Sam Silvas, author of the short story collection Stanton, California, will appear along with more than 100 authors at LitFest Pasadena, which will take place in Pasadena, California, on May 20 & 21, 2017. For a complete schedule of authors and events, visit litfestpasadena.org.
Archives for category: Los Angeles Events
SPREADING THE WORD for 13 YEARS!
Tongue & Groove
If you’re in the L.A. area on Sunday, August 14, 2016, check out Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo with an impressive roster of featured performers. The 8/14/16 event has a music theme — featured performers include Eric Spitznagel, James Fearnley, Lisa Jane Persky, and David Kendrick, plus music by Kaylee Cole.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
6-7:30 p.m.
The Hotel Cafe
1623 1/2 No. Cahuenga Blvd.
Hollywood, California 90028
$7.00
Come early! Seating is limited and the event starts on time! The club is a two-story black brick building, a third of a block below Hollywood Blvd. There are parking lots on Selma as well as Cahuenga. Meters need to be fed till 8pm. Avoid Cahuenga street parking
Eric Spitznagel is an Executive Writer at Men’s Health Magazine, where he’s written about a range of topics. He’s also been a frequent contributor to Playboy, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Maxim, Billboard, Details, The Believer, and the New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He’s the author of seven books, including Ron Jeremy’s bestselling autobiography The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz. He’s also edited several humor anthologies, most recently Care to Make Love in that Gross Little Space Between Cars?, which features questionable life advice from people like Louis C.K., Zach Galifianakis, and Amy Sedaris. His most recent book is Old Records Never Die. You can read all about it at www.recordsneverdie.com.
James Fearnley, a founding member of The Pogues, has written a memoir, Here Comes Everybody, drawn from his personal experiences and the series of journals and correspondence he kept throughout the band’s career. Fearnley describes the coalescence of a disparate collection of vagabonds living in the squats of London’s Kings Cross, with, at its center, the charismatic MacGowan and his idea of turning Irish traditional music on its head. With beauty, lyricism, and great candor, Fearnley tells the story of how the band watched helplessly as their singer descended into a dark and isolated world of drugs and alcohol, and sets forth the increasingly desperate measures they were forced to take.
An early participant in the CBGB’s scene, Lisa Jane Persky was a founding member of the staff of the New York Rocker and more recently a founding editor of Los Angeles Review of Books. Her work as journalist, photographer, and artist has appeared in Mojo, The Pitchfork Review, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere, and her fiction has appeared in Bomb and has been anthologized in Eclectica: Best Fiction Volume 1. She has appeared on, off, and off-off Broadway, and in numerous films and television shows. Lisa also anthologizes at chickensinliterature.com.
David Kendrick came to Los Angeles by way of a phone call from the legendary Kim Fowley. He has played with 90 bands more or less. Some of note have been Gleaming Spires, Sparks, DEVO,and Andy Prieboy. He is an avid collector of odd art and some of his finds have appeared in Clown Paintings by Diane Keaton. David’s ongoing music project, “The Empire Of Fun,” to date has released a box set plus six other collections, including the fiction story CD set I’m sorry Mr. Kendrick, there’s a skull inside your head. Recently he has had essays on cycads and fear published by the Laboratory Arts collective Hymn magazine.
Kaylee Cole has opened for bands such as The Lumineers, The Head & The Heart, Damien Jurado, and Emily Wells, performed with the Seattle Rock Orchestra and Portland Cello Project, and nearly finished a debut album (recorded and produced by Dave Sitek of TV On The Radio). Whether she’s behind a grand piano at an ornate theater, or sitting with a keyboard on her lap at a cozy house show, Kaylee Cole is a true entertainer who leaves no audience member without an impression.
SPREADING THE WORD for 12 YEARS!
Tongue & Groove
If you’re in the L.A. area on Sunday, July 31, 2016, check out Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo with an impressive roster of featured performers.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
6-7:30 p.m.
The Hotel Cafe
1623 1/2 No. Cahuenga Blvd.
