Skylight Books Podcast Series

I DREAMED I WAS A VERY CLEAN TRAMP (Ecco) How this legendary downtown artist went from an ordinary childhood in the idyllic Kentucky foothills to igniting the “punk” movement that would take over New York and London’s restless youth culture—and spawn the careers of not only Hell himself, but a cohort of friends such as Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, and the Ramones—is just part of the fascinating story Hell tells. With Joycean powers of observation, he delves deeply into the details of both the world that shaped him and the world he helped to shape. From an early age, Hell dreamed of running away. His father died when he was seven, and at seventeen he left behind his mother and sister and headed to New York City, a place of limitless possibilities. He arrived penniless; ten years later he was a pivotal voice of the age of punk, starting or co-founding such seminal bands as Television, The Heartbreakers, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids—whose song “Blank Generation” remains the defining anthem of the era. As much as any one person, Hell established CBGBs as the ground zero of punk. He and the Voidoids would tour with the Clash, and Malcolm McLaren would credit him as an inspiration for the Sex Pistols. There was the kinetic excitement of nights at Max’s Kansas City, the descent into drug addiction, and the ever-present yearning for redemption through poetry, music, and art. Richard Hell is the author of the novels Go Now and Godlike, and the collection of essays, diaries, and lyrics, Hot and Cold. Hell has published essays, reportage and fiction in such publications as Spin, GQ, Esquire, The Village Voice, Vice, Bookforum, Art in America, The New York Times and The New York Times Book Review. From 2004-2006 he was the film critic for Black Book magazine. Hell lives in New York City. Photo by Iniz & Vinoodh THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 27, 2013. COPIES OF BOOKS FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780062190833

Young adult author extraordinaire Cecil Castellucci presents a panel on dystopian young adult novels, featuring authors Jennifer Bosworth, Chris Howard, and Sherri L. Smith. Cecil Castellucci is the author of books and graphic novels for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, First Day on Earth, The Year of the Beasts and Odd Duck. Her picture book, Grandma’s Gloves, won the California Book Award Gold Medal. Her short stories have been published in Strange Horizons, YARN, Tor.com, and various anthologies including, Teeth, After and Interfictions 2. She is the YA editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, Children’s Correspondence Coordinator for The Rumpus and a two time Macdowell Fellow. She lives in Los Angeles. Jennifer Bosworth lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of the young adult novel Struck and is the writer half of a writer/director team with her husband, Ryan Bosworth. Chris Howard was born not far from London but currently lives in Denver, CO. Before he wrote stories, he wrote songs, studied natural resources management, worked for the National Park Service, and spent eight years leading wilderness adventure trips for teenagers. He was awarded a Publishers Weekly “Flying Start” in Fall 2012, following the release of his debut novel, Rootless (Scholastic Press), and Chris is currently working on the next book in this gritty sci-fi series that's recommended for both teens and adults. Sherri L. Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois and spent most of her childhood reading books. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she has worked in movies, animation, comic books and construction. Sherri’s first book, Lucy the Giant, was an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults in 2003. The Dutch translation, Lucy XXL (Gottmer, 2005), was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2005 De Gouden Zoen, or Golden Kiss, Awards for Children’s Literature in the Netherlands. Sherri’s novel, Sparrow, was chosen as a National Council for the Social Studies/Children’s Book Council Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People and is also a 2009 Louisiana Young Readers Choice Award Nominee. Upon the release of Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet in February 2008, Sherri was featured as a spotlight author for The Brown Bookshelf's Black History Month celebration, 28 Days Later. Flygirl, an historical YA novel set during World War II, is her fourth novel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 25, 2013.

