Skylight Books Podcast Series

Ink Is Thicker Than Water (Entangled Publishing) One of Skylight Books' favorite YA authors returns with a novel about the lengths we go to find out who we are. For Kellie Brooks, family has always been a tough word to define. Combine her hippie mom and tattooist stepdad, her adopted overachieving sister, her younger half brother, and her tough-love dad, and average Kellie's the one stuck in the middle, overlooked and impermanent. When Kellie's sister finally meets her birth mother and her best friend starts hanging with a cooler crowd, the feeling only grows stronger. But then she reconnects with Oliver, the sweet and sensitive college guy she had a near hookup with last year. Oliver is intense and attractive, and she's sure he's totally out of her league. But as she discovers that maybe intensity isn't always a good thing, it's yet another relationship she feels is spiraling out of her control. It'll take a new role on the school newspaper and a new job at her mom's tattoo shop for Kellie to realize that defining herself both outside and within her family is what can finally allow her to feel permanent, just like a tattoo.  Amy Spalding grew up outside of St. Louis. She now lives in Los Angeles with two cats and a dog. She works in marketing and does a lot of improv. She has more tattoos than she can count. Amy would love for you to visit her online at www.theamyspalding.com or on Twitter @theames. 

My Mistake (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) In My Mistake Dan Menaker brings us a fresh perspective on life in those wonderfully fabled halls of The New Yorker—the office politicking, the romancing, the talent scouting—and beyond. Throughout his more than forty years in the publishing business, including successful tenures as an editor at Random House where he acquired classics like Primary Colors, Menaker gives an honest, no-holds-barred account of  a lifetime spent working to celebrate language and good writing. He tells his own story here, too—with irrepressible style and wisdom—offering insightful observations on the devastating grief that comes from losing a sibling, the joys of adoption and raising a family, and the writing life. The result is a moving, life-affirming portrait of a man who has lived and learned among some of the best writers of our generation. A man who sees the beauty, fortune, and necessity of all the mistakes he has made along the way. DANIEL MENAKER began his career as a fact checker at The New Yorker, where he became an editor and worked for twenty-six years. Formerly Editor in Chief of Random House, Menaker is the author of six books. He has also written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, Harper's, and many other publications. He lives in New York City with his wife, the writer Katherine Bouton. His website is http://danielmenaker.com/.

BTW (Penny-Ante Editions) Another Skylight favorite, Jarett Kobek, returns with his most comic work yet, a love letter to Los Angeles and terrible relationships. For tonight's reading he will be joined by artist William E. Jones. Bad relationships, interracial dating, cross-faith intermarriage, the endless pangs of love, reality television, Muslim fundamentalism, Crispin Hellion Glover, Internet pornography, Turkish secularism in the era of Erdoğan, the amorous habits of Thomas Jefferson, errant dogs, monogamous cheeseburger tattoos, alcoholics without  recovery, 9/11 PTSD, female Victorian novelists, the people who go to California to die. Jarett Kobek’s second novel, BTW, presents the tragicomedy of a young man in Los Angeles balancing a lunatic father, two catastrophic relationships, identity politics, and American pop culture at its most confused. Praise for BTW: “Moving from Williamsburg to Echo Park, Kobek’s account of post-NYU life in the aughts (so generic it can barely be lived, yet alone retold) is surprisingly disrupted as primitive identities of religion and race surface among this young, well-connected, smart and otherwise evolved group of friends. In this, his second novel, Kobek’s writing continues to impress."--CHRIS KRAUS, author of Where Art Belongs and I Love Dick “Half of BTW is a coming of age novel about the narrator’s romantic entanglements, the most significant of which turns out to be with the city of Los Angeles; the other half is the real love story, played out between the narrator and his father. This father, who is by turns hectoring, profane, and tenderin phone conversations and voicemail messages from his native Turkey, counts as one of the great comic characters in recent fiction, the sort of eccentric with whom you spend a minute in an elevator but can't forget."--William Jones, author of Halstead Plays Himself "Jarett Kobek’s deceptively artless prose responds like a flower to the sunlight of joy as to the cold rain of alienation. BTW is a book that could be as big as Bright Lights, Big City with the same general framework of a sharply experimental novel that yet can boast a big heart, a joke on every page, an overwhelming city magnificently delineated, and a handful of fascinating and all too real characters.--Kevin Killian, author of Spread Eagle and Impossible Princess “It’s like Kobek keyed into John Kennedy Toole’s lost biorhythm and resurrected it amid the cosmopolitan absurdities of Los Angeles. Between Tabitha Brown, Khadija, the Butterfed Behemoth and the legendary Mehmet, BTW adds up to a funny and hyper-literate look at failing relationships.”--Ken Baumann, star of the television show The Secret Life of the American Teenager Jarett Kobek is an American author and essayist living in California. His book ATTA (Semiotexte, 2011) is a fictionalized psychedelic biography of the lead 9/11 terrorist and If You Won’t Read, Then Why Should I Write? was published in 2012 by Penny-Ante Editions, both of which were longlisted for Novel of the Year by 3:AM Magazine. His most recent criticism, «Je suis devenu un magicien noir», was published as a catalogue essay by White Cube of London. William E Jones  is an artist and filmmaker born in Ohio and now living in Los Angeles.  He has made two feature length experimental films, Massillon (1991) and Finished (1997), the documentary Is It Really So Strange? (2004), videos including The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography (1998) and many installations.  His work has been the subject of retrospectives at Tate Modern (2005), Anthology Film Archives (2010), the Austrian Film Museum and Oberhausen Short Film Festival (both 2011).  His group shows include the 1993 and 2008 Whitney Biennials, the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), and “Untitled (Death by Gun)” at the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011). His books include Is It Really So Strange? (2006),Tearoom (2008),“Killed”: Rejected Images of the Farm Security Administration (2010),Halsted Plays Himself (2011), and Imitation of Christ (2013).  His solo exhibition, Heraclitus Fragment 124 Automatically Illustrated, opens at David Kordansky Gallery in January 2014.