Hollywood, California 90028
$7.00
Come early! Seating is limited and the event starts on time! The club is a two-story black brick building, a third of a block below Hollywood Blvd. There are parking lots on Selma as well as Cahuenga. Meters need to be fed till 8pm. Avoid Cahuenga street parking
This month’s featured performers include Pam Ward, David Darmstaedter, Elizabeth Marquez, Rios de la Luz, Kristina Wong, and music by Linda Ravenswood
Pam Ward is an author/artist and L.A. native. An art advocate as well as an instructor and mentor at Art Center College of Design, Pam has designed for politicians, community organizations, and corporate America. A former board member of Beyond Baroque Literary Foundation, Pam was also an artist-in-resident for the City of Los Angeles, Venice and Manhattan Beach. After publishing two novels, Want Some Get Some and Bad Girls Burn Slow, and working on merging writing and graphic design, Pam produced the recent installation, My Life, LA: The Los Angeles Legacy Project, a poster project blending graphics with story/facts documenting the impact of Angelenos on the actual land. Her play, I Didn’t Survive Slavery for This has played throughout L.A. Currently she is working on the true story of her aunt, a real Black Dahlia suspect.
David Darmstaedter lives in Topanga, California, and travels the hills dressed in tinfoil underwear to summon ideas from the wild. He has written plays, screenplays, short stories and novels. His memoir My Monster is in eternal development with Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke. He will be reading from his current book in the works, Solly’s Shangri-La.
Beth Marquez stumbled into a spoken word tent at Lollapalooza when she was 13, and it changed her life. She co-hosted Java Gardens reading in Huntington Beach and attended the National Poetry Slam as an alternate for the Laguna Beach team. She’d been published in the Moontide Press, Valley of Contemporary Poets, and Ugly Mug anthologies and elsewhere. She will be debuting a show based on her poetry at The Victory Theater in Burbank in September.
Rios de la Luz is a queer xicana/chapina living in Portland, Oregon. She is brown and proud. She is the author of The Pulse Between Dimensions and the Desert (Ladybox Books, 2015). Her work has been featured in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Entropy, The Fem Lit Magazine, World Literature Today, and St. Sucia.
Kristina Wong is a performance artist, comedian, and writer who has created five solo shows and one ensemble play that have toured throughout the US and UK. She was recently featured in the New York Times‘s Off Color series highlighting artists of color who use humor to make smart social statements about the sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious ways that race plays out in America today. She’s been a frequent ommentator/guest with, xoJane, Playgirl Magazine, Huffington Post, and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore to mention but a few places. She has been the recipient of numerous prestigious grants and residencies and not to brag, but Kristina has twice given the commencement speech at UCLA, her alma mater. Her most recent solo show “The Wong Street Journal,” which navigates privilege and economic disparity, premieree in June 2015. Kristina’s mail order bride website is www.bigbadchinesemama.com. This Fall, she is a guest professor at Cal Arts in the MFA Creative Writing Program.
Linda Ravenswood, with an aim towards inquiry, tantalization, and uncovering, speaks, stands, beckons, and reminds viewers to hold memory, history, place, and lineage as holy, yet available markers. In these ways, Linda has evolved an arts practice holding a strong and defining spatial, and theatrical course. Recent work (2014¬2016) has appeared, or been commissioned at The Broad Theatre, AWP/Pen Centre USA, Cornell University, The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, The Angel’s Gate Cultural Centre, The Artery, The Bootleg Theatre, Gallery 16 (San Francisco), The Lancaster Museum, The Hollywood Fringe Festival, and Craftswoman House. She has been published in 30 literary journals, her music has appeared in three documentary films (PBS), she has four books in print (Sybaritic Press, Mouthfeel Press, Gallery 16 Press, LACMA Press – forthcoming), and she is a 2016 Vermont Studio Centre fellow in Poetry. Twice nominated for The Pushcart Prize for Poetry, Linda is a lecturer, dramaturg, and workshop presenter, most recently teaching at Occidental College. Linda Ravenswood is NDN, First Nation, (Pokanoket Nation), a Mayflower descendant on her mother’s side, and an Indigenous Mestiza from Baja California Sur on her father’s side. She was raised by Holocaust survivors from WWII. No kiddin’.
SPREADING THE WORD for 12 YEARS!
Tongue & Groove
If you’re in the L.A. area on Sunday, May 22, 2016, check out Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo with an impressive roster of featured performers.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
6-7:30 p.m.
The Hotel Cafe
1623 1/2 No. Cahuenga Blvd.
Hollywood, California 90028
$7.00
Meredith Alling is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her debut full-length collection, SING THE SONG, will be out on Future Tense Books November 2016. She is on Twitter @meremyth.
