Skylight Books Podcast Series

The Subprimes (Harper)

 A wickedly funny dystopian parody set in a financially apocalyptic future America, from the critically acclaimed author ofTriburbia. 

In a future America that feels increasingly familiar, you are your credit score. Extreme wealth inequality has created a class of have-nothings: Subprimes. Their bad credit ratings make them unemployable. Jobless and without assets, they've walked out on mortgages, been foreclosed upon, or can no longer afford a fixed address. Fugitives who must keep moving to avoid arrest, they wander the globally warmed American wasteland searching for day labor and a place to park their battered SUVs for the night. Karl Taro Greenfeld's trenchant satire follows the fortunes of two families whose lives reflect this new dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-financially-fittest America. Desperate for work and food, a Subprime family has been forced to migrate east, hoping for a better life. They are soon joined in their odyssey by a writer and his family--slightly better off, yet falling fast. Eventually, they discover a small settlement of Subprimes who have begun an agrarian utopia built on a foreclosed exurb. Soon, though, the little stability they have is threatened when their land is targeted by job creators for shale oil extraction. But all is not lost. A hero emerges, a woman on a motorcycle--suspiciously lacking a credit score--who just may save the world. In The Subprimes, Karl Taro Greenfeld turns his keen and unflinching eye to our country today--and where we may be headed. The result is a novel for the 99 percent: a darkly funny comedy about paradise lost and found, the value of credit, economic policy, and the meaning of family.

Praise for The Subprimes

"The Subprimes holds up a funhouse-mirror version of ourselves and our era. Karl Taro Greenfeld has written a masterful, viciously funny satire of our times, one that we ignore at our peril."--Ben Fountain

"Set in a meticulously, terrifyingly imagined all-too-near future, The Subprimes is a potent cocktail of North American myth, equal parts John Steinbeck and Margaret Atwood, with a dash of benzene."--William Gibson

"Greenfeld has a tendency to lean toward parody in his satiric style, but here he employs enough authenticity to terrify, enough black humor to disarm the story's inherent pessimism, and a surprising admiration for faith in its myriad forms."--Kirkus

"The Subprimes admirably -- amazingly -- superimposes all the populist instincts of The Grapes of Wrath onto a dystopian future that is all too visible from our current moment. Greenfeld's compassion and understanding -- this novel's beating heart -- are what grabbed me most."--Charles Bock

"A little Occupy, a little Ed Abbey, and a good deal of hope for solidarity in a screwed-up world -- The Subprimes is a superhero story for the rest of us."--Bill McKibben

"Greenfeld has produced a fascinating novel about life in the age of economic uncertainty. It's a colorful tale of characters living on the edge combined with sharp social insights."--Walter Isaacson

"Sharply observed and engrossing, The Subprimes depicts a future that is simultaneously absurd...and plausible. It would be too scary to read if it weren't so entertaining."--Edan Lepucki

Karl Taro Greenfeld is the author of six previous books: the much-acclaimed novel Triburbia. The memoir Boy Alone; NowTrends; China Syndrome; Standard Deviations; and Speed Tribes. His award-winning writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Paris Review, The Nation, , The New York Times Magazine, Best American Short Stories 2009 and 2013, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2012. Born in Kobe, Japan, he has lived in Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. He currently lives in California with his wife, Silka, and their daughters, Esmee and Lola.

The Making of Zombie Wars (Farrar Strauss Giroux)

 Script idea #142: Aliens undercover as cabbies abduct the fiancee of the main character, who has to find a way to a remote planet to save her. Title: " Love Trek." 

Script idea #185: Teenager discovers his girlfriend's beloved grandfather was a guard in a Nazi death camp. The boy's grandparents are survivors, but he's tantalizingly close to achieving deflowerment, so when a Nazi hunter arrives in town in pursuit of Grandpa, he has to distract him long enough to get laid. A riotous Holocaust comedy. Title: " The Righteous Love." 

Script idea #196: Rock star high out of his mind freaks out during a show, runs offstage, and is lost in streets crowded with his hallucinations. The teenage fan who finds him keeps the rock star for himself for the night. Mishaps and adventures follow. This one could be a musical: " Singin' in the Brain."

