Enjoy recent author events, interviews, and bookseller series. Visit our website to learn more: www.skylightbooks.com
Episodes
Thursday Apr 30, 2015
Thursday Apr 30, 2015
Join us for a special evening as students from Otis College or Art and Design's Graduate Writing Program share their poetry and prose.
California native, Sarah Daniele Dickerson is a writer whose biggest influences are Joan Didion, Kendrick Lamar, Frida Kahlo, and Angela Davis. After earning an MFA she intends to spend a year creating and exploring all manner of internal and external wilderness. She is the editor-in-chief of Revel Empire, a digital publication founded on a belief in collaborative creativity as a revolutionary act, and her audio/chapbook “Invisibly Wounded Adult-Sized Children” will be released digitally and in print this summer.
A writer from Los Angeles, Justin Evans is forever fretting and fussing. He writes mainly prose and has a very large nose. That immigrant old fellow Justin has been published in journals like Bird's Thumb, the Point and SMR. He prefers walking to cars. His first novel he is just now redrafting.
Eunice Kim received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design and her BA from Amherst College. In her free time she likes playing jazz, making jewelry, and creating art out of anything recycled. A New York native, she is currently living in Los Angeles with her pet turtle Soren who is about ten years older than she is. Together they have produced writing that strives for a balance of spirituality and melodrama.
Taylor McDaniel grew up in Louisiana, where he earned his B.A. in English from Louisiana State University. His poetry has appeared in Vitrine: a printed museum and Smoking Glue Gun magazine, among others, and is forthcoming in Bat City Review. Taylor is currently an MFA writing candidate at Otis College of Art and Design.
Sean Pessin has lived in Los Angeles for his whole life. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English at CSUN, and will complete his M.F.A. in writing at Otis College. His work is always strange and queer, and has appeared in Used Gravitrons, The Sigma Tau Rectangle, The New Short Fiction Series, and Interfictions Online.
Tess Satsuma is writing a novel about Waikiki. She is influenced by movie soundtracks, water, disaster predictions and bus travel.
Thursday Apr 30, 2015
Thursday Apr 30, 2015
The Fine Art of Fucking Up (Unnamed Press)
Your archenemy taunts you with clandestine bacon frying. Your boss feverishly cyberstalks an aging romance novel cover model. Your husband unexpectedly takes in a wayward foreign national. Your best friend reveals a secret relationship with your longstanding workplace crush.
Welcome to the life of Nina Lanning, lone and floundering administrator of a prestigious Midwestern art school. When once-a-century flooding threatens to destroy the art building, and the priceless Jackson Pollock trapped inside, Nina and her ragtag band of faculty members undertake to rescue the early work of the splatter master. Propelled by disasters both natural and personal, Nina must confront her colleagues, her husband, and most importantly, herself. Cate Dicharry’sdebut novel is a painfully hysterical examination of what is truly worth saving, and mastering the art of letting go.
Praise for The Fine Art of Fucking Up
"Cate Dicharry's comic timing is unimpeachable and though her characters are idiosyncratic and quirky, they are deeply dimensional and exceptionally real. A richly complicated and rewarding novel."-- Jill Alexander Essbaum, author of Hausfrau
"Cate Dicharry has an unwaveringly merciless eye for the bogus aspects of art school. But you don't need a BA in Painting or Performance Studies to enjoy the screwball comedy of The Fine Art of Fucking Up. An affectionate yet unsparing view of how easy it is to lose one's way."-- Sara Levine, author of Treasure Island!!!
"How thoroughly The Fine Art of Fucking Up sucked me in, and how, like good books tend to do, this novel operated by some kind of clairvoyant book magic: This is exactly the book you need to read right now; this is your life, but enough not your life to see it clearly. Good job. Keep reading." -- Kailyn McCord in Quaint Magazine
Cate Dicharry has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Low Residency Program at the University of California, Riverside. Cate lives in Iowa City with her husband and two small sons. The Fine Art of Fucking Up is her first novel.
