Enjoy recent author events, interviews, and bookseller series. Visit our website to learn more: www.skylightbooks.com
Episodes
Friday Nov 14, 2014
Friday Nov 14, 2014
Peter, Paul and Mary: Fifty Years of a Music Life (Imagine Publishing)
Peter Yarrow and Noel Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary celebrate the release of the first book to detail the intimate story of the trio and their music.
Here is the first and only book that visually tells us the intimate story of Peter, Paul, and Mary and their music, with stirring images that follow their passionate fifty-year journey to the center of America’s heart.
The very best of thousands of photographs, many rare and never before published, taken over five decades by some of the world’s top photographers, show them at their earliest performances in the 1960s, when Mary was the most desired, beautiful, and charismatic performer and a new role model for women. Follow the trio as they lead America to discover the passionate soul of folk music. Join the struggle for racial equality, social justice, and freedom in this memorable journey, from the historic 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King, Jr., to the trio’s appearance before half a million people in 1969 to end the Vietnam War, to their singing at the Hollywood Bowl for Survival Sunday in 1978, helping to launch the antinuke movement, the world’s first international environmental movement.
Through these images, you can feel and almost hear the trio’s songs calling for a more caring, better world as you see photos of them performing with a courage and conviction that became, for so many, the embodiment and soundtrack of their generation’s awakening to conscience, to activism, and to a new dream for all humankind.
Peter, Paul, and Mary’s songs of defiant hope and a certain unmasked innocence are still a powerful part of our American consciousness. This book reenacts the history of how the trio marked our lives with their indelible stamp of honesty—the sort we yearn to recapture and recreate in our own time, for ourselves, our children, and the generations to come.
Peter, Paul, and Mary came into being at the dawn of John F. Kennedy's presidency, as America entered one of its most dramatic periods of social and political change. With music being one of the great forces that brought them together, Americans united in unprecedented ways to create a more just and peaceful society. Folk music, with its ability to reach people's hearts, became the sound track of this remarkable quest, and Peter, Paul, and Mary became standard-bearers of America's new hopes and dreams.
Friday Nov 14, 2014
Friday Nov 14, 2014
Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer (Liveright Publishing)
Moses Harvey was the eccentric Newfoundland reverend and amateur naturalist who first photographed the near-mythic giant squid in 1874, draping it over a shower curtain rod to display its magnitude. In Preparing the Ghost, what begins as Moses s story becomes much more, as fellow squid-enthusiast Matthew Gavin Frank boldly winds his narrative tentacles around history, creative nonfiction, science, memoir, and meditations about the interrelated nature of them all.
In a full-hearted, lyrical style reminiscent of Geoff Dyer, Frank weaves in playful forays about his research trip to Moses' Newfoundland home, Frank's own childhood and family history, and a catalog of bizarre facts and lists that recall Melville's story of obsession with another deep-sea dwelling leviathan.
Though Frank is armed with impressive research, what he can't know about Harvey he fictionalizes, quite explicitly, as a way of both illuminating the scene and exploring his central theme: the big, beautiful human impulse to obsess.
For tonight's reading, Matthew Gavin Frank will be joined by Los Angeles Times book critic (and author himself) David Ulin.