Take Wing and Fly Here (Sherman Asher Books) Join us for this evening of conversation based on the release of Priyanka Kumar's new novel, TAKE WING AND FLY HERE, the first in her trilogy about our changing relationship with the American West. James Ragan and Priyanka Kumar will touch on topics including land conservation, the influence of birding and nature on their creative projects, and a discussion of perspective in their writing, whether it's screenwriting, poetry, or fiction. Kumar will also share images of her fine art birding photography and clips from her documentary, The Song of the Little Road, starring Martin Scorsese, Ismail Merchant, and Ravi Shankar. Praise for Take Wing and Fly Here: "Kumar has the most unique talent. She is one of the most gifted writers I know. Her storytelling gifts make all of us sit up and take notice."--Joan Tewekesbury, author of Ebba and the Green Dresses of Olivia Gomez in a Time of Conflict and War, and screenwriter of Nashville. Priyanka Kumar is the award-winning writer, director, and producer of the feature documentary The Song of the Little Road on Satyajit Ray, starring Martin Scorsese, Ismail Merchant, and Ravi Shankar, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and is in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' permanent collection. Kumar's awards include the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Award, the New Visions/New Mexico Award, an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences fellowship, a Panavision Filmmaker Award. She taught filmmaking at the University of S. California, Santa Cruz. 

Divas Dames & Daredevils (Exterminating Angel Press) Wonder Woman, Mary Marvel, and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle ruled the pages of comic books in the 1940s. But many heroines of the WWII era have been forgotten. Through twenty-eight full reproductions of vintage Golden Age comics, Divas, Dames & Daredevilsreintroduces their ingenious abilities to mete out justice to Nazis, aliens, and evildoers of all kinds. Each spine-tingling chapter opens with Mike Madrid’s insightful commentary about heroines at the dawn of the comic book industry and reveals a universe populated by extraordinary women—superheroes, reporters, galactic warriors, daring detectives, and ace fighter pilots—who protected America and the world with wit and guile. In these pages, fans will also meet heroines with striking similarities to more modern superheroes, including The Spider Queen, who deployed web shooters twenty years before Spider Man, and Marga the Panther Woman, whose feral instincts and sharp claws tore up the bad guys long before Wolverine. These women may have been overlooked in the annals of history, but their influence on popular culture, and the heroes we’re passionate about today, is unmistakable. Includes a foreword by Maria Elena Buszek, PhD. Praise for Divas Dames & Daredevils: "Mike Madrid gives these forgotten superheroines their due. These 'lost' heroines are now found--to the delight of comic book lovers everywhere." --Stan Lee "In one beautifully designed collection, [Mike Madrid] reprints the blood-and-thunder stories of twenty-eight Golden Age comic book heroines. . . . Lovers of comics and strong women everywhere thank you, Mike Madrid!" --Trina Robbins, author of Pretty in Ink: Women Cartoonists 1896-2013. "Madrid's meticulous and passionate research provides a window into a seemingly lost "herstory" of patriotism, bravery, and progressive ways of thinking about female agency and adventure. This collection, and the engaging context provided throughout, ensure that these divas, dames, and daredevils will not be forgotten." --Jennifer K. Stuller, author of Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology. Mike Madrid is the author of Divas, Dames & Daredevils: Lost Heroines of Golden Age Comics(Exterminating Angel Press) and The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines, an NPR "Best Book To Share With Your Friends" and American Library Association Amelia Bloomer Project Notable Book. Madrid, a San Francisco native and lifelong fan of comic books and popular culture, also appears in the documentary "Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines."