Iris De Anda is a writer, activist, and practitioner of the healing arts. A womyn of color of Mexican and Salvadorean descent. A native of Los Angeles she believes in the power of spoken word, poetry, storytelling, and dreams. She has been published in Poetry of Resistance Anthology, Mujeres de Maiz Zine, Loudmouth Zine: Cal State LA, OCCUPY SF poems from the movement, The Border Crossed Us Anthology, Seeds of Resistance, In the Words of Women, Twenty: In Memoriam, Revolutionary Poets Brigade Los Angeles Anthology, Frontera Esquina, Brooklyn & Boyle, and online at La Bloga & La Tolteca. She is a moderator for Poets Responding to SB 1070. She currently hosts The Writers Underground Open Mic every Third Thursday of the month at the Eastside Cafe. Author of CODESWITCH: Fires From Mi Corazon. Visit her at irisdeanda.com.
Vanessa Diaz is from Huntington Park, California. A graduate of the University of California, Davis, she has been published in Huizache magazine and The Acentos Review.
Robert Kerbeck was selected for mentorship by the managing editor of Tin House, Cheston Knapp. Robert’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Cortland Review, Gargoyle, and Word Riot. He is the recipient of the upstreet short fiction scholarship to work with Steve Almond at this summer’s VCFA writer’s conference. His first play, Putin And The Snowman, opens Off-Broadway in July. Visit him at robertkerbeck.com.
Jessica Garrison is the author of a short story collection called One Dollar Stories. The collection emerged from a popular zine series which she sold at LA house parties and bars with the tagline, “Do you want to buy a story for a dollar?” Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, Flaunt Magazine, Dark Sky Magazine, Penny-Ante Three, Love is the Law, and various places online. To find out more, visit her website.
Christopher Leopold Hackman is a songwriter and performer best known for his work with the LA-Based psychedelic rock ensemble The Fuzzy Crystals. His music has also been heard in films such as The Choice (Lionsgate, 2016) and The Lesson (UrbanFox, 2016), as well as on Saturday Night Live, The Real World, and Road Rules. For music and information, visit
soundcloud.com/thefuzzycrystals.
SPREADING THE WORD for 12 YEARS!
Tongue & Groove
On Sunday, December 20, 2015, Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo — features an all-women lineup.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
6-7:30 p.m.
The Hotel Cafe
1623 1/2 No. Cahuenga Blvd.
Hollywood, California 90028
$7.00
https://www.facebook.com/events/792226594237807/
Steph Cha is the author of Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, and Dead Soon Enough — all published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. She’s the noir editor for LARB and a regular contributor to the LA Times. She lives in her native city of Los Angeles with her husband and basset hound.
Julia Ingalls is primarily an essayist. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Salon, Guernica, and on KCRW, among others. She’s into it.
Dawn Dorland‘s fiction appears in Green Mountains Review online, The Drum (audio), and is collected in Paragraph; her essays are available on the GrubStreet blog. Dawn’s debut novel-in-progress, Econoline, about generational poverty and American class ascent, has been recognized with fellowships and other support from the Vermont Studio Center, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, the Hambidge Center for the Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and Ragdale (2016). In 2015, Dawn was named a Visiting Artist for six weeks at a Regional Cultural Center in rural Minnesota. She earned her MFA at the University of Maryland, where she received full funding and won a teaching award, and teaches fiction and essay on the faculty of Writing Workshops LA and at the Downtown Women’s Center on Skid Row.
Amanda Montell is a Los Angeles writer and online content creator. She currently serves as the Managing Editor of digital literary journal, FORTH Magazine, and is a staff editor at online lifestyle magazine, TotalBeauty.com. Amanda is also the creator and host of the “The Dirty Word,” a web series about gender, language, and pop culture, forthcoming on Wifey.tv. Amanda’s essays have appeared in Literary Orphans, Medium, and Trop Magazine, among others. She is also a regular contributing writer at Time Out Los Angeles.
Vicki Juditz is best known for her one-woman show (Teshuvah, Return), about her journey to Judaism, for which she received an LA WEEKLY nomination for Best Female Solo Performer and an Ovation Award nomination for Best Writing of a World Premiere. She has performed her original stories at temples, theaters, and festivals, including the National Storytelling Festival, the Aspen LAFF Festival, and the Jewish Festival of Hong Kong. Locally, she performs at spoken-word series such as Speakeasy, Tasty Words, I Love a Good Story, Spark, Jewish Women’s Theater, and Tales by the Sea. A frequent winner of Moth StorySLAMs, she also won a GrandSLAM on the theme Mea Culpa. No stranger to TV, she has guest starred on Storytime, Everybody Loves Raymond, YES, DEAR, and My Name is Earl. Find her at facebook.com/VickiJuditz.