Praise for Preparing the Ghost:
"Preparing the Ghost is a triumph of obsession, a masterful weaving of myth and science, of exploration and mystery, of love and nature. Here Matthew Gavin Frank delivers my favorite book-length essay since John D'Agata'sAbout a Mountain, and with it he stakes a claim to his own share of the new territory being forged by such innovators of the lyric essay as Eula Biss and Ander Monson." --Matt Bell, author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods
"Matthew Gavin Frank has made a book into a curiosity cabinet, one dedicated to the storied giant squid. A mysterious but seductive mix of history, creative non-fiction, memoir, and poetry, Preparing the Ghost is written with contagious passion. In this original book, Frank weaves his imagination through history s gaps, and keeps the reader riveted with the lure of the unknown and dark, sultry prose." --Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise
"Preparing the Ghost reads like a cross between Walt Whitman and a fever dream. Who would think squid and ice cream go together? I remained riveted to the very last word." --Sy Montgomery, author of The Good Good Pig
"Matthew Gavin Frank has fashioned a book-length essay marked by unforeseen oneiric asides, and of real and imaginary escapades in search of one Newfoundlander s giant squid. Preparing the Ghost is a mash-up of a meditation on the nature of myth, the magnetic distance between preservation and perseverance, and the sympathetic cravings that undergird pain. In Frank's heart-thumping taxonomy, monstrous behemoths square nicely with butterflies and ice cream. Don t ask me how: read this book!" --Mary Cappello, author of Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor who Extracted Them
"What a marvelous essay Matthew Gavin Frank has written. Preparing the Ghost is driven by narrative, by lyric association, by memoir, by lists, by research, by imagination. Frank delivers this story of Moses Harvey, the first person to photograph the giant squid, with a passion as supercharged as Harvey s own. Above all, this is an essay about obsession, mystery, mythmaking, and the colossal size of our lives. Take it all in. Revel in its majesty." --Lee Martin, author of Such a Life
"Like the giant squid at the center of this enchanting inquiry, Mathew Gavin Frank's Preparing the Ghost is a multi-tentacled and entirely captivating saga of profound mystery and relentless pursuit." --Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire
"Part history, part lyric poem, part detective novel Matthew Gavin Frank's Preparing the Ghost is just as intriguing and hard to classify as its subject. I never thought I'd care so much about the elusive giant squid, but thanks to this book, I can t help but see its shadow everywhere." --Brenda Miller, author of Season of the Body and Listening Against the Stone
"A great essay takes us into the author's polymathic mind and out to the wondrous world, teaching us something we didn t know we wanted to know. In Preparing the Ghost's deliciously delirious layering of science, biography, history, mystery, linguistics, myth, philosophy, epistemology, adventure, travel Matthew Gavin Frank has given us a truly great essay." --Patrick Madden, author of Quotidiana
The shortest distance between two people is a great story. This one is incredible. You will embrace Preparing the Ghost like a friend you won't want to leave." --Bob Dotson, New York Times bestselling author of American Story: A Lifetime Search for Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things
"Matthew Gavin Frank reinvents the art of research in extraordinarily imaginative ways. His meditation on the briefly known and the forever unknowable courts lore (both family and creaturely), invites the fantastical, heeds fact, and turns the human drive to notate and list into a gesture of lyrical beauty". --Lia Purpura, author of On Looking and Rough Likeness
"Fans of Federico Fellini and, most especially, of Georges Perec, will adore Mr. Frank's infuriatingly baroque, charmingly eccentric and utterly unforgettable book. And with hand on heart I can truly say that I also loved every word of it." --Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded
"Inventive, original, and endlessly interesting, Preparing the Ghost is a gorgeous exploration of myth, history, language, and imagination, all swirling around the mysterious and evocative figure of the giant squid. This book is a journey through passion, obsession, fear, and adventure, and the hunger to behold what lurks within the depths of the sea. "To look into a squid's eyes is like looking into infinity," one squid-obsessed character declares, as Matthew Gavin Frank leads us deeper and deeper into this dazzling account of strangeness, and danger, and the longing to see." --Catherine Chung, author of Forgotten Country
"Preparing the Ghost is the most original book I have read in years. Opening with an arresting image that literally haunts him, Matthew Gavin Frank unstrings history and reweaves a narrative from its threads, from fiction and news reporting and his own life, to remind us that every experience is a story braid. To remind us that life and love and death all are beauty." --Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Chronology of Water and Dora: A Headcase
Matthew Gavin Frank has previously written about everything from wine-making in a tent in Italy to the social hierarchies of a pot farm in California. He teaches creative writing and lives in Marquette, Michigan.
Saturday Nov 08, 2014
Saturday Nov 08, 2014
The Adventures of Mrs. Jesus
With the cheeky irreverence of Lamb and Go the F**k to Sleep, comes a full-color illustrated collection of hilarious, satirical cartoons featuring the wife of Jesus, from Dan O'Shannon, an executive producer of ABC’s Modern Family.
To millions, Jesus is a teacher and an inspiring leader. To his wife, he’s the man who’s always out on the road, traveling across the country and hanging out with his pals. Now, this long-suffering wife is about to get her turn in the spotlight . . .
Welcome to The Adventures of Mrs. Jesus: a wonderfully profane and inventive chronicle of the life of humankind’s most tragically overlooked spouse. Everyone has a cross to bear. Hers has her husband on it.
