative writers, a tradition she continues tonight with J. Ryan Stradal.

Speak (Ecco Press)

 A thoughtful, poignant novel that explores the creation of Artificial Intelligence--illuminating the very human need for communication, connection, and understanding. In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the seventeenth century, to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human, and what it means to be less than fully alive.

A young Puritan woman travels to the New World with her unwanted new husband. Alan Turing, the renowned mathematician and code breaker, writes letters to his best friend's mother. A Jewish refugee and professor of computer science struggles to reconnect with his increasingly detached wife. An isolated and traumatized young girl exchanges messages with an intelligent software program. A former Silicon Valley Wunderkind is imprisoned for creating illegal lifelike dolls. Each of these characters is attempting to communicate across gaps--to estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hallexplores how the chasm between computer and human--shrinking rapidly with today's technological advances--echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard, or understood.

Praise for Speak

"Speak reads like a hybrid of David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood; a literary page turner that spans four centuries and examines the idea of who and what we define as human. Louisa Hall has written a brilliant novel."—Philipp Meyer, author of New York Times bestseller The Son

"Speak is that rarest of finds: a novel that doesn't remind me of any other book I've ever read. A complex, nuanced, and beautifully written meditation on language, immortality, the nature of memory, the ethical problems of artificial intelligence, and what it means to be human."—Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

“Louisa Hall’s Speak is a deeply original and intelligent novel. It’s also riveting. I wouldn’t have thought artificial intelligence, as a subject, would make for such a warm and human and psychologically astute novel. I’ll be thinking about Babybots and Hall’s quietly chilling and all-too-plausible vision of the near-future for a long time to come.”—Adelle Waldman, author ofThe Love Affairs of Nathaniel P

“Speak is a triumph. With a poet's voice, Louisa Hall reaches into the past and imagines the future to weave a beautifully complex novel about our human need to communicate. The result is a transcendent story about artificial intelligence that heartbreaking and very, very real.”—Ivy Pochoda, author of Visitation Street

Louisa Hall grew up in Philadelphia. After graduating from Harvard, she played squash professionally while finishing her pre-medical coursework and working in a research lab at the Albert Einstein Hospital. She holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Texas at Austin, where she currently teaches literature and creative writing, and supervises a poetry workshop at the Austin State Psychiatric Hospital. She is the author of the novel The Carriage House, and her poems have been published in The New Republic, Southwest Review, Ellipsis, and other journals.
 
Ivy Pochoda is the author of Visitation Street and The Art of Disappearing and has a BA from Harvard University in English and Classical Greek with a focus on dramatic literature and a MFA from Bennington College in fiction. She is a former professional squash player and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

To Live and Dine in L.A. (Angel City Press)

 Note: This event was previously scheduled for Wed, July 8th, at 7:30 pm, and has now been moved to Friday, July 17th, at 7:30 pm. We apologize for any inconvenience.

 Tonight's event features the book To Live and Dine in L.A. by USC Professor Josh Kun with a Foreword by Chef Roy Choi.To Live and Dine in LA is a huge project of The Library Foundation of Los Angeles based on the Menu Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library. Central to the project are a major exhibition at the Central Library downtown and the book published by Angel City Press. Together, the exhibition and the book ask and address an important question: How did Los Angeles become the modern city the world watches? We know some of the answers all too well. Sunshine. Railroads. Hollywood. Freeways. But there’s another often overlooked but especially delicious and revealing factor: food. Think veggie tacos and designer pizzas, hot dogs on sticks and burgers from golden arches, Cobb Salads and chocolate topped ice cream sundaes, not to mention the healthiest dishes on the planet. Ask anyone who has eaten in L.A.—the city shapes the tastes that predict how America eats. And it always has. 

​With more than 200 menus—some dating back to the nineteenth century—culled from thousands in the Menu Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library, To Live and Dine in L.A. ​is a visual feast of a book. In his detailed history, author Josh Kun riffs on what the food of a foodie city says about place and time; how some people eat big while others go hungry, and what that says about the past and today. Kun turns to chefs and cultural observers for their take on modern: Chef Roy Choi sits down long enough to say why he writes “some weirdass menus.” Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Jonathan Gold looks at food as theater, and museum curator Staci Steinberger considers the design of classic menus like Lawry’s. Restaurateur Bricia Lopez follows a Oaxacan menu into the heart of Koreatown. The city’s leading chefs remix vintage menus with a 21st century spin: Joachim Splichal, Nancy Silverton, Susan Feniger, Ricardo Diaz, Jazz Singsanong, Cynthia Hawkins, Micah Wexler, Ramiro Arvizu and Jaime Martin del Campo cook up the past with new flavors. And, of course, the menus delight: Tick Tock Tea Room, Brown Derby, Trumps, Slapsy Maxie’s, Don the Beachcomber, and scores more. 