J. Ryan Stradal is the author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest (Viking, July 2015). 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.
Thursday Apr 30, 2015
Thursday Apr 30, 2015
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.
Thursday Apr 30, 2015
Thursday Apr 30, 2015
The Immune System: A Dewey Decimal Novel & Love Maps & The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. (Akashic Books)
Join us tonight for a special event brought to you by one of the most exciting independent presses in the country, Akashic Books.
The Immune System is the explosive final installment in Nathan Larson's Dewey Decimal trilogy. Picking up months after the events of The Nervous System, Dewey finds himself running dirty operations for the crooked Senator Howard. When Dewey is tasked with disrupting unrest from a growing group of outcast civilians, and simultaneously given the assignment of protecting a pair of Saudi royals, he is forced to look within and make some impossible choices. Ultimately, this puts him at odds with his benefactor and the powers that be.
In the course of the novel, we learn the true nature of the 2/14 cataclysm that decimated New York City, and by the end of it, Dewey must choose whether or not to face his own past. He must also decide if he is to be part of the elite control system, or if he's willing to commit himself to the unknown, without the protections he enjoys in the good favor of the landlords of the new New Order.
Praise for the Dewey Decimal Series:
“The most incredible thing about Larson’s novel is just how credible it is . . . and the prose is perfect, as tweaked and jumpy and memorable as the man known as Dewey Decimal. I’m a Library of Congress girl myself, but Larson’s uncannily original fiction deserves its own number within any system of library classification.”—Laura Lippman, author of After I’m Gone
“Larson’s vividly imagined world and his quirky narrator are likely to win him a cadre of loyal fans.”—Publishers Weekly
“Whiplash prose, teeth-gnashing dialogue and post-civilization concepts that make a crazy (amateur) librarian in a pitch-black world a hell of a lot of fun . . . A good time for fans of the likes of Charlie Huston and Charles Stross.”—Kirkus Reviews
Nathan Larson is an award-winning film music composer, having created the scores for over thirty movies, including Boys Don’t Cry, Dirty Pretty Things, and Margin Call. The Dewey Decimal System and The Nervous System are the highly acclaimed first two installments in his Dewey Decimal crime-fiction trilogy. Larson lives in Harlem, New York City, with his wife and son.
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The love in Love Maps is not the kind associated with domestic bliss; it is the kind that bubbles up at inopportune moments, attaching itself to people who might be better off free, causing mayhem and longing, along with moments of rare beauty. The title is taken from a series of paintings by Sarah Marker, an artist who ekes out a living teaching humanities at a fancy high school in Connecticut.
The story begins when Sarah receives a letter from Philip, her erstwhile husband. They have lived separately for seven years, without having seen each other once, without having formally severed ties, in a state of sustained ambivalence. Now he wants to visit. As much as Sarah would like to see him, she is terrified at what he will do when he discovers that he has a son.
Sarah bundles up her son and once again takes flight, only to arrive in a place she had not intended. While navigating the terrain of the 1980s art scene in New York City, she must confront the terrible events surrounding Philip's departure, and reconcile the expectations of domestic life with her own fractured experience of family, confronting the violence and aching love at the heart of this story.
