Skylight Books Podcast Series

Death by Sunshine (Writers Tribe Books)

Novelist Allison Burnett (Christopher, The House Beautiful) visits Skylight to read and sign the third and final book in his B. K. Troop series, Death by Sunshine. "Like Truman Capote, Allison Burnett knows how to pull up a chair and whisper a juicy story into his lucky reader's ear. Death By Sunshine is a quickly paced tale inhabited by fascinating and funny creatures." --Nell Scovell, Vanity Fair "In this age when the genuine comic novel seems to be an extinct species, Allison Burnett gives us reason to rejoice. Death By Sunshine is a return trip to the world of B.K. Troop, one of the most appealing characters ever put on a page." --Charles Busch, author of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Die, Mommie, Die! "Death by Sunshine is classic Burnett: hilarious, gut-wrenching, and entirely entertaining. He takes us on a journey across the country into the darkest recesses of the human psyche - with a few detours into the excesses of the human flesh along the way. A terrific read!" --Claire LaZebnik, author of Epic Fail and Families and Other Non-Returnable Gifts Allison Burnett’s first novel, Christopher, was a finalist for the 2004 PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction. His second novel, The House Beautiful, was published in October 2006. His third novel, Undiscovered Gyrl, was published by Vintage Books in October 2009. His new novel, set in Los Angeles, is Death By Sunshine. Allison also works in film, having written and directed the 1997 feature film, Red Meat, as well as written or co-written a dozen films, including Autumn in New York, Resurrecting the Champ, The Feast of Love, Underworld Awakening, and Gone. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 11, 2012.

Celebrate poetry month at Skylight Books with Los Angeles poets reading from Walt Whitman's magnificent Leaves of Grass on Sunday, April 1st from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm.

Walt Whitman began Leaves of Grass: "I celebrate myself,/ And what I assume you shall assume,/ For every atom belonging to me as good belong to you." Leaves of Grass celebrates the open road, camraderie, freedom, equality: "I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,/ and I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,/ and I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men."

A diverse group of some of Los Angeles' finest poets will join us to celebrate National Poetry Month by reading from this groundbreaking form, including James Cushing, Pam Ward, Holly Prado Northup, Harry Northup, Phoebe MacAdams Ozuna, Fernando Castro, Eloise Klein Healy, and S.A. Griffin.

New American Haggadah (Little, Brown and Company)

Author Jill Soloway (Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants) presents a discussion with Eileen Levinson and Caroline Libresco on New American Haggadah, a new translation by Nathan Englander of the story of Exodus, with additional essays and commentaries edited by Jonathan Safron Foer.

Jill Soloway is a writer/director and community organizer. She recently cofounded East Side Jews, a network of Jewish artists, writers and thinkers living on the East Side of LA aiming to reinvent Jewish culture, community and ritual. Her short film, Una Hora Por Favora, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and she is currently in pre-production on her first feature, Afternoon Delight. Jill wrote/produced Six Feet Under for four years and was showrunner for How to Make It In America and United States of Tara.

Caroline Libresco has been Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival since 2001 and holds an M.A. in History of Religion from Harvard. She serves on the leadership teams for Sundance’s Creative Producing Initiative and Women’s Initiative. She produced the award-winning documentary, Sunset Story; the Academy Award-winning featurette, Barrier Device; associate-produced the HBO documentary Cat Dancers; and was developing producer on The Grace Lee Project.

Eileen Levinson is a designer and artist living in Los Angeles. Her practice encourages collaborative rethinking of Jewish ritual and tradition. Eileen is also the creator of Haggadot.com, a website for Jews of any background to upload, exchange and personalize an original Haggadot for Passover. The site hosts over one thousand selections of user-generated haggadah content from around the world. In 2011, Jewish Daily Forward reviewed the site as "the most exciting new Haggadah" of the year.

The Big Town (Fantagraphics)

Monte Schulz returns to Skylight Books to launch the last book in his Jazz Age trilogy, The Big Town. "Monte Schulz's The Big Town exposes decadence, wealth and consumption in Jazz Age America as spiritual myopia — where desperate, haunting characters hinge their lives on impossible dreams. This lyrical, gripping novel is as close to 1920s America as it gets, and penned with such frightening realism that the chaos of a bygone era erupts from its pages." – Simon Van Booy, award-winning author of Everything Beautiful Began After Monte Schulz published his first novel, Down by the River, in 1990, and spent the next twelve years writing a novel of the Jazz Age, which is now available in three parts: This Side of Jordan, The Last Rose of Summer, and The Big Town. He wrote the three books for his father, the late cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 4, 2012.