Josh Levin is an aspiring screenwriter teaching ESL classes in Chicago. His laptop is full of ideas, but the only one to really take root is "Zombie Wars." When Josh comes home to discover his landlord, an unhinged army vet, rifling through his dirty laundry, he decides to move in with his girlfriend, Kimmy. It's domestic bliss for a moment, but Josh becomes entangled with a student, a Bosnian woman named Ana, whose husband is jealous and violent. Disaster ensues, and as Josh's choices move from silly to profoundly absurd, The Making of Zombie Wars takes on real consequence.

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Question of Bruno, Nowhere Man, The Lazarus Project, Love and Obstacles, andThe Book of My Lives. When he lives, he lives in Chicago.

Let's Start a Riot: How a Young Drunk Punk Became a Hollywood Dad (Harper)

 In his book, Let's Start a Riot: How a Young Drunk Punk Became a Hollywood Dad Bruce chronicles his journey from wild early days as a "young punk" in 1980s Alberta, to his flannel plaid days and futon nights in 1990s Toronto, to becoming a "pajama-clad dad" living in the Hollywood Hills. Taking us from scowling teenager to father of two, this biting, funny collection of personal stories, peppered with moments of surprising poignancy, proves that although this infamous Kid may be all grown up, his singular brand of humor and signature wit remain firmly intact.

Bruce McCulloch is a Canadian actor, writer, comedian and film director. He is known for his work as a member of the Kids in the Hall, the popular comedy troupe, and as a writer for Saturday Night Live. He directed the films Dog Park,Stealing Harvard and Superstar, and has made two acclaimed comedy/music albums, Shame-based Man and Drunk Baby Project. McCulloch has also recently acted in episodes of Workaholics and the new season of Arrested Development. McCulloch recently returned to TV with the series Death Comes to Town. He currently lives in the Hollywood Hills with his family and tours solo and with KITH for sold-out shows.

The Smartest Book in the World: A Lexicon of Literacy, a Rancorous Reportage, a Concise Curriculum of Cool (Touchstone Books)

 From Greg Proops, the beloved star of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the creator, voice, and general know-it-all behind The Smartest Man in the World podcast, comes a cultural dictionary as hilarious as the man himself, The Smartest Book in the World: A Lexicon of Literacy, a Rancorous Reportage, a Concise Curriculum of Cool. Greg Proops brings his “gift of gab” (Rolling Stone) and his “bold, never boring voice” (New York Times) to the printed word with this electrifying compendium of essential wisdom and obscure knowledge, ancient rulers and overlooked feminists, and more than one fantasy baseball team.  

The Smartest Book in the World unleashes Proops’s fascinating and far-reaching knowledge, and plenty of laughs too. He offers up a cultural guide to the must-see and must-have albums, riffs on the merits of poetry and proper punctuation, and jaunts through lessons on everything from the history of baseball to how to steal precious art. Filtered through his distinctive voice and Proopsian panache, the exploits of the Roman Emperors read like a gossip column and entire novels fly by in a single sentence. Illustrations throughout by Proops’s wife, the artist Jennifer Canaga, bring inspired visuals to his riotous writing.

Spanning genres and generations, Greg Proops gives readers a rollicking reference guide guaranteed to make anyone the smartest person in the room. This book is the perfect companion to The Smartest Man in the World and an uproarious introduction for the uninitiated.

Greg Proops is a revered stand-up comic from San Francisco, and he records his chart-topping podcast “The Smartest Man in the World” from live shows around the World as well as Cleveland. Mr. Proops has been a voice actor in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and played Bob in Bob the Builder. He has been a guest on @Midnight on Comedy Central; Red Eye; The Late, Late Show; and Chelsea Lately. He lives in Hollywood.

Head Case: My Brain and Other Wonders (Henry Holt & Company)

 A spirited, wry, and utterly original memoir about one woman's struggle to make her way and set up a life after doctors discover a hole the size of a lemon in her brain.