Praise for Love Maps:
“Who can plot the turns and reversals of the heart? Who can follow its illogical loyalties and mysterious obsessions? Who can reconcile its competing claims from lovers and family? Eliza Factor, that’s who, in this stunningly assured novel about a pair of sisters—one a successful artist, the other a famous singer—and the handsome architect who comes between them. The cover should come with a warning to put your life on hold for a few days, because once you pick it up, you won’t be able to do anything else until you finish.”—Bliss Broyard, author of One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life—A Story of Race and Family Secrets
“Eliza Factor’s second novel is a beautiful and uplifting journey through the New York art scene of the 1980s, as lived by one true artist. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a character more fully and honestly revealed across the pages of a book than Sarah Marker. A stunning and original exploration of family, romantic love, and the possibility of healing.”—Joseph Weisberg, creator/executive producer of The Americans (FX Network)
“By turns lyrical and flinty, searching and suspenseful, Love Maps is animated by the strivings and travails of characters who seek (and find) the real and the true, the territory instead of the map.”—Thad Ziolkowski, author of Wichita
“Eliza Factor’s Love Maps is a delight, and I read it with mounting pleasure and admiration. It feels strange to think of Love Maps as a pleasure—this is, after all, a book that captures in technicolor detail the pain and vulnerability that come with just about every variety of human relationship. But prose this witty and psychologically deft, and structures this intricate and heartbreaking, don’t come around often.”—Ben Dolnick, author of At the Bottom of Everything
Eliza Factor is a writer and the founder of Extreme Kids & Crew. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and three children. Her debut novel, The Mercury Fountain, was published in 2012 by Akashic Books.
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From Tehran to Los Angeles, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. is a sweeping saga that tells the story of the Soleymans, an Iranian Jewish family tormented for decades by Raphael's Son, a crafty and unscrupulous financier who has futilely claimed to be an heir to the family's fortune. Forty years later in contemporary Los Angeles, Raphael's Son has nearly achieved his goal--until he suddenly disappears, presumed by many to have been murdered. The possible suspects are legion: his long-suffering wife; numerous members of the Soleyman clan exacting revenge; the scores of investors he bankrupted in a Ponzi scheme; or perhaps even his disgruntled bookkeeper and longtime confidant.
Award-winning novelist Gina B. Nahai pulls back the curtain on a close-knit community that survived centuries of persecution in Iran before settling and thriving in the United States, but now finds itself divided to the core by one of its own members. By turns hilarious and affecting, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. examines the eternal bonds of family and community, and the lasting scars of exile.
Praise for The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.
"A wide-ranging, page-turning, magical realist, multigenerational family saga and Iranian-Jewish-American immigration tale enveloped in a murder mystery...it both entertains and instructs, and its differing genres seem more complimentary than conflicting."--New York Journal of Books
"Nahai has crafted an engaging combination of family saga and murder mystery, placed it in the framework of a relatively unknown subculture, and people it with fascinating characters. Flavored with both elements of magical realism and down-to-earth observations, The Luminous Heart of Jonah S. brings a little-known Los Angeles community to vivid life."--Shelf Awareness
"What results is a novel that feels more universal than anything, and an engrossing, expansive epic that charts not only thousands years of Iranian Jewish life, but the brutality of one family's survival amidst revolution and cultural upheaval."
--Kirkus Reviews
"One of the many pleasures of this sprawling, multigenerational story is the way it transcends the specifics of the Iranian diaspora with insights that could apply to anyone."--LA Weekly
"One of Nahai's gifts is her astute observation of this community, her own, which she describes with unsparing precision."--Los Angeles Review of Books
"Nahai's eye for detail, whether it's succinctly summing up a funeral or providing a description of a Tehran summer, always seems to be spot on."--PopMatters
"An intriguing murder-mystery journey anchored within the Iranian-Jewish community of Los Angeles. Vivid and raw...Nahai masterfully introduces us to the mythical and mundane layers that make up Iranian-American identity."--Washington Independent Review of Books
"It's the family connections--the true Iranian heritage--that is the luminous heart of the novel."--The Reporter Group
Gina B. Nahai is a best-selling author, columnist, and full-time lecturer at USC’s Master of Professional Writing Program. Her novels have been translated into eighteen languages, and have been selected as “Best Books of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. She has also been a finalist for the Orange Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and has won the Los Angeles Arts Council Award, the Persian Heritage Foundation’s Award, the Simon Rockower Award, and the Phi Kappa Phi Award. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles magazine, Publishers Weekly, and the Huffington Post, among others. She writes a monthly column for the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, and is a three-time finalist for an LA Press Club Award. Nahai holds a BA and a Masters degree in International Relations from UCLA, and a Master of Professional Writing from USC. She’s a former consultant for the Rand Corporation, and a frequent lecturer on the politics of pre- and postrevolutionary Iran.
