Skylight Books Podcast Series

Inside Scientology (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Journalist Janet Reitman will discuss and sign her new book Inside Scientology, the first full, journalistic history of the Church of Scientology, based on the article Reitman wrote for Rolling Stone in 2007, which was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. "Inside Scientology is an engrossing, groundbreaking work that brings a welcome sense of fair-mindedness to a subject that is, for many journalists and scholars, too hot to touch. Reitman has accomplished the miracle of adding light without heat."--Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 Janet Reitman was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 2007 for the Rolling Stone story “Inside Scientology,” from which this book grew. She is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. Her work has appeared in GQ, Men’s Journal, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, and the Washington Post, among other publications. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 16, 2011.

Bookstore Pop-ups, Hybrids, and Rebels: Why Indie booksellers are leading the movement to support and foster local businesses

A panel discussion with maverick booksellers David Kipen, Andrew Laties, and Josh Spencer on why there is no better time to be in the book business. “For a while I was really interested in the future of books. Now I’m interested in the present of books.” – Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, co-founder, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn (founded 2009) For the past decade, the book business has been dominated by conversations about chain stores, online retailers, and the e-book market, all of which pointed to the perennial uncertainty about the future of books generally. And yet from coast to coast a new wave of independent booksellers is staking a claim and embracing uncertainty to make the point: books are still here, and the future is now. Skylight books is pleased to welcome David Kipen (Libros Schmibros), Andrew Laties (Rebel Bookseller) and Josh Spencer (The Last Bookstore) for a panel discussion on why and how:

• Even in a treacherous economy, independent bookshops like Brooklyn’s Greenlight Bookstore are opening and succeeding;
• Pop-up stores, like the current Libros Schmibros partnership with the Hammer Museum, are becoming the norm
• Independent bookstores are leading the movement to support locally owned businesses.

David Kippen is the founder of Libros Schmibros, a hybrid lending library and used book shop in Boyle Heights.  He is the former director of the National Endowment for the Arts' National Reading Initiatives, and past book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, established Libros Schmibros in July 2010 Andy Laties is the author of Rebel Bookseller: Why Indie Business Represent Everything You Want to Fight For—From Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities. Laties co-founded Children's Bookstore, Children’s Bookfair Company, Children’s Museum Store, and Povertyfighters.com, and created the film Art of Selling Children’s Books. He co-founded and still manages the museum shop at The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts, which Parents Choice called “the very best bookstore for picture books in the entire world.” Josh Spencer is the founder of The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA. After selling books online for a decade, Spencer decided to go backwards in time and open up a physical used bookstore in 2009.  With his neighborhood of downtown LA experiencing its own rebirth it seemed like the logical place to try retail time travel.  The Last Bookstore did well enough for him to move into a new location 10 times as big less than two years later, and the rest is history in the making (as we speak). Moderated by Emily Pullen from Skylight Books. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 11, 2011.

The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press) by McDaniel Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books) by Gnall Bang Ditto (Manic D) by Tamblyn Poets Jeffrey McDaniel, Stacy Gnall, and Amber Tamblyn will read and sign their respective poetry collections. Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of four books, most recently The Endarkenment (University of Pittsburgh Press). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry 1994 and 2010. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York. Stacy Gnall is from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA at the University of Alabama, and she is currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her first collection of poetry, Heart First into the Forest, was published by Alice James Books. She lives in Los Angeles. Amber Tamblyn is a Venice, California native. She has been a writer and actress since the age of nine. She was nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award for her work in television and film. In 2005 Simon & Schuster published her debut collection of poetry Free Stallion. She is the producer of "The Drums Inside Your Chest," an annual poetry concert (thedrumsinsideyourchest.com) and the nonprofit, Write Now Poetry Society (writenowpoets.org). Her second book of poetry and prose Bang Ditto (Manic D. Press) was released last Fall. She writes for The Poetry Foundation and lives in NYC. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 9, 2011.

Twin Cities (Penguin)

California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes returns to Skylight to read and sign her new poetry collection, Twin Cities. Carol Muske-Dukes is the current Poet Laureate of California and a professor at the University of Southern California. She is also a co-editor of two anthologies and an author of eight books of poetry, four novels, and two essay collections.  She is a regular critic for the New York Times Book Review and the LA Times Book Review. Her work appears everywhere from the New Yorker to L.A. Magazine and she is anthologized widely, including in Best American Poems, 100 Great Poems by Women and many others.  She is professor of English and Creative Writing and founding Director of the new PhD Program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.  She has received many awards and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, an Ingram-Merrill, the Witter Bynner award from the Library of Congress, the Castagnola award from the Poetry Society of America and several Pushcart Prizes. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 7, 2011.

Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving (HarperCollins)

Novelist and poet Dan Fante will discuss and sign his new family memoir Fante, covering the lives of his Italian-born grandfather, his famous-writer father John Fante (Ask the Dust), and his own life, writing, and personal struggles. "If writing is fighting, then Dan Fante goes fifteen rounds and stays standing. This is a fascinating story about two hard-edged men, survival and the passion to live and to write."--Michael Connelly Dan Fante is the son of novelist John Fante. He was born and raised in Los Angeles. At nineteen he hitchhiked across the country, eventually ending up in New York City where he was a cab driver for seven years and held a hundred other jobs in order to survive. Fante battled with alcoholism for many years and was arrested many times for his numerous stupidities. After getting sober, and in hope of remaining permanently indignant, Fante took up writing novels in his mid-forties. Today Dan Fante is sober and lives in Los Angeles with his wife Ayrin and his six-year old son Michelangelo Giovanni Fante. Fante is the author of the novels 86’d, Chump Change, Mooch, Spitting Off Tall Buildings, the short story collection Short Dog; two books of poetry, and the plays “The Boiler Room” and “Don Giovanni.” He continues to write every day.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS SEPTEMBER 2, 2011.

The Fire in Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries (White Crane Books)

Selected contributors will read from their pieces in the important new anthology The Fire in Moonlight, including anthology editor Mark Thompson, Stuart Timmons, associate editor Richard Neely, Allen Page, David Cohen, Trebor Healey, Michael David, and Ian MacKinnon (schedule permitting). The most valuable possession a people have is their story...their history. Many years in the making, with over fifty contributors from around the world, Fire in the Moonlight is the first anthology of its kind. Beginning with Walt Whitman and Edward Carpenter in the nineteenth century and moving through the liberation movements of the late twentieth, Fire in the Moonlight speculates far into the twenty-first. It offers a timely compendium of culture wisdom, provocative wit and challenging sensuality. This collection gives witness to a groundbreaking movement that painstakingly emerged from the Gay Liberation era. Rooted in the history of radical visionaries, this little known, essential community informs the modern world with new meaning, offering fresh definitions of faith, identity, purpose and gender. Fire in the Moonlight is a series of personal reflections on who the Radical Faeries are, where they've been and where they are going: Radical Faeries in their own words. It is about how a movement has changed lives--and how Radical Faeries contribute to healing a fractured Earth. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS AUGUST 13, 2011.

Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past (Faber & Faber)

Simon Reynolds, one of Skylight's favorite music critics (and the author of Rip It Up and Start Again), will discuss and sign his new book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past. "Peering deeply into pop’s ever-expanding history and the technology that makes every part of it eternally accessible all at the same time, Reynolds wonders if culture can survive in conditions of limitlessness. . . . A restless, omnivorous intellectual, Reynolds roams far and wide. . . . His book is crammed with entertaining arguments." --The Telegraph (UK) "Retromania deserves to be very widely read." --The Observer (UK) Simon Reynolds is the author of seven books including Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 and Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture (a/k/a Generation Ecstasy). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, The Wire, and Slate, among other publications. Born in London, Reynolds now lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 31, 2011.

Other People We Married (FiveChapters Books)

Brooklyn-based author Emma Straub reads her much buzzed-about short story collection, Other People We Married. “It is rare that I will love every story in a collection but I did love each of the twelve stories in this collection both individually and also as a whole collection with a distinctive shape. Each story was intimate and engaging and really, really clean. I never found a word or idea out of place, nothing that pulled me from the stories or the people and places borne of Straub’s imagination.”–Roxane Gay, HTMLGIANT “These quiet epiphanies in Straub’s stories place her in the company of Beattie and Moore, and the voices she creates are contemporary. When I finished reading this exquisite collection, I flipped back to the beginning of the book and stared at the table of contents. The book was suddenly heavier in my hands—suddenly filled with the weight of all these character’s silent fantasies, side-thoughts and careful revelations. Other People We Married is a captivating first collection of short stories for this writer; I look forward to her future work.” –Bracha Goykadosh, The Rumpus Emma Straub is the author of the short story collection Other People We Married and the forthcoming novel Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Slate, and Tin House, among many other journals. She lives in New York City and on Twitter @emmastraub. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 27, 2011.

Compression & Purity (City Lights Books)

Poet Will Alexander returns to Skylight Books to read and sign his new poetry collection, Compression & Purity. "Born in South Central Los Angeles, and a lifelong resident of Los Angeles, Alexander, who got his start publishing in Clayton Eshleman's groundbreaking journal "Sulfur" in 1981, is vastly under-appreciated--an important avant-garde poet, who deserves a wider audience." -- Huffington Post "Compression & Purity works well as an introduction to Alexander's black surrealist oeuvre while still engaging and challenging his longtime readers. Though emotionally cold and detached, the poems more than make up for it with a genuine love of language and its power to effect change." --The San Francisco Bay Guardian Born in 1948, Will Alexander is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, visual artist and pianist. He was the recipient of a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry in 2001 and a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002. He was also the subject of a colloquium published in the prestigious African American cultural journal Callaloo in 1999. Author of ten books (including ABOVE THE HUMAN NERVE DOMAIN, COMPRESSION & PURITY, EXOBIOLOGY AS GODDESS, and TOWARDS THE PRIMEVAL LIGHTNING FIELD), Alexander has taught at various colleges including University of California, San Diego, New College (San Francisco, CA), Hofstra University, and Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, in addition to being associated with the nonprofit organization Theatre of Hearts/Youth First, serving at-risk youth. He is a lifelong resident of Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 25, 2011.