Dan O'Shannon has written for several well-known network comedies such as Newhart, Cheers, Frasier, and Modern Family. His various awards include but are not limited to five Emmys, two Golden Globes, five WGA awards, an Annie award, and an Academy Award nomination. He also holds an honorary doctorate from Cleveland State University. Additionally, O'Shannon is the author of a book about comedy theory-- What Are You Laughing At? A Comprehensive Guide to the Comedic Event, which has been adopted by universities across the country.
Saturday Nov 08, 2014
Saturday Nov 08, 2014
Grace's Guide: The Art of Pretending to be a Grown-Up (Touchstone Books)
"One of the sharpest, funniest voices on YouTube" ("Forbes"), comedian Grace Helbig offers an irreverent and illustrated guide to life for anyone faced with the challenge of growing up.
Face it--being a young adult in the digital era is one of the hardest things to be. Well, maybe there are harder things in life...but being an adult is difficult! So Grace Helbig has written a guide that's perfect for anyone who is faced with the daunting task of becoming an adult. Infused with her trademark saucy, sweet, and funny voice, Grace's Guide is a tongue-in-cheek handbook for millennials, encompassing everything a young or new (or regular or old) adult needs to know, from surviving a breakup to recovering from a hangover. Beautifully illustrated and full-color,Grace's Guide features interactive elements and exclusive stories from Grace's own misadventures--like losing her virginity solely because her date took her to a Macaroni Grill--and many other hilarious lessons she learned the hard way.
Amusing and unexpectedly educational, this refreshing and colorful guide proves that becoming an adult doesn't necessarily mean you have to grow up.
Praise for Grace's Guide
"This book is just like Grace Helbig--hilarious, bright, and will cut you when you least expect it. Seriously, paper cuts are no joke. This is high-quality paper stock."--Mamrie Hart, Host of You Deserve a Drink on YouTube
"Grace Helbig is a sparkly vessel of wit and fun!"--Andy Cohen, author of Most Talkative
"One of YouTube's most endearing personalities."--Variety
"I've always looked up to Grace Helbig--and not only because she's a giantess!--because she has the extraordinary ability to accomplish whatever she sets out to do. I think this book is a testament to that."--Hannah Hart, author ofMy Drunk Kitchen
"Grace Helbig is my spirit animal and I would gladly take her to lunch at Macaroni Grill so we could talk Latin conventions, first love, and hangover remedies. I wouldn't even expect her to put out."-Jenny Han, author of To All the Boys I've Loved Before
"Hilariously honest without missing a beat, Grace brings her irresistible voice and lovable personality to Grace's Guide. #MustReadImmediately."--Tyler Oakley
Grace Helbig is a comedian, actress, and YouTube personality. She previously hosted "DailyGrace "on My Damn Channel, before leaving in January 2014 to create her own YouTube channel, it'sGrace which has more than 1.7 million subscribers and 150 million views. Helbig is the executive producer and star of the feature film "Camp Takota." She is the winner of the People's Choice Webby Award for Best First Person Format and the Streamy Award for Personality of the Year and Best First-Person Series. Helbig has been named one of "Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business, "Forbes"' 30 under 30, "Time "magazine's 140 Best Twitter feeds, and BuzzFeed's 11 Awesome Up-and-Coming Funny Ladies You Should Know. A graduate of Ramapo College, she lives in Los Angeles.
Saturday Nov 08, 2014
Saturday Nov 08, 2014
This Is A Book For Parents of Gay Kids (Chronicle Books)
"An excellent and much-needed resource." −School Library Journal
This important book is the first of its kind—it is currently the only book to speak to parents who want practical, straightforward advice on how to communicate and better parent their gay child. Authors Dannielle Owens-Reidand Kristin Russo have been dialoguing with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-gender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, and supportive families and friends, for more than four years through their award-winning website, Everyone Is Gay. Expanding on the support and advice for LGBTQ youth and their families that Dannielle and Kristin offer on their website, the book’s question-and-answer format means readers can turn straight to the questions most relevant to them, or read cover to cover to discover answers to everything from profoundly personal religious questions to practical day-to-day issues. With two authors who truly understand gay youth, this book breaks down the issues that many families face when their child comes out.