Sunday Apr 26, 2015
Sunday Apr 26, 2015
Orhan's Inheritance (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)
In her extraordinary debut, Aline Ohanesian has created two remarkable characters--a young man ignorant of his family's and his country's past, and an old woman haunted by the toll the past has taken on her life.
When Orhan's brilliant and eccentric grandfather Kemal--a man who built a dynasty out of making "kilim" rugs--is found dead, submerged in a vat of dye, Orhan inherits the decades-old business. But Kemal's will raises more questions than it answers. He has left the family estate to a stranger thousands of miles away, an aging woman in an Armenian retirement home in Los Angeles. Her existence and secrecy about her past only deepen the mystery of why Orhan's grandfather willed his home in Turkey to an unknown woman rather than to his own son or grandson. Left with only Kemal's ancient sketchbook and intent on righting this injustice, Orhan boards a plane to Los Angeles. There he will not only unearth the story that eighty-seven-year-old Seda so closely guards but discover that Seda's past now threatens to unravel his future. Her story, if told, has the power to undo the legacy upon which his family has been built. Moving back and forth in time, between the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, Orhan's Inheritance is a story of passionate love, unspeakable horrors, incredible resilience, and the hidden stories that can haunt a family for generations.
Praise for Orhan's Inheritance:
"Aline Ohanesian draws from her family's own dark history to create a tender, powerful story of love and reclamation.Orhan's Inheritance is a breathtaking and expansive work of historical fiction and proof that the past can sometimes rewrite the future." --Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train
“A harrowing tale of unimaginable sacrifice...A novel that delves into the darkest corners of human history and emerges with a tenuous sense of hope.” – Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“To take the tumultuous history of Turks and Armenians in the early part of this century, and to tell the stories of families and lovers from the small everyday moments of life to the terrible journeys of death, to make a novel so engrossing and keep us awake - that is an accomplishment, and Aline Ohanesian's first novel is such a wonderful accomplishment.” - Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon
“Readers who were moved by the work of Carol Edgarian, Mark Mustian, and Nancy Kricorian will appreciate the historical authenticity and passion that Aline Ohanesian brings to this story of the Armenian Genocide. Orhan’s Inheritance is heartfelt and sincere.”— Chris Bohjalian, author of The Sandcastle Girls
“From its first startling image, Orhan's Inheritance will seep under your skin and leave an indelible mark upon your heart. What lucky readers we are to inherit Aline Ohanesian’s gorgeous work.” —Gayle Brandeis, author of Delta Girls
“Orhan's Inheritance is a remarkable debut from an important new voice. It tells us things we thought we knew and shows us we had no idea. Beautiful and terrible and, finally, indelible.” – Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Queen of America
Aline Ohanesian's great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Her history was the kernel for the story that Ohanesian tells in her first novel, Orhan's Inheritance. Ohanesian was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction and "Glimmer Train"'s Short Story Award for New Writers. Born in Northridge, California, she lives and writes in San Juan Capistrano, California, with her husband and two young sons. Her website is www.alineohanesian.com.
Sunday Apr 26, 2015
Sunday Apr 26, 2015
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.
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
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.
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
How to Cary Bigfoot Home (Red Hen Press) The King of the Sea Monkeys (Guernica Editions)
The thirteen stories in Chris Tarry's richly imagined debut, How To Carry Bigfoot Home, lay bare the insurmountable forces that determine who we are and who we become. From an out-of-work dragon-slaying father in "Here Be Dragons" to a family arguing aboard a rocket ship in "Topics in Advanced Rocketry," the stories use fantastic settings, blazing wit, and imaginative circumstances to explore very human truths. The stories work to reconcile the public self with the private heart. To contemplate the monsters we carry home and lay bare for the ones we love the most.