The Man Who Quit Money (Riverhead)

Mark Sundeen visits Skylight to discuss and sign his book The Man Who Quit Money, the fascinating true story of Daniel Suelo, a man who left his life savings in a phone booth ten years ago and hasn't earned, received, or spent a penny since.  Daniel Suelo will be attending the event and is available to answer questions and sign books!

“Maybe it's just this odd, precarious moment we live in, but Daniel Suelo's story seems to offer some broader clues for all of us. Mark Sundeen's account will raise subversive and interesting questions in any open mind.” --Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy Mark Sundeen is an award-winning writer whose work appears in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, McSweeney’s, and The Believer. He is the author of the books Car Camping (HarperCollins, 2000) and The Making of Toro (Simon & Schuster, 2003), and co-author of North By Northwestern (St. Martin’s, 2010), which was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Sundeen was born in Harbor City, California, in 1970. After graduating from Stanford University, Sundeen spent ten years in Moab, Utah, sometimes homeless, working odd jobs, river guiding, and leading Outward Bound wilderness courses. It was here, in 1993 while working as a short order cook, that he first met Daniel Suelo. Sundeen holds a masters in writing from the University of Southern California, and has taught at the MFA writing programs at the University of New Mexico and Western Connecticut State University. Since moving to Montana in 2005, he splits his time between Missoula and Moab. Photo of the author by Isan Brant. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 21, 2012

Pity the Billionaire (Metropolitan Books)

Thomas Frank (What's the Matter with Kansas?) returns to Skylight Books to discuss and sign his new book Pity the Billionaire, in which he takes an insightful and sardonic look at the way our dire economic circumstances have brought an unexpected resurgence of conservatism. "No one fools Thomas Frank, who is the sharpest, funniest, most intellectually voracious political commentator on the scene. In Pity the Billionaire he has written a brilliant expose of the most breath-taking ruse in American political history: how the right turned the biggest capitalist breakdown since 1929 into an opportunity for themselves." --Barbara Ehrenreich "A feisty and galvanizing book... This is the kind of analysis - historically astute, irreverent and droll - that makes Frank such an invaluable voice. As he's done in a series of perceptive books, Frank cuts through the partisan blather and explains how money and cynical ideas shape a certain kind of contemporary politics. Pity the Billionaire is further evidence that he's as good at this as any writer working today." --San Francisco Chronicle Thomas Frank is the author of The Wrecking Crew, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and One Market Under God. A former opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Frank is the founding editor of The Baffler and a monthly columnist for Harper’s. He lives outside Washington, D.C. Photo of the author by Jane Magellanic.

One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road (Viva Editions)

In celebration of what would have been Jack Kerouac's 90th birthday, we're presenting biographer Gerald Nicosia (Memory Babe), who will be discussing and signing his new book One and Only, about the woman who started Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady on the journey that inspired On the Road. "This is the missing back-story of the back-story of "On the Road," the mysterious missing woman a lot of us sensed was there but invisible and silent. Until now. Nicosia has given her voice and made her visible, and she's extraordinary. No wonder both Kerouac and Cassady loved her." —Russell Banks, author of Cloudsplitter "One and Only is essential reading for anyone wishing to get the full picture of the Beat Generation. Lu Anne Henderson was Neal Cassady's life-long love and was responsible for the friendship with Kerouac that gave us On The Road. Gerald Nicosia was always a loyal advocate of the women of the Beat Generation, and his remarkable interview with Lu Anne fills in an enormous gap in the story. It shows the vulnerability and insecurities of the main characters, and reveals the chaos of their emotional lives so that Kerouac and company finally emerge as real people! A great book." —Barry Miles, author of Ginsberg: A Biography; Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats; and the forthcoming authorized biography of William S. Burroughs, Call Me Burroughs Gerald Nicosia is a biographer, historian, poet, playwright and novelist. His biography of Jack Kerouac, Memory Babe, won the Distinguished Young Writer Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters and was called a “great book” by Allen Ginsberg and “by far the best of the many books published about Jack Kerouac’s life and work” by William Burroughs. It is still widely regarded as the definitive work on Kerouac.  His book Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement won numerous honors and was named one of the Los Angeles Times “Best Books of the Year” in 2001.  He is currently at work on a biography of Ntozake Shange. Nicosia lives in Corte Madera, California. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 12, 2012

Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events (Harper)