This is a Book for Parents of Gay Kids speaks to parents who want practical, straightforward advice on how to communicate and better parent their LGBTQ child. For tonight's event, Danielle and Kristin will be joined by Canadian author Vivek Shraya who will read from his book, God Loves Hair, a compilation of short stories following a tender, intellectual, and curious child as he navigates complex realms of sexuality, gender, racial politics, religion, and belonging.
Dannielle Owens-Reid and Kristin Russo dialogue daily with LGBTQ youth and families through their award-winning website, Everyone is Gay. Dannielle lives in Los Angeles, and Kristin lives in New York City.
Vivek Shraya is an artist working in the mediums of music, performance, literature, and film. Winner of the We Are Listening International Singer-Songwriter Award, Vivek has released albums ranging from acoustic folk-rock to electro synthpop, the most recent of which is I Could Be Good for You. His most recent film, What I LOVE about being QUEER, expanded to include an online project and book with contributions from around the world. He lives in Toronto.
Friday Oct 31, 2014
Friday Oct 31, 2014
Boulevard Women (BkMk Press Books)
Boulevard Women is a collection of braided short stories about the lives of several women, including a teenager, a forty-something widow, and a seventy-something traditionally Southern-minded lady, who are neighbors on Boulevard, a historic avenue in Athens, Georgia, that has seen better times. As the characters discover what growing up—and growing old—entails for contemporary American women, their lives reveal the complicated relationships between race, gender, and religion in our modern-day lives.
Praise for Boulevard Women
The acclaimed writer Kelly Cherry, who selected the book for the 2012 G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, writes, ''With this debut collection Lauren Cobb proves herself as a writer who can create suspense, humor, and aesthetic shapeliness out of ordinary materials.”
The critically lauded writer Judith Ortiz Cofer adds, “Boulevard Women is a compassionate and passionate rendering of the lives of the invisible women of a neighborhood in Athens, Georgia, that has seen better times. ... In a remarkably cohesive weave of interlocking stories, Lauren Cobb gives us a compelling look at our own lives.”
According to Susan Rebecca White, author of A Place at the Table, “Lauren Cobb’s Boulevard Women deftly explores the inner lives of women the world has largely overlooked. As the foundations of their lives shift and sometimes crumble, Cobb allows her characters to grow and change rather than to be knocked down. Cobb’s warm and wise heart guides them, and us, to a renewed sense of home.”
David Masiel, author of The Western Limit of the World, writes, “I loved this book. I couldn’t put it down until I’d finished, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind even then.”
Award-winning novelist Sheri Joseph says, “Boulevard Women is a mesmerizing collection of linked short stories, with characters so real, so familiar, that they lingered in my thoughts long after I closed the book. Set against the backdrop of race and religion in the contemporary South, this literary debut reveals an impressive stylistic ranger, from wry social comedy reminiscent of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge to the poetic lyricism of To Kill a Mockingbird. ... an entrancing world that I didn’t want to leave.”
And Lorraine Lopez, author of Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories, adds, “Lauren Cobb’s unforgettable characters grow and change, unfolding and expanding to reveal unexpected dimensions and complexity, great depth and wit, in ways that will astonish and delight.”
Lauren Cobb’s short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including the Beloit Fiction Review, Green Mountains Review, Arts & Letters and the Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories for 2007. Her awards include Another Chicago Magazine’s Chicago Literary Award and second place in the Second Annual Southern California Review Fiction Award. Her collection of linked short stories, titled Boulevard Women, received the 2012 G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Fiction and was published by the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s BkMK Press in December 2013. Originally from Los Angeles, Lauren Cobb now lives in northern Minnesota, where she is a professor of English at Bemidji State University. She is currently working on a literary murder mystery.
Friday Oct 31, 2014
Friday Oct 31, 2014
Guernica Annual Print Edition (Guerinca + Haymarket Press)
Join us for the Los Angeles launch of the Guernica Annual at Skylight Books.
This year Guernica celebrates ten years of award-winning, free online content. Guernica's first-ever print edition (published in partnership with Haymarket Books) contains fearless reportage, memoir, compelling interviews, and emerging and established poets and fiction writers. This special evening consists of readings from the Annual by local writers and a conversation with the staff and editors of Guernica.
Readings from:
Matthew Specktor (American Dream Machine, That Summertime Sound), Katherine Taylor (Rules for Saying Goodbye) Michael Archer (editor-in-chief and co-founder of Guernica), Lisa Lucas (publisher of Guernica) and Kima Jones (NPR, Pank, The Rumpus).