Praise for How to Carry Bigfoot Home:
“Chris Tarry’s stories come at what we might call The Problem of Men as Boys from all possible angles, from a hapless medieval stay-at-home Dad who’s running a con game out of his one-room hovel to a Bigfoot who’s a sad failure as a creative writing teacher. These stories hilariously and poignantly evoke the way, when it comes to relationships, all men are living under a leaky thatched roof with winter on the way, always believing they’re on the edge of a turnaround, even though failure keeps returning like an old friend back in town.” —Jim Shepard, Story Prize–winning author of You Think That’s Bad and Project X
“What would happen if some mad scientist were able to fuse the otherworldly exuberance of H.P. Lovecraft with the nuanced pathos of John Cheever? The result would be a dazzling, explosive, and inexhaustible new kind of illumination: a writer named Chris Tarry.” —Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting and The Storm at the Door
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Mark E. Cull's The King of the Sea Monkeys is a novel in two parts. Because the protagonist suffers from a traumatic brain injury, the first part is fragmented, finding its way in the larger narrative in disorderly pieces. The novel is centered on a young high school teacher living a fairly normal life. This life disintegrates when he is involved in a shooting at a convenience store. He survives but his world is undone. Issues of traumatic brain injury are examined and the existence of God comes into question. We find ourselves asking what the framework of a real life is.
Praise for King of the Sea Monkeys:
The King of the Sea Monkeys unfolds a lot like the creatures of this novel's title. This new world is at first so promising and real and then it is all taken away. The characters in this novel bring me back to life, back to a full appreciation of the wonder of it all. It is a novel about love and innocence and wisdom and surrender, the good kind. Mark Cull has shaped a fitting lesson for us in this era of passivity and neglect. – Percival Everett
. . .
Chris Tarry holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, and is the author of the story collection, How To Carry Bigfoot Home (Red Hen Press 2015). His fiction has appeared in publications such as The Literary Review, On Spec, The GW Review, PANK, Bull Men’s Fiction, and Monkeybicycle. His non-fiction has appeared in the anthology How to Expect What You’re Not Expecting, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, Grain Magazine, and many other places. In 2012, his story “Here Be Dragons” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is also a four-time Juno Award winner (the Canadian Grammy), and one of New York’s most sought-after musicians. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey with his wife Michelle and two amazing kids, Chloe and Lucas. Visit him at http://christarry.com
Mark E. Cull is a publisher and author who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and Red Hen Press Co-Founder, Kate Gale. Born and raised in Los Angeles, fortune led him to spend nearly two decades in the aerospace and defense industries before a lurking passion for literature finally compelled him to that world, and more specifically the world of publishing. Ready to change the publishing landscape, Mark joined Kate Gale in establishing one of the most respected and eclectic presses in the independent literature publishing sector, Red Hen Press. Mark attended college at Cal State Northridge, majoring in Literature. Since that transition, he has authored a short story collection, One Way Donkey Ride (Asylum Arts, 2002), founded The Los Angeles Review, serves on the advisory board of WriteGirl, and has co-edited three collections of short fiction: Anyone is Possible, Blue Cathedral, and The Crucifix is Down. In addition to the upcoming release of The King of the Sea Monkeys (April, 2015: Guernica Editions), he is currently at work on a novel and seeking a home for two others.
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
Pretty Ugly (Thomas Dunne Books)
From Kirker Butler, a writer/producer of Family Guy, comes a satirical look at a dysfunctional southern family complete with an overbearing stage mom, a 9 year-old pageant queen, a cheating husband, his teenage girlfriend, a crazy grandmother, and Jesus.
After eight-and-a-half years and three hundred twenty-three pageants, Miranda Miller has become the ultimate stage mother. Her mission in life is to see that her nine-year-old daughter, Bailey, continues to be one of the most successful child pageant contestants in the southern United States. But lately, that mission has become increasingly difficult. Bailey wants to retire and has been secretly binge eating to make herself "unpageantable;" and the reality show Miranda has spent years trying to set up just went to their biggest rival.