Axolotl Roadkill

The Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and Skylight Books present German writer Helene Hegemann, discussing her book Axolotl Roadkill. We'll also be screening a scene from Hegemann's film Torpedo. Refreshments will be provided by the Goethe-Institut. Helene Hegemann was born in February of 1992 in Freiburg and is considered to be a German wunderkind. She grew up with her divorced mother until age 13, and after her death moved to Berlin to be with her father. It was during that time that she started writing. In 2007, Helene’s drama Ariel 15 premiered in Berlin and was later turned into a radio play. Her screenplay Torpedo was turned into a movie in 2008. Hegemann directed it herself and won the Max-Orphühls-Prize. In 2010 her first novel Axolotl Roadkill was published in Germany and instantly received a lot of  praise by literary critics. But Hegemann was faced with accusations of plagiarism and eventually admitted to have copied some passages of her book from an online log. Her confession sparked a controversy about the issue of intertextuality and copyrights. Nevertheless, Axolotl Roadkill has been translated into 15 languages and made into a drama that had its premiere in November of 2010 in Hamburg. Hegemann is the artist-in-residence at the Villa Aurora. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 15, 2011

Steve Almond reads and signs his self published books, This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey; Bad Poetry; and Letters from People Who Hate Me, all of which will be available for purchase at Skylight Books during the reading. Steve Almond is the author of nine books, three of which he published himself.This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey is composed of 30 very brief stories, and 30 very brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing. Bad Poetry and Letters from People Who Hate Me are just plum crazy. All are available at readings. In October, Lookout Press will publish his story collection, God Bless America. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 12, 2011.

Untied: A Memoir of Family, Fame and Floundering (Crown Archetype)

Meredith Baxter has been an actor for 40 years and has five children. She achieved early success in the comedy Bridget Loves Bernie; the acclaimed ABC drama Family and the popular NBC sitcom Family Ties. Baxter makes appearances speaking no breast cancer, domestic violence, alcoholism and general life experiences. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her partner, Nancy Locke. Untied is her first book. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 9, 2011

Imperial Bedrooms (Vintage)

The iconic novelist Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less Than Zero) returns to Skylight Books to read and sign his latest book, Imperial Bedrooms, just out in paperback!

“Brutally conceived, and effectively done. . . . There is no doubt that Ellis retains the ability to startle and disquiet.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Enough talk of [Ellis's] literary genius, let's call him what he really is: a terrific horror writer. . . . An absolute creepfest [and] a festival of panting paranoia." --Chicago Sun-Times

Bret Easton Ellis is also the author of American Psycho, Glamorama, The Informers, Less Than Zero, Lunar Park, and The Rules of Attraction. His work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. He lives in Los Angeles.

THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MAY 19, 2011.

Blind Sight (Pantheon)

Los Angeles-based author Meg Howrey comes to Skylight to read and sign her debut novel, Blind Sight. "An engaging first novel filled with the nuance and yearnings of adolescence." --Marisha Pessl, author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics Meg Howrey is a classically trained dancer who has performed with the Joffrey, Los Angeles Opera, and City Balley of Los Angeles. She made her theatrical debut at Lincoln Center, and toured with the Broadway production of Contact, for which she won the 2001 Ovation Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She currently lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 29, 2011

Toward You (Tin House)

The wonderful storyteller and local favorite Jim Krusoe returns with a new book! Toward You completes Jim Krusoe’s bittersweet trilogy about the relationship between this world and the next. Bob has spent several years trying to build a machine that will communicate with the dead. He’s gotten more or less nowhere, but then two surprising things happen: he receives an important message from a dead dog, and a former girlfriend, Yvonne, reenters his life. These events make Bob even more determined to perfect the Communicator, as he calls his invention, in the belief that it will change his friendless, humdrum life for the better. In the meantime, Yvonne’s young daughter inhabits an afterlife she is trying to escape and would give anything to be reunited with her mom. Toward You is a poignant story of longing, mistakes, regret, disaster, and, above all, hope. "Krusoe's surrealistically skewed, oddly affecting novel blurs the borders between life and the afterlife, what's real and what's imagined, to highly entertaining effect. . .A seriously strange, funny and affecting novel about imagining another life while being stuck in this one." —Kirkus Reviews Jim Krusoe is the author of the novels Erased, Girl Factory, and Iceland. His stories and poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, Bomb, the Chicago Review, the Denver Quarterly, the American Poetry Review, and other publications. He teaches at Santa Monica College and lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 5, 2011.