This event is free and open to the public. All proceeds from the Guernica Annual will go towards compensating writers and editors, and maintaining Guernica's free online access.
Matthew Specktor is the author of the novels American Dream Machine and That Summertime Sound, as well as a nonfiction book about the motion picture The Sting. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, The Believer, Tin House, Black Clock, and Salon, among other publications. He is a senior editor and founding member of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Katherine Taylor is the author of the novel Valley Fever, a cross-generational tragicomedy set in California's wine-soaked Central Valley, to be published June 2015 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. She is also the author ofRules for Saying Goodbye, a novel of a young woman's disassembling and reassembling herself, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2007. Katherine's stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Town & Country, 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 an MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Graduate Writing Fellow. Katherine lives in Los Angeles.
Michael Archer is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder of Guernica. His work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Publishers Weekly ,Biography, Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Woman’s Day, Men’s Edge, and The New Yorker, among many others. His fiction has appeared in various journals. He has taught in the Czech Republic (Charles University), Costa Rica, and China. He currently teaches English and speech at the City University of New York.
Lisa Lucas is the Publisher of Guernica. Previously, she served as the Director of Education at Tribeca Film Institute and consulted for various non-profit arts and cultural organizations, including Sundance Film Festival, San Francisco Film Society and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Lucas is also co-chair of the non-fiction committee for the Brooklyn Book Festival.
Kima Jones has received fellowships from PEN Center USA Emerging Voices, Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction and The MacDowell Colony. She has been published at NPR, PANK and The Rumpus among others. Kima lives in Los Angeles and is writing her first poetry collection, The Anatomy of Forgiveness.
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
Does Santa Exist? A Philosophical Investigation (Dutton Books)
A humorous philosophical investigation into the existence of Santa--from a co-executive producer of "The Big Bang Theory," the #1 sitcom on television.
Metaphysics isn't ordinarily much of a laughing matter. But in the hands of acclaimed comedy writer and scholarEric Kaplan, a search for the truth about old St. Nick becomes a deeply insightful, laugh-out-loud discussion of the way some things exist but may not really be there. Just like Santa and his reindeer.
Even after we outgrow the jolly fellow, the essential paradox persists: There are some things we dearly believe in that are not universally acknowledged as real. In Does Santa Exist? Kaplan shows how philosophy giants Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein strove to smooth over this uncomfortable meeting of the real and unreal--and failed. From there he turns to mysticism's attempts to resolve such paradoxes, surveying Buddhism, Taoism, early Christianity, Theosophy, and even the philosophers at UC Berkeley under whom he studied. Finally, this brilliant comic writer alights on--surprise--comedy as the ultimate resolution of the fundamental paradoxes of life, using examples from "The Big Bang Theory," Monty Python's cheese shop sketch, and many other pop-culture sources.
Finally Kaplan delves deeper into what this means, from how our physical brains work to his own personal confrontations with life's biggest questions: If we're all going to die, what's the point of anything? What is a perfect moment? What can you say about God? Or Santa?
Praise for Does Santa Exist?
"Eric Kaplan's Does Santa Exist? is the funniest book of philosophy since...well, ever."--Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons" and "Futurama "and author of "Life in Hell"
"If you can put this book down, you should see a doctor. Kaplan's message burrows into the mind, beats up a few beliefs and then leaves with a triumphant bang."--Michael Gazzaniga, Professor of Psychology University of California Santa Barbara, Director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, and Founder of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society
"Exceptionally interesting, rigorous and I found it not only weirdly funny but deeply moving."--Hubert Dreyfus, Professor of Philosophy, University of California Berkeley, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
"This is truly a book that I wish I had written. Eric brings great clarity of thought to some of the deepest questions of the mind and our understanding of the world. And he's really funny." --Daniel Levitin, New York Times Bestselling author of This is Your Brain on Music, Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at McGill University, Dean of Arts and Humanities, Minerva Schools at KGI
"Eric Kaplan is more than a talented comedy writer. He is a deep soul, an intellectual master, and a brilliant communicator of the subtleties of the intersections between faith and logic. He will have you laughing, thinking harder than you've ever thought, and falling in love with the process of intellectual exploration all over again. A masterpiece."--Mayim Bialik, PhD (neuroscience, UCLA), actress known for her roles as Blossom Russo in "Blossom" and Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler in "The Big Bang Theory"
Eric Kaplan is a co-executive producer of (and writer for) the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Previously he wrote for The Late Show with David Letterman, Futurama, and Flight of the Concords. Kaplan graduated from Harvard and is currently completing his dissertation in philosophy at UC Berkeley.