But Miranda has a plan. She's seven months pregnant with her fourth child, a girl (thank God), and she is going to make damn sure this one is even more successful than Bailey, even if the new girl is a little different.
Miranda's husband, Ray, however, doesn't have time for pageants. A full-time nurse, Ray spends his days at the hospital where he has developed a habit of taking whatever pills happen to be lying around. His nights are spent working hospice and dealing with Courtney, the seventeen-year-old orphan granddaughter of one of his hospice patients who he has, regrettably, knocked up. With a pregnant wife, a pregnant teenage mistress, two jobs, a drug hobby, and a mountain of debt, Ray is starting to take desperate measures to find some peace. Meanwhile, the Millers' two sons are being homeschooled by Miranda's mother, Joan (pronounced Jo-Ann), a God-fearing widow who spends her free time playing cards and planning a murder with Jesus. Yes, Jesus.
A bright new voice in satirical literature, Kirker Butler pulls no punches as he dissects our culture's current state of affairs. It's really funny, but it's also pretty ugly.
Praise for Pretty Ugly
“To the pantheon of comic American fiction-kings – think Nathanael West, think Terry Southern - let us now add the name of Kirker Butler. In fine-tuned, generous prose that careens from screamingly funny to downright poignant, Pretty Ugly tells the tale of Miranda Ford, a pretty little girl with big-time, beauty pageant dreams. Butler has written a laugh-out-loud joy-ride of a book, the kind you don’t want to finish, and find yourself pressing into the hands of loved ones once you do. But don’t listen to me, grab it yourself. Kirker Butler is the real thing, and I can’t wait to read his next one.”—Jerry Stahl, author of Happy Mutant Baby Pills
“The person who wrote this book asked me for a quote, so I gave them one.”—Ricky Gervais
“Pretty Ugly is everything you'd want in a novel: funny, poignant, exceedingly well-written. I look forward to reading it.”—Stephen Colbert
“I love this book, and I think Kurt Vonnegut would have loved it, too. In fact, it might have been his favorite book of all time. Hell, I'm just going to go ahead and say it: Kirker's book is hilarious, and it was Kurt Vonnegut's favorite book of all time.”—Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy and Ted
“What I've read of this book I have liked!” —Amy Sedaris
“Miranda Miller and all the people of the South that orbit her are the dunces of the Confederacy you've been waiting to meet. They make one shockingly bad decision after another yet you will still be constantly surprised and delighted by every outcome. Bad things happen to bad people. Good things happen to bad people. Hilarious things happen to everyone. And there's a funeral so nutty that the only person who gets out with his dignity intact is the dearly departed. You may think you know something about children's beauty pageants but Kirker Butler has created a world that makes ‘Toddlers And Tiaras’ look like a nineteenth century book club meeting.” —Bean, KROQ’s Kevin and Bean Show
“A funny, slam-bam-thank you, ma'am, voyeuristic look at the world's most dysfunctional family. I could not put this book down!” —Jennifer Garner, actress
Kirker Butler is an Emmy nominated writer and producer. His TV credits include Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, and The Neighbors among others. He has a new show, Galavant, which will premiere on ABC Television in January 2015. Butler is also the writer of the graphic novel, Blue Agave and Worm. Kirker grew up in Kentucky, and now lives in Los Angeles with his family.
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
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.
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
PIT To LAX: My Story Worthy Life (Story Worthy Publishing)
For Christine Blackburn, the youngest of six kids growing up in Pittsburgh, the idea of living in Los Angeles and working in the entertainment industry seemed like a dream (or at least something you only saw on television). Instead she took a circuitous route—first as a flight attendant, then in the Peace Corps—with some unforeseen setbacks: a rare cancer diagnosis at age 31. With a survivorʼs renewed sense of urgency, Blackburn finally found the courage to take the leap to Los Angeles and pursue her life as a performer, or at least... as a contestant on “The Dating Game.” PIT to LAX: My Story Worthy Life is a series of memories about loving, losing, and letting go, which will inspire you and stay with you long after youʼve left its last pages. With PIT to LAX: My Story Worthy Life, Christine Blackburn proves she has indeed lived a Story Worthy Life.