At Night We Walk In Circles (Riverhead Books) Join us tonight for a sensational reading from a writer the Minneapolis Star says "like witnessing the arrival of a John Steinbeck or Gabriel Garcia Marquez." Set in an unnamed, South American country in the aftermath of war, At Night We Walk In Circles shares the tone and masterful prose of the work of Roberto Bolaño, and is driven by a suspenseful plot that makes it impossible to put down. The story centers around a young actor, Nelson, who becomes a part of a radical guerilla theater troupe he’s long aspired to join. Nelson becomes hopelessly entangled with the group and we learn about Nelson’s rise and downfall through the investigation of our narrator, a man obsessed with uncovering Nelson’s mysterious story. In sharp, vivid and beautiful prose, Alarcón delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices. DANIEL ALARCÓN is author of War by Candlelight, a finalist for the 2005 PEN-Hemingway Award, and Lost City Radio, named a Best Novel of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post, among others. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, n+1, and Harper’s, and he has been named one of The New Yorker’s 20 under 40. He lives in San Francisco, California.

Happy Mutant Baby Pills (Harper Perennial) About Happy Mutant Baby Pills: Lloyd has a particular set of skills. He writes the small print for prescription drugs, marital aids, and incontinence products. The clients present him with a list of possible side effects. His job is "to recite and minimize"—sometimes by just saying them really fast and other times by finding the language that can render them acceptable. The results are ingenious. The methods diabolical. Lloyd has a habit, too. He cops smack during coffee breaks at his new job writing copy for Christian Swingles, an online dating service for the faithful. He finds a precarious balance between hackwork and heroin until he encounters Nora, a mysterious and troubled young woman, a Sylvia Plath with tattoos and implants, who asks for his help. Lloyd falls swiftly in love, but Nora bestows her affections at a cost. Before Lloyd clears his head from the fog of romance, he finds himself complicit in Nora's grand scheme to horrify the world and exact revenge on those who poison the populace in order to sell them the cure. Jerry Stahl is the author of Permanent Midnight; I, Fatty; Perv—a Love Story; and Plainclothes Naked. He has written extensively for film and television, and his work has appeared in Esquire, Details, Playboy, and other publications. He lives in Los Angeles. Richard Lange was born in Oakland, CA and grew up in California's San Joaquin Valley. He's the author of the novels Angel Baby and This Wicked World and the short story collection  Dead Boys. His short stories have appeared in The Sun, The Iowa Review and Best American Mystery Stories, and as part of the Atlantic Monthly's Fiction for Kindle series. He received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

A Life in Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley (Goff Books) Join us for a genre-defying night that fuses art and literature, prose and design into a multi-media presentation unlike any other. A Life in Books: The Rise and Fall of Bleu Mobley, written by Warren Lehrer, is an illuminated novel containing 101 books within it, all written by Lehrer's protagonist who finds himself in prison looking back on his life and career. Nearly a year after the controversial author is thrown into a federal prison for refusing to reveal the name of a confidential source, he decides to break his silence. But it's not as simple as giving up a name to the grand jury. Over the course of one long night, in the darkness of his prison cell, he whispers his life story into a microcassette recorder, tracing his journey from the public housing project of his youth, to a career as a journalist, then experimental novelist, college professor, accidental bestselling author, pop-culture pundit, and unindicted prisoner. In A Life In Books, Mobley's autobiography/apologia is paired with a review of all 101 of his books. Each book is represented by its first-edition cover design and catalogue copy, and more than a third of his books are excerpted. The resulting retrospective contrasts the published writings (which read like short stories) with the author's confessional memoir, forming a most unusual portrait of a well-intentioned, obsessively inventive (but ethically challenged) visionary. Written and designed by award-winning author/artist Warren Lehrer, A Life in Books is an extraordinarily original, funny, heartwarming and heart-wrenching exploration of one man's use of books as a means of understanding himself, the people around him, and a half-century of American/global events. Rich with stories that spring from other stories, this genre-defying novel orchestrates a multicultural symphony of characters from Bleu's life and books: lovers, mothers, children, friends, enemies, teachers, students, runaways, rebels, thinkers, dreamers, believers, skeptics, the displaced and dispossessed. It celebrates the mysteries and contradictions of the creative process, and grapples with the future of the book as a medium, and the lines that separate truth, myth, and fiction. This four-color, full-length novel--containing over 101 hilarious and scrumptious book cover designs (and book-like objects)--fuses art and literature, and distinguishes itself as one of those books you'll want to hold in your hands, feast your eyes on, read and re-read, share with friends, and treasure for years to come. Warren Lehrer is a writer and designer, acclaimed for capturing the shape of thought and reuniting the traditions of storytelling with the printed page. He has received many awards for his books and multimedia projects, including the Brendan Gill Prize, the Innovative Use of Archives Award, three AIGA Book Awards, two Type Director’s Club awards, The International Book Design Award, a Media That Matters Award, and grants and fellowships from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Rockefeller, Ford, and Greenwall Foundations. His work is in many collections including MoMA, LA County Art Museum, The Getty Museum, Georges Pompidou Centre, and Tate Gallery. He is a professor at Purchase College, SUNY, and a founding faculty member of the Designer As Author grad program at SVA. Together with Judith Sloan, Lehrer co-authored Crossing the BLVD and co-founded EarSay, a non-profit arts organization in Queens, NY. A Life In Books is Lehrer’s 10th book; his first novel.