Ashley Perez lives, writes, and causes trouble in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She runs the literary site Arts Collide and does work of all varieties for The Rumpus, The Weeklings, Literary Orphans and Midnight Breakfast. You can also find her on Twitter: @ArtsCollide.
Stef Willen is a contributor to This American Life and a semi-regular contributor to McSweeney‘s Internet Tendency, where her award-winning column, Total Loss, also appears. She is currently turning Total Loss into a book slated to be published by Simon & Schuster in January 2017.
Rosa Pullman singer, writer, player, soul sister.
Come early! Seating is limited and the festivities start on time! www.conradromo.com
On Sunday, November 22, 2015, Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo — will feature Heather Chapman, April Dávila, Cheryl Montelle, Jeremy Radin, Maesa Pullman, and J. Ryan Stradal.
J. Ryan Stradal is a volunteer and advisory board member at 826LA and coproduces the literary/culinary event “Hot Dish.” He’s also worked in TV, most recently as the Supervising Producer on the A&E series Storage Wars: Texas. Some places where he has been published include Hobart, The Rattling Wall, Midwestern Gothic, The Rumpus, and McSweeney’s. His first novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest is a New York Times best seller. He likes wine, books, root beer, and peas. Visit him at jryanstradal.com.
Jeremy Radin is a Jewish person/actor from Los Angeles. He also writes poems, which have appeared in numerous journals. His first book, Slow Dance with Sasquatch, is available from Write Bloody Publishing. You may have seen him on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or in a restaurant aggressively eating pancakes by himself. Check out his website at jeremyradin.com.
Cheryl Montelle is a Los Angeles based writer whose stories have been published in various anthologies and magazines, and performed in Los Angeles, Joshua Tree, and New York City. She is the producer and host of “Desert Stories,”an annual fundraiser for the High Desert Playhouse in Joshua Tree, California. which she has also produced in New York City and Los Angeles. Cheryl has collaborated with The Laboratory, an international artist collective on two multifaceted art magazines, and heads the veteran/community non profit MilTree. Visit her at cherylmontelle.com.
April Dávila’s short stories have appeared in the Santa Clara Review, The Writing Disorder, and Dissections. Her nonfiction has appeared in Yes! Magazine, Earth Island Journal, and Our World 2.0 (a United Nation’s publication). Her writing on the topic of genetically modified foods garnered attention from Elle Magazine, NPR, the League of Women Voters and more. As a travel writer, she has published stories up and down the west coast. Her book Northern California is set to be published by Eye Muse Books in 2016. She is currently working on her debut novel. Learn more about her at aprildavila.com.
Heather Chapman writes a food blog at YouAreFed.com. Her short stories “The Ghost” and “The Hand” have appeared in the zine Scraps to Scribes. Her play Thaw was performed at Theatre West’s WestFest. She lives in Los Angeles.
Maesa Pullman started playing piano and writing songs when she was seven. She grew up in an artistic family whose roots go back to her grandfather who also played piano and sang. Maesa’s music is haunting with reflective lyrics; a poetic combination of folk, rock and soul steeped in Americana roots. Buy her CD Whipporwill at www.maesa.bandcamp.com.
WHAT: Tongue & Groove Literary Event
WHEN: Sunday, November 22, 2015, 6-7:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Hotel Cafe, 1623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Los Angeles, 90028
ADMISSION: $6
Come early! Seating is limited and the event starts on time! More information at Facebook.
On Sunday, October 25, 2015, Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo — will feature Janet Fitch, David Francis, Rita Williams, Julianne Ortale, and music by Garretson & Gorodetsky.
Janet Fitch is the author of the novels Paint It Black and White Oleander. Her short stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and journals such as Black Clock, Room of One’s Own, Los Angeles Noir, the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, Black Warrior Review, Vogue, and Los Angeles Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. She currently teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Paint it Black has been made into a feature film, the directing debut of Amber Tamblyn, and will be released early next year. She is currently working on an epic novel of the Russian Revolution.