Praise for PIT to LAX: My Story Worthy Life:
“Christine has written a frank and funny collection of stories. You'll be laughing out loud one minute and then she'll hit you with a poignancy that you didn't see coming. Reading this book is like getting sucker punched in the best way possible.” -ANNABELLE GURWITCH, New York Times Bestselling author of I SEE YOU MADE AN EFFORT: Compliments, Indiginities and Survival Stories From The Edge of 50
“Hey you, read this book! So what if you don't necessarily know who the author is, she had an interesting life, went to the Peace Corps, survived cancer and a lot of other stuff. Just buy it already. If you don't like it I'll give you your money back.” -TODD GLASS, author of The Todd Glass Situation
“This book will take you on the unique journey of Blackburn's life. It will make you think, feel and laugh. I loved it.” -YAKOV SMIRNOFF, Comedian, Actor, Professor
“From going to the bathroom in a bucket in Tonga while serving in the Peace Corps to undergoing chemotherapy with a doctor named Donald Trump, Blackburn shares and laughs at her many adventures (and misadventures) with heart, humor, and optimism. The optimism which carried her to California, and ultimately saved her life.”-LILIBET SNELLINGS, author of BOX GIRL: My Part-Time Job as an Art Installation
Christine Blackburn is a contributing writer for the Huffington Post, comedian, producer, host, and creator of the highly acclaimed Story Worthy Podcast and the game show, Shotgun Story Worthy. Christine has been seen in over 50 national commercials and spent two years on the USA Network program, Ready For The Weekend Movie. Christine is passionate about music, tennis, and sushi. She lives with her daughter in Los Angeles.
More information including live performance dates and video can be found www.storyworthymedia.com
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
Wednesday Apr 08, 2015
World Gone By (William Morrow & Company)
Dennis Lehane, the New York Times bestselling author of The Given Day and Live by Night, returns with a psychologically and morally complex novel of blood, crime, passion, and vengeance, set in Cuba and Ybor City, Florida, during World War II, in which Joe Coughlin must confront the cost of his criminal past and present.
Ten years have passed since Joe Coughlin's enemies killed his wife and destroyed his empire, and much has changed. Prohibition is dead, the world is at war again, and Joe's son, Tomas, is growing up. Now, the former crime kingpin works as a consigliore to the Bartolo crime family, traveling between Tampa and Cuba, his wife's homeland.
A master who moves in and out of the black, white, and Cuban underworlds, Joe effortlessly mixes with Tampa's social elite, U.S. Naval intelligence, the Lansky-Luciano mob, and the mob-financed government of Fulgencio Batista. He has everything--money, power, a beautiful mistress, and anonymity.
But success cannot protect him from the dark truth of his past--and ultimately, the wages of a lifetime of sin will finally be paid in full.
Dennis Lehane vividly recreates the rise of the mob during a world at war, from a masterfully choreographed Ash Wednesday gun battle in the streets of Ybor City to a chilling, heartbreaking climax in a Cuban sugar cane field. Told with verve and skill, World Gone By is a superb work of historical fiction from one of "the most interesting and accomplished American novelists" (Washington Post) writing today.
Dennis Lehane is the author of ten novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River; Shutter Island; The Given Day; Moonlight Mile; and Live by Night, as well as Coronado, a collection of short stories and a play. He and his wife, Angie, divide their time between Boston and the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Monday Mar 23, 2015
Monday Mar 23, 2015
You Are Here (Writegirl Publications)
WriteGirl is an innovative nonprofit organization that empowers teen girls through creative writing. Join us for this special chance to hear our WriteGirl teens speak their minds and read their original poetry and prose. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll be surprised—you won’t want to miss this one! Skylight Books has truly become a part of WriteGirl tradition.