Reclamation Artist Kristin Posehn will discuss her new book Reclamation, about her public artwork of the same name, with Frieze contributing editor and art critic Jonathan Griffin. Reclamation is both a novella and an exhibition catalogue. The book tells the story of an ephemeral public artwork through the experiences of a fictional narrator. The artwork Reclamation was an elaborate reproduction of a ruin: a one-to-one scale replica of the last remaining facade from the ghost town of Metropolis, USA. The installation took place in the newly constructed city of Almere, the Netherlands. At this event, Kristin Posehn and Jonathan Griffin will be in conversation about the book and artwork, architecture, photography, public vs private space, and the peculiar story of the ghost town of Metropolis. Kristin Posehn is an artist based in Los Angeles. She has produced numerous commissioned works, including installations for Museum De Paviljoens, Netherlands, the Bonnefanten Museum, NL, Aspex, UK, and Netwerk Center for Contemporary Art, Belgium. She received a Ph.D. in Fine Art from the Winchester School of Art, Winchester, UK, and did a two year research and production residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL. In 2010, she was a Visiting Tutor at Oxford University, UK. Reclamation is her first book. Jonathan Griffin is a writer, art critic and editor. Born and raised in London, he now lives in Los Angeles. He is a Contributing Editor of Frieze magazine, and has also written for publications including Art Review, Texte Zur Kunst, Flash Art and The Art Newspaper. He has contributed essays for a number of books, including a monograph on British painter Ross Chisholm, published by JRP Ringier, and Vitamin P2, published by Phaidon. Forthcoming books include a monograph on Hernan Bas, published by Rizzoli, and Vitamin D2, published by Phaidon. Photo of Posehn by Aaron Farley. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 22, 2013.

MIDDLE MEN (Simon & Schuster) Be advised!  Skylight Books is hosting the launch party for LA author Jim Gavin's debut story collection and you will not want to miss it. Who is Jim Gavin?  Just ask Esquire: "Who is Jim Gavin? The second coming of Denis Johnson if his debut collection is any indication. These sad, funny stories about nowhere men….knocked me out. MIDDLE MEN will transport you, will educate you, will entertain you, will fill you with laughter and sadness.” “Jim Gavin’s stories are wise and funny and not at all afraid of the dark, or the light. Middle Men is a very powerful debut.”—Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask "Jim Gavin's MIDDLE MEN is perfectly titled -- these are characters gloriously unaware of how adrift they are. Gnostic high school basketballers, romantic pursuers, open mike comedians -- I've rarely seen such a keen depiction of souls so out of focus.  These stories -- especially "Elephant Doors" -- brought back some hilarious, uncomfortable memories for me.  Immerse yourself!  Immerse!" – Patton Oswalt, author of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland In "Middle Men," Stegner Fellow and "New Yorker" contributor Jim Gavin delivers a hilarious and panoramic vision of California, portraying a group of men, from young dreamers to old vets, as they make valiant forays into middle-class respectability. In "Play the Man" a high-school basketball player aspires to a college scholarship, in "Elephant Doors," a production assistant on a game show moonlights as a stand-up comedian, and in the collection's last story, the immensely moving "Costello," a middle-aged plumbing supplies salesman comes to terms with the death of his wife. The men in Gavin's stories all find themselves stuck somewhere in the middle, caught half way between their dreams and the often crushing reality of their lives. A work of profound humanity that pairs moments of high comedy with searing truths about life's missed opportunities, "Middle Men" brings to life a series of unforgettable characters learning what it means to love and work and be in the world as a man, and it offers our first look at a gifted writer who has just begun teaching us the tools of his trade. JIM GAVIN worked as a sportswriter, a plumbing salesman, and a Jeopardy! production assistant. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he received his MFA from Boston University in 2011. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, ZYZZYVA, and Slice magazine. He lives in Southern California. This is his first book. Photo by Fred Schroeder THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 14, 2013. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9781451649314

ELDERS (Hogarth) Join us for LA author and Stegner Fellow Ryan McIlvain's debut novel about foreign Mormon missions. “A nuanced meditation on faith and commitment that has all the intensity of a stage play.  Elders is a powerful and deeply moving debut from a gifted young writer.” —T.C. Boyle, author of San Miguel “I’ve always wanted to read a novel about Mormon missions abroad, and McIlvain is the ideal writer to write it.  The framework he provides is layered and fascinating, and inside it, the complex human drama plays out beautifully—these are memorable characters, and McIlvain shows them to us with compassion and honesty both.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake RYAN MCILVAIN grew up in the Mormon Church and resigned his membership in his mid-twenties. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many journals, including The Paris Review, The Chattahoochee Review and the Potomac Review. McIlvain received honorable mentions in the Best American Short Stories and the Best American Nonrequired Reading. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford from 2009 to 2011, he currently lives with his wife in Los Angeles. Photograph by Brinn Willis THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 13, 2013. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780307955692