In her memoir, If the Creek Don’t Rise, Rita Williams shares the story of her childhood with the last African American widow of a Civil War soldier in Colorado. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, O at Home, Saveur, Best Food Writing for 2007, The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, The Utne Reader, and Fins and Feathers, as well as numerous anthologies. She taught at the University of Southern California. Rita is working on a novel about a trucker with a meth problem.
David Francis‘s first novel Agapanthus Tango was published internationally in seven languages and in the United States as The Great Inland Sea. His second novel, Stray Dog Winter, was named Book of the Year in The Advocate, Novel of the Year in the Australian Literature Review, was a LAMBDA fiction award finalist, and won the American Library Association Stonewall Prize for Literature. His short fiction has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, Best Australian Stories 2010 and 2012, Griffith Review,The Harvard Review, Australian Love Stories and The Ratting Wall. His third novel Wedding Bush Road will be released by Counterpoint press in the fall of 2016.
Julianne Ortale is coeditor along with Samantha Dunn of the short story anthology Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, Alaska Quarterly Review, Salmagundi, The Malahat Review, Stand, Happy, The Gobshite Review, and Barbaric Yawp. She received her MFA in Fiction at UC Irvine’s Programs in Writing, where she was the Cheng Fellow. Her dialogues “Hombre Kabuki” and “Fluorescent Grey” were produced as short films and placed at Breckenridge Film Festival, Mexico International Film Festival, Tulsa International Film Festival, New Filmmakers Los Angeles, SNOB, and won Narrative Merit Award at Los Angeles Cinema Festival. She lives with her family on Bainbridge Island, where she writes and works with children with autism. Her story collection Music For Incurables is under review. She is currently finishing a novel.
Weba Garretson and Ralph Gorodetsky combine folk and pop music, blues riffs, and jazz harmonies with poetic lyrics to create songs that are haunting and humorous. Their most recent work “What Must the Hummingbird See?” is a song cycle about the fragile existence of urban wildlife In Los Angeles. Other commissions include music for Los Angeles Poverty Department’s “Utopia/Dystopia” at the Redcat, and the LA Public Library stage celebration of Melville’s Moby Dick “My Moby Dick” at the Broad Theatre.
WHAT: Tongue & Groove Literary Event
WHEN: Sunday, October 25, 2015, 6-7:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Hotel Cafe, 1623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Los Angeles, 90028
ADMISSION: $7
Come early! Seating is limited and the event starts on time!
On Sunday, August 30, 2015, Tongue & Grove — a monthly literary variety show with music produced by Conrad Romo — features MariNaomi, Andrew Ramirez, Craig McLaughlin, and music by the knownothings.
WHAT: Tongue & Groove Literary Variety Show
WHEN: Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015, 6-7:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Hotel Cafe, 1623 1/2 N Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028
TAB: $7.00 at the door
ETC.: Come early! Seating is limited and the event starts on time! There are parking lots on Selma as well as Cahuenga. Meters need to be fed until 8 p.m. Avoid Cahuenga street parking. The signs are deceptive.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS…
MariNaomi is the author and illustrator of the award-winning graphic memoir Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, the Eisner-nominated Dragon’s Breath and Other True Stories, and the upcoming Turning Japanese. Her work has appeared in over sixty print anthologies, featured in such places as Bitch Magazine, LA Review of Books, Truth-out, XOJane, Buzzfeed and more. Mari’s work on the Rumpus won a SPACE Prize and an honorable mention in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics 2013. Mari is also the creator and curator of the Cartoonists of Color Database and the LGBTQ Cartoonists Database. Visit her at marinaomi.com.
Andrew Ramirez has published fiction and poetry in Slake: Los Angeles, If & When, Literature for Life, Gumbo, among others, as well as being a featured writer for The New Short Fiction Series. He was born in El Paso, Texas, and educated at University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.
Craig McLaughlin is a teacher and author of creative nonfiction, an award-winning journalist, and a nationally recognized storyteller. He holds a BA from Wesleyan University and an MA in Journalism from UC Berkeley and taught creative nonfiction at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. A former editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, he received numerous awards as a reporter and memoirist. He performs his essays as a storyteller at venues throughout the country, most often in the San Francisco Bay Area where he lives. For details, visit cdmclaughlin.com.
The songs of the knownothings transmit from an eternal underground station deep beneath the Erasure_poetry streets of East Hollywood. Here the censors are gagged, the spellcheck turned off, the autotune disengaged and all the girls in the chorus are lolling about outside the stage door. in the corridors the cats rove all night, heedless of any grid…the knownothings album slummers of lust will be released later this year.