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
They Become Her (What Books)
Perfecta (What Books)
Join us tonight for the fall launch party for one of Skylight Books' favorite local presses, What Books!
Rebbecca Brown's debut novel, They Become Her, received Honorable Mention in the 2009-2010 Starcherone Innovative Fiction contest. It tells the story of Delia Bacon, the first to propose that Shakespeare did not write his own works and whose own literary ambition inspired a life filled with fame and scandal. Three fictional biographies of contemporary writers--all sharing the name Rebbecca Brown--become involved in Delia's quest, complicating who is writing whose fictional biography. They Become Her is poetically rich, provocatively questioning identity, the relationships between texts and their authors, and the predicaments in which many artists inevitably find themselves. It invites a self-reflexive entanglement with the reader, who won't be able to resist playing along to the unexpected end.
Smart and funny, gorgeous and frightened. Whether at the racetrack or in the cul-de-sac. Asking questions of the flawed self or of the idyllic, Patty Seyburn's poems look headlong at the living world and use all of it. The poems are winding and discursive but also include short, eye-rolling lyrics. Dinner party politics join with lines from Hass, the Bible, and the memory of Detroit. Characters in Seyburn's poems do what we all do, only with the skepticism of Plato.
Rebbecca Brown received her Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2007. Her work has appeared in journals such as American Literary Review, Confrontation, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Eclipse, Requited, H_ngm_n and Ekleksographia. She received an Honorable Mention from the Academy of American Poets, the Rachel Sherwood Prize for Poetry, First Place in the LACC Writing Contest for Creative Nonfiction, and has taught as a Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Lecturer at Kannur University in Kerala, India. THEY BECOME HER is her first novel. She lives in New York City and teaches at Hunter College.
Patty Seyburn has published four books of poems, Perfeccta (What Books, 2014), Hilarity (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002), and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). She teaches at California State University, Long Beach, and co-edits Pool: A Journal of Poetry.
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
Sunday Oct 26, 2014
Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle that Set Them Free (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
When the San Jose mine collapsed outside of Copiapo, Chile, in August 2010, it trapped thirty-three miners beneath thousands of feet of rock for a record-breaking sixty-nine days. The entire world watched what transpired above-ground during the grueling and protracted rescue, but the saga of the miners' experiences below the Earth's surface--and the lives that led them there--has never been heard until now.
For Deep Down Dark, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hector Tobar received exclusive access to the miners and their tales. These thirty-three men came to think of the mine, a cavern inflicting constant and thundering aural torment, as a kind of coffin, and as a church where they sought redemption through prayer. Even while still buried, they all agreed that if by some miracle any of them escaped alive, they would share their story only collectively. Hector Tobar was the person they chose to hear, and now to tell, that story.
The result is a masterwork of narrative journalism--a riveting, at times shocking, emotionally textured account of a singular human event. Deep Down Dark brings to haunting, tactile life the experience of being imprisoned inside a mountain of stone, the horror of being slowly consumed by hunger, and the spiritual and mystical elements that surrounded working in such a dangerous place. In its stirring final chapters, it captures the profound way in which the lives of everyone involved in the disaster were forever changed.
Praise for Deep Down Dark
"Hector Tobar takes us so far down into the story and lives of the Chilean miners that his reconstruction of a workplace disaster becomes a riveting meditation on universal human themes. Deep Down Dark is an extraordinary piece of work." --George Packer
"In this masterful dissection of the 2010's dramatic sixty-nine day ordeal by thirty-three trapped Chilean miners, Hector Tobar weaves a suspenseful narrative that moves back and forth between the waking nightmares of the buried men, and those of their families on the earth's surface. In Deep Down Dark, Hector Tobar takes us deftly to the very cliff-edge of human survival." --Jon Lee Anderson
"It's almost hard to believe that Hector Tobar wasn't himself one of the trapped Chilean miners, so vivid, immediate, terrifying, emotional, and convincing is his Homeric narration of this extraordinary incident. Deep Down Dark is a literary masterpiece of narrative journalism, surgical in its reconstruction, novelistic in its explorations of human personality and nuance. In a manner that feels spiritual, Tobar puts himself at the service of his story, and his fidelity to and unquenchable curiosity about every fact and detail generates unforgettable wonderment and awe." --Francisco Goldman
"A gripping narrative, taut to the point of explosion." --"Kirkus Reviews "(starred review)
Hector Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, and The Tattooed Soldier. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of the city of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Perfidia (Knopf)
Please welcome back to Skylight one of L.A.'s most iconic crime writers, James Ellroy!