Acclaimed short story writer Kevin Moffett (Permanent Visitors) will read and sign his new story collection, Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events. "Kevin Moffett's stories are stealth heartbreakers, as well as wonders of sly detail and perfect tone. He's writing some of the best short fiction around." --Sam Lipsyte "The first thing you notice reading the stories in Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events is the author's extraordinary range--of expertise, technique, imagination and wit. There doesn't seem to be much Kevin Moffett can't do." --Richard Russo Kevin Moffett’s stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere, as well as in three editions of The Best American Short Stories. He is the winner of the Nelson Algren Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2010 National Magazine Award for “Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events.” He lives in Claremont, California. Photo of the author by Erin McConnell. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 12, 2012.

Snowflake/Different Streets (Wave Books)

Celebrated poet Eileen Myles visits Skylight Books to read and sign her highly anticipated new poetry collection Snowflake/Different Streets. "One of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature—honest, jokey, paranoid, sentimental, mean, lyrical, tough, you name it." —Dennis Cooper "[Myles' writing] comes across simultaneously as effortless and utterly gorgeous. . . . To be able to write with such gentleness and force all at the same time is such a gift, and Myles is completely generous in how she uses this." —Ron Silliman Eileen Myles was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduated from U. Mass (Boston) in 1971, and moved to New York City in 1974 to be a poet. Snowflake/different streets, a double volume (of poems) will be out in 2012 from Wave Books. Eileen’s Inferno: a poet's novel (2010) which details a female writer’s coming of age was described by John Ashbery as "zingingly funny and melancholy." Alison Bechdel called Inferno "this shimmering document." She writes about books, art and culture for a wide variety of publications including Art Forum, Book Forum, and Parkett, and she blogs on Art in America and Harriet’s sites. Please visit her at eileenmyles.com. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 16, 2012.

These Dreams of You (Europa Editions)

We're thrilled to present Steve Erickson, author of Zeroville and editor of the literary journal Black Clock, who will read and sign his new novel These Dreams of You. "In its gorgeous, vivid prose and its acutely sensitive soul, These Dreams of You shows us just what a novel can still do in our own crazy times." --Boston Globe "Erickson's seemingly fractured novel turns out to be something else -- the novel as fractal, a series of endless, astounding tessellations." --The New York Times Book Review "Over his entire career Erickson has challenged readers with a fiercely intelligent and surprisingly sensual brand of American surrealism." --The Washington Post Steve Erickson is the author of eight previous novels, including Zeroville, which was named one of the best novels of the year by Newsweek, the Washington Post Book World, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and noted as one of five favorite novels in a winter 2008 National Book Critics Circle poll. He also has written two books about American politics and popular culture, Leap Year and American Nomad.  Erickson has written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Bookforum, Frieze, Conjunctions, Salon, the L.A. Weekly, the New York Times Magazine and other publications and journals, and his work has been widely anthologized. Currently he is the film critic for the Los Angeles Magazine and the editor of the literary journal Black Clock, which is published by the California Institute of the Arts where he teaches in the MFA Writing Program. Erickson has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts grant and a fellowship from John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In 2010 he was been nominated for a National Magazine Award for criticism and received one of seven awards in literature given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS February 22, 2012.

When the Killing's Done (Penguin)

 Acclaimed novelist T.C. Boyle (The Women) returns to Skylight to read and sign this new paperback edition of his latest novel, When the Killing's Done, a fictional take on real-life battle between the National Park Service and animal welfare activists over invasive species in the Channel Islands. With vividly drawn characters and heart-pounding plot twists, Boyle asks an important question: When it comes to restoring delicate ecosystems, are the lives of some animals worth more than those of others?

"He writes lyrically, beautifully — about the ocean, the land, about California history and its pitfalls and perils.... Boyle makes us laugh and wonder at his dazzling gifts but his comedy is a dark business." --Los Angeles Times "Terrifically exciting and unapologetically relevant." --The Washington Post "Character, science and history co-evolve marvelously here in a tale of fanaticism gone literally overboard." --Barbara Kingsolver, The New York Times T.C. Boyle is the author of twelve novels including most recently, The Women, a New York Times bestseller, and nine collections of short stories, including Wild Child. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he lives near Santa Barbara, CA and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Photo of the author by Jamieson Fry. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS March 8, 2012.