The summer before she was set to head out-of-state to pursue her MFA, twenty-six-year-old Cole Cohen submitted herself to a battery of tests. For as long as she could remember, she'd struggled with a series of learning disabilities that made it nearly impossible to judge time and space--standing at a cross walk, she couldn't tell you if an oncoming car would arrive in ten seconds or thirty; if you asked her to let you know when ten minutes had passed, she might notify you in a minute or an hour. These symptoms had always kept her from getting a driver's license, which she wanted to have for grad school. Instead of leaving the doctor's office with permission to drive, she left with a shocking diagnosis--doctors had found a large hole in her brain responsible for her life-long struggles. Because there aren't established tools to rely on in the wake of this unprecedented and mysterious diagnosis, Cole and her doctors and family create them, and discover firsthand how best to navigate the unique world that Cole lives in. Told without an ounce of self-pity and plenty of charm and wit, Head Case is ultimately a story of triumph, as we watch this passionate, loveable, and unsinkable young woman chart a path for herself.

Praise for Head Case

“Head Case is hilarious, moving, thought-provoking: it will change the way you think about what it means to move through the world, no matter the shape of your own human brain.  Cole Cohen's brain is unusual, and her voice is indelible: this is a wonderful book by a wonderful writer.  I can't wait to see what she writes next.”—Elizabeth McCracken

"Terrifically readable, while still being piercing and honest about different kinds of struggle, some familiar, some utterly her own. Besides that, Cole Cohen's also really funny. And unafraid of being bleak. And funny/bleak. I so enjoyed being carried along by Cohen's voice."—Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

"Rich with yearning and ache, conveying a scrunched sense of claustrophobia and imagery of cinematic quality. . .The author also delivers flashes of humor to add levity to the proceedings. A beautifully wrenching memoir as piercing as smelling salts."--Kirkus (starred review)"

"Head Case is funny, touching, acerbic, and emotional; it vividly evokes the world as she experiences it and leaves you feeling you have met an exceptional, tough, indomitable character. " --Susan Orlean

"I'm delighted and inspired by Cole Cohen's Head Case, an account of herself that shines throughout with her particular brand of perseverance, humor, hard-won clarity and wisdom." --Maggie Nelson, author of The Art of Cruelty

"Cole Cohen writes with poignant clarity about her life of continual disorientation--the result of a hole in her parietal lobe. I laud her persistence, her humor, her gracious prose, and most of all, her honesty - and, as the mother of a child likewise afflicted with an "invisible disability," I am grateful for this revelatory memoir. Cohen's challenges are as universal as their cause is unique, and Head Case, so raw and artful both, is an important book. Bravo!"--Robin Black, author of If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

"Cole Cohen writes with clarity, humor and honesty about her own unique brain, but Head Case is also about the very human journey of learning to navigate the big world from inside one's one mind. This is a fascinating and brave memoir."--Ramona Ausubel, author of No One is Here Except All of Us and A Guide to Being Born

Cole Cohen graduated from the California Institute of the Arts MFA program in Writing and Critical Studies in 2009. She was a finalist for the Bakeless Prize and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs prize in Nonfiction and she has been a Yaddo Fellow. She currently lives in Santa Barbara, California where she works as the Events and Program Coordinator for UC Santa Barbara's Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

Jacob The Mutant (Phoneme Media)

 Conceived of as a set of fragmentary manuscripts from an unpublished Joseph Roth novel, Mario Bellatin's Jacob the Mutant is a novella in a perpetual state of transformation--a story about a man named Jacob, an ersatz rabbi and the owner of a roadside tavern. But when reality shifts, so does Jacob, mutating into another person entirely, while the novella mutates into another story. Cleverly translated by Jacob Steinberg, this Phoneme Media edition of a new novel by one of Mexico's most notorious and celebrated writers includes a translator's afterword and explanatory maps by illustrator Zsu Szkurka.

Praise for Mario Bellatin:

"Everyone talks about inventing their own language, but Mario Bellatin actually does it." --Francisco Goldman

Mexican writer Mario Bellatin has published dozens of novels with major and minor publishing houses throughout Latin America, Europe, and the United States, including Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction, published in 2014 by Phoneme Media. A Practicing Sufi, Bellatin has won many international prizes, including, most recently, Cuba's 2015 José María Arguedas Prize.