The Carriage House (Scribner Book Company) A gorgeous debut novel from an award-winning poet and world ranked squash player about an old moneyed family, facing the loss of the youthful talent and storied history that defined them. After suffering a stroke, patriarch William Adair wakes up in his hospital bed and realizes that his family has changed: they are less extraordinary than he had remembered. For more than thirty years, his faith in life was grounded on two indisputable principles: his three daughters' exceptional beauty and talents and the historical resonance of a carriage house built by his grandfather. Now, both have begun to collapse. The carriage house, held captive by a neighbor since a zoning error classified it as her property, has decayed beyond recognition and risks being condemned. William's daughters--all tennis champions in their youth--are in decline. Having lost their father's pride, the three sisters struggle to define themselves. William's ailing wife is suffering from dementia. As she forgets her daughters, they forget themselves. To help him recover, William's daughters take on the battle for the carriage house that once stood as a symbol of their place in the world. Overcoming misunderstandings, betrayals, and wrong turns deep in the past, each of the Adairs ultimately finds a new place of forgiveness and love. "The Carriage House" is a moving, beautifully wrought novel about the complex bonds of siblings and about rebuilding lost lives. Every sentence in The Carriage House is full of clarity, attention, and grace. Louisa Hall is a writer to be admired.—Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds Louisa Hall grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Haverford. After graduating from Harvard she played squash professionally, and was ranked no. 2 in the country. She is completing her Ph.D. in literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Her poems have been published in journals such as The New Republic, The Southwest Review, and Ellipsis. The Carriage House is her first novel. She lives in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 12, 2013. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9781451688634

Author (and frequent Skylight Books event host!) Noel Alumit presents a panel on getting published, featuring author Dana Johnson, book critic and author David L. Ulin, editor Daniel Smetanka, and agent B.J. Robbins. Dana Johnson is the author of Elsewhere, California and Break Any Woman Down. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern California where she teaches literature and creative writing. BJ Robbins opened her Los Angeles-based literary agency in 1992 after a multifaceted career in book publishing that took her from publicity at Simon & Schuster to Marketing Director and later Senior Editor at Harcourt. Her agency represents non-genre fiction, both literary and commercial and a wide range of nonfiction, from narrative to history and biography, pop culture, travel-adventure, sports and health. Daniel Smetanka has worked in various aspects of the publishing industry for close to twenty years. As an Executive Editor at Ballantine/Random House, Inc., he acquired and published award-winning debut books including The Ice Harvest by Scott Philips, The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner, Down to a Soundless Sea by Thomas Steinbeck, and Among the Missing by Dan Chaon, a 2001 finalist for the National Book Award. He currently serves as Editor-at-Large for Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press. Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin authored The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith and The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Are So Important in a Distracted Time.

Exploding the Phone (Grove Press) In EXPLODING THE PHONE, Phil Lapsley illuminates the forgotten history of the proto-hackers, tinkerers, and pranksters who turned AT&T’s telephone system into their electronic playground. Before smartphones and iPads, before the Internet or the personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world’s largest machine: the telephone system. By the middle of the twentieth century the telephone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. But the network had a billion-dollar flaw, and once people discovered it, things would never be the same. Phil Lapsley’s EXPLODING THE PHONE traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T’s monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell’s Achilles’ heel. Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine network of “phone phreaks” who broke into the system to satisfy their curiosity, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, and the counterculture movement that argued you should rip off the phone company to fight against the war in Vietnam. AT&T responded with “Greenstar,” an unprecedented project that would ultimately tap some thirty-three million telephone calls and record 1.5 million of them. The FBI fought back, too, especially when a phone phreak showed a confidential informant how he could remotely eavesdrop on FBI calls. Phone phreaking exploded into the popular culture, with famous actors, musicians, and investors caught with “blue boxes,” many of them built by two young phone phreaks named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Soon, the phone phreaks, the feds, and the phone company were at war. Based on original interviews and declassified documents, and featuring a forward by phone phreak turned Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak, EXPLODING THE PHONE is a captivating, ground-breaking work about an important part of our cultural and technological history. "The definitive account of the first generation of network hackers – the scruffy rebels who first plumbed the secrets of the global telephone network, and accidentally earned the wrath of everyone from AT&T to the FBI. At turns a technological love story, a counter cultural history and a generation-spanning epic, Exploding the Phone is obsessively researched and told with wit and clarity. It captures a moment in time that might otherwise have been lost forever." —Kevin Poulsen, news editor of Wired.com and author of Kingpin Phil Lapsley is a cofounder of two high-tech companies, and a former consultant at McKinsey & Company. He holds a masters degree in electrical engineering from U. C. Berkeley and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 11, 2013. COPIES OF THE BOOK FROM THIS EVENT CAN BE PURCHASED HERE: http://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780802120618