The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor. The United States teeters on the edge of war. The roundup of allegedly treasonous Japanese Americans is about to begin. And in L.A., a Japanese family is found dead. Murder or ritual suicide? The investigation will draw four people into a totally Ellroy-ian tangle: a brilliant Japanese American forensic chemist; an unsatisfiably adventurous young woman; one police officer based in fact (William H. "Whiskey Bill" Parker, later to become the groundbreaking chief of the LAPD), the other the product of Ellroy's inimitable imagination (Dudley Smith, arch villain of "The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz)." As their lives intertwine, we are given a story of war and of consuming romance, a searing expose of the Japanese internment, and an astonishingly detailed homicide investigation. In "Perfidia," Ellroy delves more deeply than ever before into his characters' intellectual and emotional lives. But it has the full-strength, unbridled story-telling audacity that has marked all the acclaimed work of the "Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction."
Praise for Perfidia
"Perfidia is a brilliant, breakneck ride. Nobody except James Ellroy could pull this off. He doesn't merely write--he ignites and demolishes."
--Carl Hiaasen
"A return to the scene of Ellroy's greatest success and a triumphant return to form. . . . His character portrayals have never been more nuanced or--dare we say it--sympathetic. . . . A disturbing, unforgettable, and inflammatory vision of how the men in charge respond to the threat of war. It's an ugly picture, but just try looking away."
--"Booklist", starred review
"A sprawling, uncompromising epic of crime and depravity."
--"Publishers Weekly"
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy-American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's a Rover-and the L. A. Quartet novels, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L. A. Confidential, and White Jazz. He lives in Los Angeles.
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Friday Oct 17, 2014
The Book With No Pictures (Dial Books for Young Readers)
We're delighted to present the Los Angeles launch event for The Book With No Pictures, the new children's book from actor and author B.J. Novak (One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories).
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 copy ofThe Book With No Pictures here at Skylight Books. Signing line tickets will become available the day the book goes on sale: Tuesday, September 30, 2014. 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.
Once you have your signing line ticket, these are the guidelines for the signing:
- For every copy of The Book With No Pictures purchased, B.J. Novak will sign one copy of One More Thing
- Only The Book With No Pictures will be personalized; copies of One More Thing will be signed only
- This signing is for books only; please leave other memorabilia at home
- We won't be able to accommodate posed photos, but you are welcome to take photos from the line as he signs (no flash, please)
Thank you for your cooperation!
B.J. Novak's The Book With No Pictures turns the turns the notion of the picture book on its head, by delivering a text-only story book for young children. You might think a book with no pictures seems boring and serious. Except . . . here’s how books work. Everything written on the page has to be said by the person reading it aloud. Even if the words say . . .
BLORK. Or BLUURF.
Even if the words are a preposterous song about eating ants for breakfast, or just a list of astonishingly goofy sounds like BLAGGITY BLAGGITY and GLIBBITY GLOBBITY.
Cleverly irreverent and irresistibly silly, The Book with No Pictures is one that kids will beg to hear again and again. (And parents will be happy to oblige.)
B.J. Novak is well known for his work on NBC’s Emmy Award-winning comedy series The Office as an writer, actor, director, and executive producer. He is also known for his work as a standup comedian and his performances in motion pictures such as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks. Novak’s collection of short stories One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories (Knopf) was published earlier this year to rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review called it “hugely pleasurable...droll and smart in spades, but often humane and vulnerable, too..." The Washington Post called Novak “a gifted observer of the human condition and a very funny writer capable of winning that rare thing: unselfconscious, insuppressible laughter.” He is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in English and Spanish literature.