David Shook has translated Mario Bellatin's Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction, and The Large Glass: Three Autobiographies, forthcoming from Phoneme Media in December. He and Bellatin have collaborated to make films on three continents. Shook's own poetry has been nominated for the Forward Prize and long-listed for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. 

Jacob Steinberg was born in Stony Brook, New York, in 1989. A poet, translator, and critic, his publications includeMagulladón and Ante ti se arrodilla mi silencio. As a translator he has worked with Sam Pink, Luna Miguel, and Mario Bellatin, among others. Scrambler Books released his first English-language collection, Before You Kneels My Silence, as well as the first volume of his translations of contemporary Argentine poet Cecilia Pavón. He currently lives in New York.

Haints Stay (Two Dollar Radio)

 From a rising star in the indie lit world comes a striking new Acid Western in the tradition of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man or Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff. 

Brooke and Sugar are killers. Bird is the boy who mysteriously woke beside them between towns. The story follows the middling bounty hunters after they’ve been chased from town, and Bird, each in pursuit of their own brand of belonging and justice. It features gunfights, cannibalism, barroom piano, a transgender birth, a wagon train, a stampede, and the tenuous rise of the West’s first one-armed gunslinger. 

Haunting, surreal, and possessing an unsettling humor, Haints Stay will ensure Winnette’s growing reputation as an imaginative stylist and one of the most striking voices of his generation. 

Praise for Haints Stay

“The unexpectedness of Colin Winnette’s fiction is nothing less than thrilling. Haints Stay is a solid, layered work of genre-defying beauty.”—The Lit Pub

“Haints Stay puts to mind the very best contemporary novels of the old West, including those by powerhouses like Charles Portis, Patrick DeWitt, Robert Coover, Oakley Hall, E.L. Doctorow and Sheriff Cormac McCarthy himself, not to mention Thomas McGuane’s classic screenplays for The Missouri Breaks and Tom Horn. But Colin Winnette has his own dark and delightful and surprising agenda. Be wary. He might be the new law in town." —Sam Lipsyte

“Life is nasty, brutish, and short in this noir-tinged Western... that falls somewhat uncomfortably between ‘Deadwood’ and The Crying Game. It sounds like a cross between Daniel Woodrell and Elmore Leonard right up until Winnette flips the script.”—Kirkus Reviews

“If the Western genre could be thought of as a pile of old stones, Haints Stay is a particular piece of lovely spit-shined agate at the top, gleaming in invitation, and under its glow the others are changed.” —Amelia Gray

“Funny, brutal and haunting, Haints Stay takes the traditional Western, turns it inside out, eviscerates it, skins it, and then wears it as a duster. This is the kind of book that would make Zane Grey not only roll over in his grave but rise undead from the ground with both barrels blazing.”—Brian Evenson

“From his curiously harrowing Animal Collection to the glorious guts of Fondly, I trust wherever Colin Winnette’s imagination sees fit to take me. And now — with Haints Stay — we venture to the lawless old West for a story stitched out of animal skins and language that glimmers like blood diamonds. This is a dangerous novel; let’s read it and risk our lives together.”—Saeed Jones

“Before the novel ends, there’s cannibalism, an amputation, a bloody jailhouse shoot-out, a surprise birth, and the slaughter of a town’s entire population. [A] portrait of the frontier as a place where desperation and death were always near at hand.”—Publishers Weekly

“I loved it. Loved it! Haints Stay had me from the very first line—the visceral ante upped and crescendoing nearly every page. Humor, gore, that wonderful unsettling feel you get when you’re reading a book that excites you and kind of scares you as well?,Yes, please.”—Lindsay Hunter

Colin Winnette is the author of several books, including the SPD bestseller Coyote, and Fondly, listed among Salon's "best books of 2013." His writing has appeared in the Believer, the American Reader, McSweeney's, and 9th Letter, among other places. His prizes include the NOS Book Contest (for Coyote) and Sonora Review's Short Short Fiction Prize. He was a finalist for Gulf Coast Magazine's Donald Barthelme Prize for short prose and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center's First Book Award. He conducts a semi-regular interview series for Electric Literature and is an associate editor of Pank magazine. He lives in San Francisco.