WriteGirl’s latest anthology, You Are Here: The WriteGirl Journey, showcases the stories of 161 women and girls navigating their way through small moments and big adventures. You Are Here is available for purchase at Skylight Books.
Praise for WriteGirl
“These girls started with a few words and the seed of an idea. With WriteGirl's encouragement, each girl allowed the words to keep coming until her idea grew into an essay, a story, or a poem. What do writers do? They write. And how lucky we are to have these writers' words to inspire us!” – Carole King, GRAMMY Award-winning singer and songwriter
“The work of these young women reminds me what it's like to be young. Their voices are clear and passionate, carefully observant and exuberant. They celebrate their friends, their neighborhoods, new love, and mourn the losses from which their youth can't shield them. They tell the truth.” – Terry Wolverton, author
WriteGirl is a nonprofit organization for Los Angeles high school girls (ages 13-18) centered on the craft of creative writing and empowerment through self-expression. Through one-on-one mentoring and monthly workshops, girls are given techniques, insights and hot tips for great writing in all genres from professional women writers.
Founder and Executive Director Keren Taylor and WriteGirl’s unique programming have received numerous awards and commendations for exemplary community service, including being honored with the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award by First Lady Michelle Obama. While such recognition is much appreciated, WriteGirl is most proud of the accomplishments of its teen members—100% of our graduating seniors have entered college, many on full or partial scholarships.
For more information, please visit http://www.writegirl.org or email info@writegirl.org
Monday Mar 23, 2015
Monday Mar 23, 2015
Aquarium (Grove Press)
Please welcome back to Skylight Books one of our favorite authors, David Vann!
Twelve-year-old Caitlin lives alone with her mother—a docker at the local container port—in subsidized housing next to an airport in Seattle. Each day, while she waits to be picked up after school, Caitlin visits the local aquarium to study the fish. Gazing at the creatures within the watery depths, Caitlin accesses a shimmering universe beyond her own. When she befriends an old man at the tanks one day, who seems as enamored of the fish as she, Caitlin cracks open a dark family secret and propels her once-blissful relationship with her mother toward a precipice of terrifying consequence.
In crystalline, chiseled, yet graceful prose, Aquarium takes us into the heart of a brave young girl whose longing for love and capacity for forgiveness transforms the damaged people around her. Relentless and heartbreaking, primal and redemptive,Aquarium is a transporting story from one of the best American writers of our time.
Published in twenty languages, David Vann’s previous books—A Mile Down; Legend of a Suicide; Caribou Island; Last Day On Earth; Dirt; and Goat Mountain—have won enormous critical acclaim. A former Guggenheim fellow, Wallace Stegner fellow, John L’Heureux fellow, and NEA fellow, he has taught at Stanford, Cornell, FSU, USF, holds degrees from Stanford and Cornell, and is currently a Professor at the University of Warwick in England and Honorary Professor at the University of Franche-Comté in France.
Monday Mar 23, 2015
Monday Mar 23, 2015
Punk Elegies (Rare Bird Books)
Punk Elegies arrives like a chemically unstable mixture of Richard Yates and Damon Runyon. Set along Hollywood Boulevard at the birth of punk and the death of the 1970s, the thirty-three melancholic, comic laments of Punk Elegies are a mesmerizing concoction of delusion and revelation. A cultural moment, a marriage and one young man's mind and soul spiral through a series of boundless possibilities and arrive at a harrowing finality. In the end, on the spin cycle of destiny, MacDonell circles alone, naked and bewildered in the labyrinth of a pre-AIDS bathhouse inferno. The first sunrise of the rest of his life dares him to step outside.
Allan MacDonell is the author of Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine and was a defining voice of the groundbreaking punk periodical Slashmagazine. While writing for Slash, he also co-invented slam-dancing.