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Man Alive (City Lights/Sister Spit)
Cha-Ching!/The Beautifully Worthless (City Lights/Sister Spit)
Join us tonight for a spectacular reading from one of the most iconic publishing houses in the country, City Lights and its radical imprint, Sister Spit.
In Man Alive, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life--one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who threatened his life and then released him in an odd moment of mercy. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood as he cobbles together his own identity.
In Cha-Ching!, Theo, our scruffy, big-hearted, and quick-witted heroine, is not so much down on her luck as delivered luckless into a culture where the winners and losers have already been decided. Her adventures in getting over take her from San Francisco to New York City, from dyke bars to telemarketing outfits, casinos to free clinics. With the signature poet's voice that has won her awards and acclaim, Ali Liebegott investigates the conjoined hearts of hope and addiction in an unforgettable story of what it means to be young and broke in America.
"Man Alive is a sweet, tender hurt of a memoir. Thomas Page McBee deftly recounts what has shaped him into the man he has become and how--from childhood trauma to a mugging in Oakland where he learned of his body's ability to save itself. This is a memoir about forgiveness and self-discovery, but mostly it's about love, so much love. McBee takes us in his capable hands and shows us what it takes to become a man who is gloriously, gloriously alive." -- Roxane Gay.
"Thomas Page McBee's story of how he came to claim both his past and his future is by turns despairing and hopeful, exceptional and relatable. To read it is to witness the birth of a fuller, truer self. I loved this book." -- Ann Friedman
Praise for Cha-Ching!
"Cha-Ching! is so raw with need that I found myself itching that addict's itch to chase the seemingly impossible."—Karolina Waclawiak, deputy editor of The Believer and author of How to Get Into the Twin Palms
"The Beautifully Worthless is an outrageous act of kindness."—Eileen Myles
"She's insanely talented, it's mad. The Beautifully Worthless crisscrosses the USA, like Close to the Knives, like Kerouac, desperately seeking out everything occluded and driven, a frenzy of seeking frozen into poetry. "—Kevin Killian
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Friday Oct 17, 2014
Walker on Water (Unnamed Press)
Join us for a very special event as one of Skylight Book's favorite local presses, Unnamed Press.
A woman cultivates a knack for walking on water, but is undermined by her husband's brain, which he removes each night when he returns home from work; a couple overcomes the irksome mischief of the gods; a skeptical dragon wonders what sex is all about: this is the world of Kristiina Ehin.
From the 2007 British Poetry Society Popescu prize winner for European poetry in translation: a series of comic, surreal adventures. Kristiina Ehin's quirky voice takes each story directly from the dream state, at times stubborn and resistant, at other times masochistically compliant. Ehin offers up modern folktales in which the very nature of our human identity is at stake-rampant with images and archetypes both new and old, and mediated by the abrupt changes we can only experience in dreams.
Praise for Walker on Water
"The pages drip in rich images and complex emotions in Kristiina Ehin's wildly imaginative and surrealistic collectionWalker on Water. It's Etgar Keret meets Aimee Bender meets Michael Cisco meets Aesop. It's three-headed twins, a woman who inadvertently bites the arms off her husbands, and a Life Story who has a pesky Brain's Monkey. It's a wholly original and revolutionary read."—Paul Tremblay, author of The Little Sleep and A Head Full of Ghosts
"Wow! I love this book!"—Mark Mothersbaugh, lead singer of DEVO
"Sharp, jarring, and darkly funny, the stories in Walker on Water move seamlessly and defiantly between the real and the surreal, reinventing folklore, redefining fiction, and daringly reexamining relationships."—Susan Steinberg, author of Spectacle
Kristiina Ehin is the author of Walker on Water, out June 2014 from the Unnamed Press and translated from the original Estonian by Ilmar Lehtpere. An internationally renowned poet, her collection The Drums of Silence was awarded the British Poetry Society Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation in 2007, and her collection 1001 Winters has been nominated for the same prize in 2013. In her native Estonia, Ehin has published six volumes of poetry, three books of short stories and a retelling of South-Estonian folk tales. She has written plays, as well as poetic radio broadcasts. She has won Estonia’s most prestigious poetry prize for Kaitseala—a book of poems and journal entries written during a year spent living as a nature reserve warden on an otherwise uninhabited island off Estonia’s north coast.