Karolina Waclawiak received her BFA in Screenwriting from USC School of Cinematic Arts and her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her first novel, How To Get Into The Twin Palms, was published by Two Dollar Radio in 2012. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, and The Believer (where she is also an editor). She lives in Los Angeles.

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic (Featherproof Books)

Jessica Hopper's music criticism has earned her a reputation as one of the firebrands of the form, a keen observer and fearless critic not just of music, but the culture around it, revealing new truths that often challenge us to consider what it is to be a fan. 

With this premiere volume, spanning from her punk fanzine roots to her landmark piece on R. Kelly's past, The First Collection leaves no doubt why the New York Times has called Hopper's work "influential." Not merely a selection of two decades of Hopper's most engaging, thoughtful and humorous writing, this book serves as a document of the last 20 years of American music making and the shifting landscape of music consumption.

Through this vast range of album reviews, essays, columns, interviews, and oral histories, Hopper chronicles what it is to be truly obsessed with music, the ideas in songs and albums, how fantasies of artists become complicated by real life, and just what happens when you follow that obsession into muddy festival fields, dank basements, corporate offices or court records.

Jessica Hopper is a music and culture critic whose work regularly appears in GQ, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and theChicago Tribune. She is a senior editor at The Pitchfork Review and the music editor at Rookie. Her essays have appeared inBest Music Writing for 2004, 2005, 2007, 2010, and 2011. Hopper was the longtime music consultant for This American Life. Her book, The Girls' Guide to Rocking, was named one of 2009's Notable Books For Young Readers by the American Library Association. She lives in Chicago with her husband and young sons. 

Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (Farrar Strauss Giroux)

Skylight Books is over the moon excited to welcome one of our favorite directors, writers and all-around cultural icons,John Waters for the launch of the paperback edition of Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America, his wild and wonderful memoir about what happened (and what might've happened) while hitchhiking across this great nation of ours.

NOTE: As with all Skylight Books events, this reading is free and open to the public (first come, first served).  But because we're expecting a large crowd at this event, we'll be giving out numbered tickets to the signing line to keep things organized.  To get a ticket to the signing line, you must purchase a paperback copy of Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America here at Skylight Books.  Tickets will be available starting May 12, 2015, the official release date for the paperback version of Carsick.  They will be available in-store, or you can order on our website and leave a note in the "Order Comments" field.  We will also hold a ticket for you if you order and pay for a book over the phone.  In addition to books, John Waters will sign memorabila and will pose for photographs with individual attendees. Thank you!

From acclaimed filmmaker and cult artist, John Waters, comes a cross-country hitchhiking journey with America's most beloved weirdo.

John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads "I'm Not Psycho," he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash? 

Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker's unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette. 

Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion--and a celebration of America's weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.

Praise for Carsick:

“Waters idiosyncratically cuts to the core of American diversity, finding the good (and bad) in any situation with biting wit…Waters devotees take note: this is required reading.” –Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Waters has made a funny engaging and—of course—occasionally outrageous book . . . All in all a cool trip and a delightful book." - Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

“Fantastical and plush . . . Carsick becomes a portrait not just of America’s desolate freeway nodes — though they’re brilliantly evoked — but of American fame itself.”  – NY Times Book Review
 
“Travel—uh, hitchhiking—book of the year?" —Ray Olson, Booklist
 
"A flavorful book, with the same cheeky sentimentality we experienced in Water's memoir Role Models plus a Divine-sized dose of kitsch. John Waters fans like me will be ecstatic." —Annie Coreno, Publishers Weekly

“Waters gives full rein to his trash roots with fictional creations that rival anything he’s ever put on screen…Waters, in short, discovers Middle America, somewhere safely between his imaginary world of trash and the glitz of high culture.” –Norman Powers, New York Journal of Books
 
“A good helping of unbridled lewdness is surely to be expected, and no doubt cherished, from the man known as the king of filth and the pope of trash.”—Geoff Nicholson, San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Waters doesn’t bore us with theories as to why the open road has become so much less open; he allows his nasty nostalgic fantasies to hint at the abandon so absent from our lives.”— Michael Andor Brodeur
 