Kun tackles the timely and critically important topic of food justice, and shows how vintage menus teach us about more than just what’s tasty, and serve as guides to the politics, economics, and sociology of eating. To Live and Dine in L.A. ​is the first book of its kind—the definitive way to read a menu for more than just what to order. It’s about how to live. And how to dine. In L.A. Spread the word and join the conversation about Los Angeles’ food history online by tagging your tweets and posts with #ToLiveandDineLA.

Josh Kun ​is an Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. His previous collaboration with L.A. Public Library was the award­-winning book and exhibition Songs in the Key of Los Angeles. He has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. He is author and an editor of several books, including Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, Tijuana Dreaming: Life and Art at the Global Border, and Black and Brown Los Angeles: Beyond Conflict and Coalition. As a curator he has worked with the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Jewish History in Philadelphia. Kun curated Songs in the Key of L.A. in 2013 and To Live and Dine in L.A. in 2015, both exhibitions that originated at Los Angeles Central Library galleries.

Roy Choi was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and went on to cook at the internationally acclaimed Le Bernardin. He was named Best New Chef by Food and Wine in 2010. Choi is the co-owner, co-founder, and chef of Kogi BBQ, as well as the restaurants Chego!, A-Frame, Sunny Spot and POT. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Selected Tweets (Short Flight/Long Drive Books)

 Selected Tweets—as the name suggests—is a book comprised of selected tweets from both Tao and Mira. The book operates as a sort of flip book, with Tao’s tweets on one side and Mira’s on the other. The tweets are organized by account (both writers have multiple), and then chronologically within each account, if that makes sense.

SHEILA HETI: How do you imagine people read twitter?

TAO LIN: On their phones I think mostly. I think I’ve read the most Twitter while laying in bed or on my back, or just laying in places, like in parks or in airports. Maybe not the most, but a lot. I’ve dropped my phone on my face many times. I think other people must too, but I rarely hear about this.

--

SHEILA HETI: What do you think about before you tweet? You once told me that you tweet what makes you feel uncomfortable. So which tweets do you reject, which do you accept?

MIRA GONZALEZ: I wouldn’t necessarily say that I tweet what makes me feel uncomfortable, I think it’s more that I feel comfortable tweeting things that I would never feel comfortable saying in a real life conversation, or even in other places on the internet. For reasons that I don’t fully understand, Twitter is a place where I don’t feel ashamed to say my most shameful thoughts...

Praise for Selected Tweets

“Selected Tweets” features a selection of bleak, depressed, disturbing, funny, and personal tweets that create a fragmented narrative and show how Twitter can serve as a platform for art, storytelling, and connection." - Columbia Spectator

"Mira's tweets are self-deprecating to the point of hilarity, and Tao's are more neurotic—still 'funny' but, like, in the way people sometimes use that word to describe a thing that's behaving oddly, like ''My air conditioner is acting funny.' They both tweet the word 'Xanax' a lot. Get it in May." - The FADER

"Mostly, Twitter resembles a diary that is being written publicly and in real time. To Lin and Gonzalez, twitter is also a tool for writing. Like a director Lin and Gonzalez exhibit their creative power by picking and choosing which tweets to include in the overarching narrative." - The State Press

Tao Lin is the author of the novels Taipei, Richard Yates, Eeeee Eee Eeee, the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel, the story-collection Bed, and other books. He edits Muumuu House and lives in New York.

Mira Gonzalez is from Los Angeles, California. She is the author of I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together, which was nominated for The Believer Poetry Award and The Goodreads Choice Award. Her work has been published widely in print and online.

The Sunlit Night (Bloomsbury Publishing)

 From an exhilarating new voice comes a stunning debut novel which Jonathan Safran Foer calls as "lyrical as a poem, psychologically rich as a thriller."

In the beautiful, barren landscape of the Far North, under the ever-present midnight sun, Frances and Yasha are surprised to find refuge in each other. Their lives have been upended-Frances has fled heartbreak and claustrophobic Manhattan for an isolated artist colony; Yasha arrives from Brooklyn to fulfill his beloved father's last wish: to be buried "at the top of the world." They have come to learn how to be alone. But in Lofoten, an archipelago of six tiny islands in the Norwegian Sea, ninety-five miles north of the Arctic Circle, they form a bond that fortifies them against the turmoil of their distant homes, offering solace amidst great uncertainty. With nimble and sure-footed prose, Rebecca Dinerstein reveals that no matter how far we travel to claim our own territory, it is ultimately love that gives us our place in the world.