Hyperbole and A Half (Simon and Schuster) Skylight Books is excited, stoked, and over-the-moon ecstatic to be hosting Allie Brosh, creator of the award-winning blog "Hyperbole and a Half." Never heard of "Hyperbole and A Half" and the book it spawned? Let Allie tell you about it. "This is a book I wrote. Because I wrote it, I had to figure out what to put on the back cover to explain what it is. I tried to write a long, third-person summary that would imply how great the book is and also sound vaguely authoritative like maybe someone who isn't me wrote it but I soon discovered that I'm not sneaky enough to pull it off convincingly. So I decided to just make a list of things that are in the book:  Pictures Words Stories about things that happened to me Stories about things that happened to other people because of me Eight billion dollars* Stories about dogs The secret to eternal happiness*  *These are lies. Perhaps I have underestimated my sneakiness!

The Last Ride of Caleb O'Toole (SourceBooks/Jabberwocky) Join us tonight for the launch party of local author and actor Eric Pierpoint's middle grade novel, The Last Ride of Caleb O'Toole. Epic in scope, populated by unforgettable characters, this debut wild west adventure novel by popular Hollywood character actor Eric Pierpoint will thrill young readers.  Caleb O’Toole and his two sisters are left orphaned after a cholera outbreak in their hometown of Great Bend, Kansas. Attempting to fulfill their mother’s dying wish, they strike out on a onehorse wagon to travel the treacherous road along the Oregon Trail to the Montana Territory to live with their aunt. Caleb promised to keep his two sisters safe. But safety is thirteen hundred miles away in the rugged Bitterroot Mountains, past the dust-choked deserts, monstrous tornadoes and ravenous wolves of the Oregon Trail. And after witnessing a crime by the infamous Blackstone Gang, Caleb and his sisters have no choice but to brave the dangers of the trail, trying to stay one step ahead of murderous outlaws. Praise for The Last Ride of Caleb O'Toole: "The fast-paced adventure serves up a hearty history lesson with side dishes of political, social and environmental commentary. Realistic and complicated characters give the familiar story of the pioneer's journey fresh life. . . a suspenseful adventure with heart." - Kirkus Reviews "The pace doesn't let up TV and film actor Pierpoint offers a rowdy Wild West adventure in his first book for children. . . Readers seeking action, history, and adventure aren't likely to mind. " - Publishers Weekly Eric Pierpoint is a veteran Hollywood actor  has been on stage, screen, and television for nearly thirty five years and whose credits include Hart of Dixie, Parks and Recreation, Alien Nation, The World’s Fastest Indian, and Holes.  Inspired by his family’s heritage as part of the pioneer migration along the Oregon Trail, including a great-great-grandmother born in a covered wagon, Eric piled Joey, his trusty dog, into his car to trace his family history, experience firsthand what the pioneers must have seen during the Western Migration and learn the history of this amazing era: the American Indian Wars and tribal culture, the hardships of the wild west and friendships that formed because of the dangerous journey. The author’s journey and his research was transformed into THE LAST RIDE OF CALEB O’TOOLE, a unique adventure novel of America’s pioneer past. Visit www.ericpierpoint.net or www.facebook.com/EricPierpointConnection.