“Waters offers readers an outlandish glimpse into his mind in vintage Waters fashion…the book is also an homage to a lost American pastime of getting into cars with strangers.”—Justin Snow, Metro Weekly
 
“The book, a kind of ode to America, fits with Mr. Waters’s belief that New York is no longer the creative center of the universe” M.H. Miller, New York Observer
 
“The novellas read like short stories that could be made into films… Funny and shocking…yet fans of the filmmaker’s work will likely be more amused than shocked.”—Gary M. Kramer, Frontiers

John Waters is an American filmmaker, actor, writer, and visual artist best known for his cult films, including Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, and Cecil B. DeMented. He is also the author of a memoir, Role Models. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

The Underground is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America (Dey Street Books)

 Ask any millennial: electronic dance music (EDM) is this decade’s rock and roll. Rolling Stone has called EDM the “defining youth culture of the 2010s” but—like hippie culture in the 60s or punk rock in the 70s—it’s about more than music. In The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America, author and music journalist Michaelangelo Matos chronicles the history of EDM and its meteoric rise from drug-fueled warehouse raves to an estimated $6.2 billion business.

The first comprehensive history on the EDM movement in the United States, The Underground Is Massive examines the U.S. electronic dance scene from its beginnings in Detroit and Chicago with acts like Frankie Knuckles and the Belleville Three to its current apex, where performers like Daft Punk and Skrillex sell out arenas all over the world.

In the face of such a massive history, Matos expertly explains how and why EDM has evolved from an underground scene to dominating mainstream youth culture today. He discusses dance music’s rise in tandem with the Internet, exploring the idea that ravers and EDM fanatics were partially responsible for powering the information revolution of the new millennium. He also delves into the scene’s relationship with illegal drugs, from cocaine to Ecstasy to nitrous oxide, and links the changes in EDM fans’ drugs of choice to the evolution of the music.

Based on hundreds of exclusive interviews as well as a score of vintage fanzines, mailing list archives and out-of-print books and magazines, The Underground Is Massive joins the ranks of the classic music histories like Please Kill Me and Can't Stop Won't Stop.  It tells the bizarre yet fascinating story of a drug-fueled, misfit music subculture that turned pop culture on its ear by remixing the relationship between music, sound, drugs and money in ways that fans, and the industry, could not have predicted.

Praise for The Underground Is Massive

“An EDM bible.”—Chloe Maassen, Insomniac.com

“Matos is the perfect person to create a book of this magnitude.”—Mike Walkusky, EDM.com

“We're excited about this book. Matos...has long been one of the few U.S. music journalists who consistently write about electronic dance music with intelligence and insight.”—Andy Hermann, LA Weekly

Michaelangelo Matos attended his first rave in 1993 and began writing professionally about electronic dance music a few years later. A regular contributor to Rolling Stone, NPR, Red Bull  Music Academy Magazine, Wondering Sound, and Beatport, he is the author of an acclaimed volume on Prince’s Sign ‘O’ the Times for Continuum’s 33 1/3 monograph series. He lives in Brooklyn.

Simon Reynolds is the author of seven books about pop culture, including the rave chronicle Energy Flash,  the postpunk history Rip It Up and Start Again and Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. Born in London but these days living in LA, he’s currently writing a book about glam rock. In addition to writing for magazines including The New York Times, The Guardian, Pitchfork and The Wire, Reynolds also maintains a bunch of blogs centered around Blissblog http://blissout.blogspot.com/

Go Ahead & Like It (Ten Speed Press)

An artistic, smart self-help book that prompts and inspires readers to write lists of things they like--a simple yet profound way to collect and remember the good in daily life. 

This scrapbook-style art book is an invitation to write lists of things you like: small things that bring delight, intriguing things that excite, and meaningful things that make every day special. It's a how-to guide, writing prompt, model for self-discovery, and beautiful inspiration for daily gratitude, with poet Jacqueline Suskin's personal lists intertwined with photographs, illustrations, and instruction. It's a self-help book for people who might not be drawn to standard self-help, and it's creative thinking for people who might not identify themselves as creative thinkers (What does it mean to "like" something in today's digital age, anyways?). Above all, it presents a simple, dependable method to notice the good that's all around us--even in a traffic jam or waiting in line--so we can inhabit our world more fully and smile more in the process.