Praise for The Sunlit Night:

Praise for The Sunlit Night
"Lyrical as a poem, psychologically rich as a thriller, funny, dark, warm, and as knowing of place as any travel book or memoir, The Sunlit Night marks the appearance of a brave talent." --Jonathan Safran Foer

"By turns ravishing and hilarious, The Sunlit Night is more than a shining debut--it's the work of a young master. Dinerstein writes of her two lovers with sensitivity and chutzpah: human drama, a nightless summer, the transformative power of nature. Here's an exciting new voice that sings perfectly in key." --Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life

"[A] captivating debut novel . . . [Dinerstein] writes . . . with humor and compassion. Her prose is lyrical and silky, but it's also specific, with acute observations and precise detail, and she evokes the sun-stroked, barren Norwegian landscape with a striking sense of place. . . With provocative insights about the cruelty of abandonment, the concept of home, and the limits of parental and filial love, Dinerstein's novel is a rich reading experience." --Publishers Weekly, starred and boxed review

"Dinerstein's much buzzed-about debut novel is a fanciful Arctic Circle romance between a Russian immigrant raised in a Brighton Beach bakery and a Manhattanite seeking refuge from family problems in a Norwegian artists' colony." --The Forward"

Rebecca Dinerstein is the author of Lofoten, a bilingual English-Norwegian collection of poems. She received her B.A. from Yale and her M.F.A. in Fiction from New York University, where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow. She lives in Brooklyn. Follow her on Twitter @beckydinerstein. For more information on Rebecca and the book, please visit:www.rebeccadinerstein.com

Maggie Shipstead is the author of two novels: Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements, which was a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She is a graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Her writing has appeared in many publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, The New Republic, and The Best American Short Stories.

Valley Fever (Farrar Strauss Giroux)

 A razor-sharp, cross-generational tragicomedy set in California's wine-soaked Central Valley.

 Ingrid Palamede never returns to places she's lived in the past. For her, "whole neighborhoods, whole cities, can be ruined by the reasons you left." But when a breakup leaves her heartbroken and homeless, she's forced to return to her childhood home of Fresno, California. Back in the "real" wine country, where grapes are grown for mass producers like Gallo and Kendall-Jackson, Ingrid must confront her aging parents and their financial woes, soured friendships, and blissfully bad decisions. But along the way, she rediscovers her love for the land, her talent for harvesting grapes, and a deep fondness and forgiveness for the very first place she ever left.

With all the sharp-tongued wit of her first novel, Rules for Saying Goodbye, Katherine Taylor examines high-class, small-town life among the grapes--on the vine or soaked in vodka--in Valley Fever, a blisteringly funny, ferociously intelligent, and deeply moving novel of self-discovery.

Praise for Valley Fever:

“Valley Fever goes straight to the heart of it: How are we supposed to live? How to jump through those hoops of fire known as love and work and family, and hopefully emerge with body and soul more or less intact. Or even--dare I say it?--to come through with some measure of peace in ourselves. Katherine Taylor's unflinching novel takes on the big stuff, and does so with an empathy and insight that reward the closest reading. This superb book succeeds on every level."
– Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

“In Katherine Taylor’s stirring and sneakily capacious novel, what begins as a family romance widens out to be nothing less than a portrait of the knotty, complicated relationship between land and the people who make it their life’s work to nurture and sometimes exploit it. Heartbreak comes in the form of relentless heat, ravaging dust, and a perfect grape left to wither on the vine, and the undoing of a once proud family vineyard becomes as potent a tale of love and betrayal as any I’ve recently read. Taylor’s prose is sharp, rueful, hilarious and crackling with life. Her characters' raw, unsentimental affairs with one another and with the earth they till will stay with you long after you’ve left the book’s pages behind.” – Marisa Silver, author of Mary Coin

Katherine Taylor is the author of the novels Valley Fever and Rules for Saying Goodbye. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Town & Country, ZYZZYVA, The Southwest Review and Ploughshares, among other publications. She has won a Pushcart Prize and the McGinnis Ritchie Award for Fiction. She has a B.A. from University of Southern California and a master’s degree from Columbia University, where she was a Graduate Writing Fellow. Katherine lives in Los Angeles.

Matthew Specktor is the author of the novels American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, GQ, the Paris Review, Tin House, The Believer, and numerous other periodicals and anthologies. He is a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.