For Bukowski on his 95th Birthday
by Bunkong Tuon
The punch clock rings like a tumor
as he steps into the late afternoon light.
The boarded-up windows hang like terrible
hangovers while plastic bags, soda cans,
cardboard boxes litter the sidewalks.
Mick Jagger screams I Can’t Get No
Satisfaction from someone’s broken window.
Chevrolets parked along broken fences
and graffiti walls. Teenagers watch him
trudge by. Heads down, parents exhausted
from their 9-to-5’s at factories and hospitals.
The little children stop running and screaming,
stare at this man in his sweat-stained shirt,
fascinated momentarily with his acned face,
then return to their hide-and-seek game.
He crosses the street. A car screeches
to a stop. The driver sticks her head out
the window cursing, one hand pressing
the steering wheel, the other holding up
a middle finger. But the man ignores her,
turns a corner, and disappears into a boarding
house. In his one-room apartment he pours
cheap red wine into a dirty glass, turns
on his radio with guts, then sits down
at the desk. A Remington typewriter hums,
purrs, and sings along to Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony. He pushes his index fingers,
one stroke at a time, his breath
measured, heart simmers, home at last.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bunkong Tuon teaches writing and literature in the English Department at Union College, in Schenectady, New York. His recent publications include poems in Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Más Tequila Review, Misfit, and Patterson Literary Review. Gruel, his first full-length collection (which features other poems about Bukowski), was published recently by NYQ Books.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: On Sunday, August 16, 2015 — Charles Bukowski’s 95th birthday — the San Pedro International Film Festival will host a celebration of the author’s life and writing. For more information, visit spiffest.org.
On Sunday, August 16, 2015, Tongue & Grove — a monthly literary variety show with music produced by Conrad Romo — features three Burning River Press authors from Cleveland, Pen Emerging Voices Fellow Andres Reconco, with music by Tooth & Talon with Molly James.
WHAT: Tongue & Groove Literary Variety Show
WHEN: Sunday, Aug. 16, 2015, 6-7:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Hotel Cafe, 1623 1/2 N Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028
TAB: $7.00 at the door
ETC.: Come early! Seating is limited and the event starts on time! There are parking lots on Selma as well as Cahuenga. Meters need to be fed until 8 p.m. Avoid Cahuenga street parking. The signs are deceptive.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS…
Christopher Bowen is the founder and publisher of Burning River chapbooks. His chapbook published by Sunnyoutside Press, We Were Giants, has been lauded for its “bands of loss,” in the words of one critic — and as “a reminder of the temporality of everything” by another. In 2014, he started The Ohio Vintage Matchbook Company, a website devoted to prose, poetry, and the progress of literature in the 21st Century. He lives, cooks, attends school, and writes from the Cleveland, Ohio, area.
Chella Courington writes poetry and short fiction. Her chapbook, Girls and Women, was published by Burning River and she has also published with Indigo Ink and Porkbelly Press. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Gargoyle, and Danse Macabre — and she has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Best New Poets anthologies. She is a professor of creative writing at Santa Barbara City College.
Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of an experimental memoir, An Unsuitable Princess: A True Fantasy/A Fantastical Memoir (Jaded Ibis Press 2014), which received an honorable mention for the best books of (the Jewish year) 5774 from HEEB magazine. She is also the author of a full-length poetry collection, With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women (The Aldrich Press 2012). Her first chapbook, After Voices,’ was published by Burning River. She has been nominated twice for the Best of the Net anthology and twice for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City.
Andres Reconco was born in a little coastal town called Acajutla, in El Salvador. He came to the U.S. in 1991 and has been living in Los Angeles ever since. He received his bachelor’s in English Literature from CSULA. He is a 2014 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2015 Idyllwild Writer’s Week Fellow. He teaches English at the Los Angeles High School of the Arts, a public school in Korea Town.
Tooth and Talon is an up-and-coming, Oakland-based soul-folk trio. Their soulful vocals, sweet melodies, and ukulele-led instrumentation moved the Rock Paper Sciccors Collective to call them “Oakland’s ukulele darlings.” They came together originally through the 9 Lives Collective, an Oakland-based musician incubator. They are now in the midst of recording their first album. Tooth and Talon regularly plays cafes, bars, and home shows in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can listen to some demo recordings of their music here: https://soundcloud.com/toothandtalon.
Silver Birch Press 