Jacqueline Suskin is best known through her work with Poem Store, a public performance project in which she composes custom verses on a manual typewriter in exchange for donations. She and her typewriter have been featured on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, in the New York Times, at SFMoMA, and at Los Angeles Contemporary, bringing poetry to the general public in an intimate, immediate, and accessible way.

Mandy Kahn is author of the poetry collection Math, Heaven, Time and is co-author of the nonfiction book Collage Culture: Examining the 21st Century's Identity Crisis. She collaborates with composers to create works that feature poetry in tandem with classical music and has had readings and signings at Colette (Paris), Motto (Berlin), Shoreditch House (London), Davies Symphony Hall (San Francisco), Printed Matter (New York) and Art Center College of Design (Pasadena).

Pleasantville (Harper)

 One of Skylight Books' favorite local authors Attica Locke returns with her most ambitious novel to date, taking on business corruption, scheming local politicians and murder in Pleasantville, which brings back Black Water Rising’s morally conflicted environmental attorney Jay Porter.

It’s now 1996, fifteen years since Black Water Rising, and Porter is struggling to cope with a family tragedy.  He’s decided to quit the law after he wraps up his final case: representing the citizens of Pleasantville, a storied neighborhood on the north side of Houston, against the chemical giant ProFerma.

Houston’s mayoral election is pending, and Pleasantville is a key electoral district due to the long-time organizing efforts of its now elderly “patriarch” Sam Hathorne. Its endorsement can make or break a candidate’s chances. Sam’s son, Axel, Houston’s former police chief and a favorite of Pleasantville faces a run-off against the city’s current District Attorney, Sandra Wolcott. Then Axel’s nephew, Neal, is arrested for the murder of a young woman who disappeared while campaigning in Pleasantville. Sam coerces Jay into serving as Neal’s defense attorney, even though Jay insists he’s not qualified. As he tries to untangle the complicated knot of politics, lies, and family secrets at the heart of the Hathorne campaign, Jay finds that the case puts an entire electoral process on trial, revealing the lengths to which those with power are willing to go to keep it.

Attica Locke’s first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the prestigious Orange Prize in the UK (now the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction).  Her second book, The Cutting Season, published by Dennis Lehane books, is a national bestseller, and, like her debut, was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.  It was also named an Honor Book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, was long-listed for the Chautauqua Prize, and is the 2013 winner of the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the largest literary prize for African-Americans.

A graduate of Northwestern University, Locke was a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab and had planned a career as a movie director, but got derailed along the way, spending many years as a screenwriter-for-hire.  She wrote scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, and Dreamworks.  Highly paid, yet unproduced, Locke grew restless with the Hollywood studio system. “There were days I felt like I was writing solely for the pleasure of a group of studio execs, all with a fifteen-mile radius of Burbank, California, that my work had no meaning beyond that.”  In 2005, she gave herself one year to change this – during which she wrote the first draft of Black Water Rising.  “Besides motherhood, it was the single most transformative experience of my life.”

After two books, she felt pulled toward Hollywood again, explicitly television, where great drama is being produced “like I haven’t seen in my lifetime.”  She is currently co-producer and writer on the upcoming Fox drama, Empire, created by Lee Daniels (The Butler, Precious) and Danny Strong (Game Change, The Hunger Games) and premiering in January 2015.

Locke is a member of the academy for the Folio Prize in the UK and is also on the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.  

A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed (Riverhead Books)

 From the internationally bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most overlooked forces.

Now in So You've Been Publicly Shamed, Ronson investigates the world of public shaming, where social media has made everyone a vigilante and where a poorly phrased tweet or comment can catapult a person to Public Enemy No. 1 overnight. Shaming moves with lighting speed and has a terrifyingly powerful effect, sometimes destroying a person’s entire life. In his inimitable “Ronsonian” style, Jon Ronson follows up with those whose lives have been left in tatters, and questions those being most cruel in the anonymous internet playground, resulting in a powerful and very humane dispatch from the front line of the escalating war on human nature and its flaws.