At Last (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Acclaimed British novelist Edward St. Aubyn (Mother's Milk, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) will read and sign his new novel At Last. "Sparkling... With the wit of Wilde, the lightness of Wodehouse, and the waspishness of Waugh, [St. Aubyn] wraps his fancy prose style around the self in extremis ('suffocated, dropped, born of raped as well as born to be raped"), situations more familiar to readers of Cooper or Burroughs."  --Zadie Smith, Harper's "A miraculously wrought piece of art." --Suzi Feay, The Financial Times "St. Aubyn's technique is to crystallise emotional intensity into sentences of arctic beauty, which can be caustically witty or brutal. His novels are uncommonly well controlled, and thus their impact is all the more powerful... In At Last this crystallisation and control are on glittering display... We have reached the pinnacle of a series that has plunged into darkness and risen towards light. At Last is both resounding end and hopeful beginning." -- Philip Womack, The Telegraph "Ferociously funny, painfully acute and exhilaratingly written... Brimming with witty flair, sardonic perceptiveness and literary finesse." --Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times Edward St. Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He is the author of A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge, and of a series of novels about the Melrose family, the trilogy Some Hope and Mother’s Milk, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Photo of the author by Timothy Allen. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 19, 2012

When We Were Outlaws by Jeanne Cordova (Spinspters Ink)

Dr. Chris Freeman riffs off the style of hard-hitting PBS interview host Charlie Rose, and tosses the tough questions to Jeanne Cordova, author of When We Were Outlaws: a memoir of Love and Revolution Delve back in time to the early 1970s birth of activism in the lesbian & gay movement.   Get the nuts and bolts on... Lesbian separatism, Advocacy journalist (ala the infamous L.A. Free Press), Lesbians in the Symbionese Liberation Army, Butch daughters and their seriously confused fathers, The politics of non-monogamy (polyamory) as a multi-generational lifestyle & more... Special guest: Art Kunkin, Founder of the Los Angeles Free Press Dr. Chris Freeman teaches Gender Studies at USC, including, "Queer L.A." Freeman is the co-editor of the Lambda Award-winning THE ISHERWOOD CENTURY and the Lambda finalist LOVE, WEST HOLLYWOOD. Jeanne Cordova, pioneer dyke activist, queer organizer, lesbian journalist/publisher.  Author of SEXISM IT'S A NASTY AFFAIR, KICKING THE HABIT, and a contributor to LESBIAN NUNS BREAKING THE SILENCE & THE PERSISTENT DESIRE: A FEMME BUTCH READER THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 4, 2012.

All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps (Penguin Press)

Dave Isay, founder of the revolutionary oral history project StoryCorps (as heard on NPR's Morning Edition), will discuss and sign his new collection of tales from the project, All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps. Dave Isay is the founder of StoryCorps and the recipient of numerous broadcasting honors, including five Peabody Awards and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. He is the author/editor of numerous books that grew out of his public radio documentary work, including two StoryCorps books: Listening Is an Act of Love and Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps—both New York Times bestsellers.

Photo of the author by Harvey Wang.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 3, 2012.

The Flame Alphabet (Knopf)

Ben Marcus (Notable American Women) will read and sign his highly anticipated new novel, The Flame Alphabet. In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a work of heartbreak and horror, a novel about how far we will go, and the sorrows we will endure, in order to protect our families. A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children's speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighborhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction. With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parents' sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isn't so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition. The Flame Alphabet invites the question: What is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love? Both morally engaged and wickedly entertaining, a gripping page-turner as strange as it is moving, this intellectual horror story ensures Ben Marcus's position in the first rank of American novelists. "Language kills in Marcus's audacious new work of fiction, a richly allusive look at a world transformed by a new form of illness . . . Biblical in its Old Testament sense of wrath, Marcus's novel twists America's quotidian existence into something recognizable yet wholly alien to our experience." --Publishers Weekly (Starred review and Pick of the week) "Echoes of Ballard's insanely sane narrators, echoes of Kafka's terrible gift for metaphor, echoes of David Lynch, William Burroughs, Robert Walser, Bruno Schulz and Mary Shelley: a world of echoes and re-echoes--I mean 'our' world--out of which the sanely insane genius of Ben Marcus somehow manages to wrest something new and unheard of. And yet as I read The Flame Alphabet, late into the night, feverishly turning the pages, I felt myself, increasingly, in the presence of the classic." --Michael Chabon Ben Marcus is the author of three books of fiction: Notable American Women, The Father Costume, and The Age of Wire and String, and he is the editor of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. His stories have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Tin House, and Conjunctions. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and awards from the Creative Capital Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York City and Maine. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 2, 2012