Die vielen Leben der Paula Fox (The Many Lives of Paula Fox) Villa Aurora presents German author Bernadette Conrad, who is in Los Angeles for her followship with the Villa, for an event discussing and signing her biography of American author Paula Fox. NOTE: The reading and signing will be in English, but the book is only available in German.  Skylight will have some copies of the German edition available for sale. Born in 1963, Bernadette Conrad studied German Philology, Romance Languages and Social Pedagogy, and pursued a career as a social worker with a focus on addiction therapy. Today, she is a freelance writer and journalist, whose publications are regularly featured in DIE ZEIT and Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Bernadette Conrad is the recipient of various grants and awards such as the 2010 Walliser Medienpreis and the 2012 Literary Fellowship of the State of Baden-Wurttemberg. Her publications include “Nomaden im Herzen” (Nomads at Heart, 2006), a collection of literary reports, and the biography “Die vielen Leben der Paula Fox” (The Many Lives of Paula Fox), published in 2011 to rave reviews. During her residency at Villa Aurora, Conrad will do extensive research for her new book, a work of fiction again examining the topic of nomadic existence. Set in Los Angeles and other parts of the U.S., it tells the story of a father who emigrates to the U.S. in the 1950s, but returns after discovering that all the demons he had hoped to leave behind are still with him. It is also the story of his daughter who feels compelled to follow her father's dream, and travels to New England but ultimately realizes that she has to follow her own path. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 10, 2013.

PEN Center USA presents The Rattling Wall, Issue 3 FEATURING: Benj Hewitt, Rhoda Huffey, Mandy Kahn, Amelia Morris, and Rachel Reynolds Join us as LA literary journal The Rattling Wall presents writers from Issue 3 reading their work.  Drinks will follow the reading and signing. Benj Hewitt is a Los Angeles-based writer and winner of the 2012 John Steinbeck Short Story Award. He recently finished his first book When I Come Around, a coming-of-age memoir set in the Bay Area during the glory days of grunge and the dawn of the dot-com era. He has been long-listed for Ireland’s Fish Publishing Short Memoir Contest and was a finalist for the 2012 Summer Literary Series Contest in Poetry. His essays on politics and parenting have appeared in Huffington Post and Modern Mom. Rhoda Huffey is the author of the novel The Hallelujah Side, which was chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book. Her short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, Santa Monica Review, and Green Mountains Review. She lives in Venice Beach, California. Mandy Kahn is coauthor with Aaron Rose of the nonfiction book Collage Culture, which was also released as an LP record with a score by No Age. Her recent appearances include readings, signings, and talks at Art Center College of Design, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, the Last Bookstore, Family, the Silver Lake Jubilee, the Shoreditch House (London), Motto (Berlin), Printed Matter (New York), Colette (Paris), the Celebrity Author's Luncheon for CALM (Santa Barbara), and Davies Symphony Hall (San Francisco). Kahn is writer-in-residence for the live event The Series, for which she writes poetry, prose, and experimental theater in collaboration with choreographers, musicians, and performance artists. Both her poetry and her prose have been anthologized. Amelia Morris lives in Los Angeles and authors the food blog Bon Appétempt. When she's not tramping around on trumped-up charges, she's writing, dancing, and prancing. Her handiwork has appeared on saveur.com, bonappetit.com, westelm.com, Gourmet Live, Refinery 29, the Los Angeles Times, and Elle Girl Korea. Bon Appétempt has won two of Saveur Magazine's Best Food Blog Awards: Best Culinary Essay in 2011 and Best Food Humor Blog in 2012. Additionally, her writing has been published in McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes and her first novel Will & Margot patiently awaits publication. Rachel Reynolds is a student of creative writing and classics at the University of Redlands Johnston Center for Integrative Studies. She has been the recipient of two first place prizes and a second place prize in the University's annual Jean Burden Prize for Poetry contest. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 2, 2013.