As Ronson says of his meeting with the recipient of one shaming, “Over the years I’ve sat across tables from a lot of people whose lives have been destroyed. Usually the people who did the destroying were the government, or the military, or big business. This felt like the first person I had ever interviewed who had been destroyed by us.”

Ronson’s “hilarious and unsettling” (Boston Globe) storytelling has made him a favorite of readers & critics alike. He is a regular on This American Life and critics have deemed his work “beguiling” (New York Times), “both terrifying and hilarious” (O, The Oprah Magazine) and “entertaining and alarming in equal parts” (Kirkus).  And Salon praised: “Ronson’s touch is light and he’s not afraid to play the feckless neurotic for laughs, but that doesn't obscure the serious questions raise by his investigations.” It is this deft mix of comedy and rigorous reporting that make Ronson’s work equal parts entertainment and essential reading and he is at the height of his powers in this new book.

Sur La Route (Quale Press)

 Please welcome back to Skylight Books, local poet Cecilia Woloch!

Sur la Route is a novella in postcard-like vignettes — a series of brief, vivid, poetic episodes that trace the path of a disaffected American woman “on the road” in France and western Europe. It’s the winter of 1994 and she’s fled the blandness of Los Angeles for Paris, carrying with her only a list of the names of friends-of-friends, a couple of battered suitcases and a longing to be part of a more sensual, nuanced, mysterious world. She moves breathlessly through that world, the peripatetic rhythm of events mirrored in the restless, lyrical narrative. Along the way, she falls in love with a man, a woman, a city, a way of being in the world, and her own life. By turns sexy, intriguing, and passionate, her experiences require her to open her own heart as widely as possible, even (and always) at the risk of breaking it.

Cecilia Woloch is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Carpathia (BOA Editions 2009)and Tzigane, le poème Gitan (Scribe-l’Harmattan 2014), the French translation of her second book, Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem. The text of Tsigan has also been adapted for multi-media performances in the U.S. and Europe. Her novella, Sur la Route, a finalist for the Colony Collapse Prize, is being published by Quale Press in 2015, along with a new collection of poems, Earth, winner of the Two Sylvias Press Prize for the chapbook. Other honors include The Indiana Review Prize for Poetry, The New Ohio Review Prize for Poetry, the Scott Russell Sanders Prize for Creative Nonfiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, CEC/ArtsLink International, Chateau de la Napoule Foundation, the Center for International Theatre Development and others. Her work has been translated and published in French, German, Polish and Ukrainian. The founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and The Paris Poetry Workshop, she has also served on the faculties of a number of creative writing programs and teaches independently throughout the U.S. and around the world.

The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows (St. Martin's Griffin)

 From the deeply unsettling to the possibly supernatural, these thirty-one border-crossing stories from around the world explore the uncanny in literature, and delve into our increasingly unstable sense of self, home, and planet. The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows opens with “The Sand-man,” E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1817 tale of dopplegangers and automatons—a tale that inspired generations of writers and thinkers to come. Stories by 19th and 20th century masters of the uncanny—including Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Shirley Jackson—form a foundation for sixteen award-winning contemporary authors, established and new, whose work blurs the boundaries between the familiar and the unknown. These writers come from Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia, Scotland, England, Sweden, the United States, Uruguay, and Zambia—although their birthplaces are not always the terrains they plumb in their stories, nor do they confine themselves to their own eras. Contemporary authors include: Chris Adrian, Aimee Bender, Kate Bernheimer, Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris, Mansoura Ez-Eldin, Jonathon Carroll, John Herdman, Kelly Link, Steven Millhauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Yoko Ogawa, Dean Paschal, Karen Russell, Namwali Serpell, Steve Stern and Karen Tidbeck.

Marjorie Sandor is the author of four books, most recently The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction. Her story collection, Portrait of my Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime, won the 2004 National Jewish Book Award in Fiction, and an essay collection, The Night Gardener: A Search for Home won the 2000 Oregon Book Award for literary non-fiction. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, AGNI, The Hopkins Review and The Harvard Review among others. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon.

Aimee Bender is the author of the novels The Color Master, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake—a New York Times bestseller—and An Invisible Sign of My Own, and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. Her works have been widely anthologized and have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.