Skylight Books Podcast Series

Ten Thousand Saints (Ecco) Debut novelist Eleanor Henderson will read and sign her highly acclaimed novel, Ten Thousand Saints. "Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination. The resulting novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time."  —Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder "Ten Thousand Saints is funny, touching, artistic, surprising, lovely, eye-opening, and very, very wise.” —Arthur Phillips, bestselling author of Prague and The Tragedy of Arthur THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 16, 2011.

Secrets and Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy (Soft Skull Press) A launch party for journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya, who will discuss and sign his new book, based on unprecedented access to fundamentalist Mormon polygamist families. "From his telling beginning, a quote from Bob Dylan, Bhattacharya is amusingly off and running, and readers will want to follow his punchy, magazine-trained voice wherever it may lead." --Publishers Weekly "Bhattacharya gained impressive access inside the polygamist compounds, weaving a fascinating and entertaining tale." --Huffington Post Sanjiv Bhattacharya has written for Details, Los Angeles Times Magazine, and Maxim. He has appeared as an expert on polygamy, discussing his Channel Four documentary, The Man with 80 Wives, on MSNBC Live, Montel Williams, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.

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.

Smart Gals' 6th Annual Dead Poets Slam: Monarchs vs. Minions 8 Dead Poets, 3 Judges, and 1 winner! How do poems from monarchies fare against poems by the oppressed? Can royal stanzas stand up to the power of the people? Will the crown be plow-shared into submission by her former subjects? Find out April 9th, at Smart Gals 6th annual Dead Poets Slam (held at Skylight Books for the first time!), when a team of anonymously performed, deceased, monarchial poets face off against poetic minions of colonized countries. Hosted by Christine Louise Berry (Smart Gals), and featuring Noël Alumit, Daniel Bess, Jerrod Cardwell, T.K. Carr, Kathleen Coyne, Juli Crockett, Imani Tolliver, Steve Tom, and Lori Yeghiayan. Our esteemed judges will include writer and poetry professor Chris Davidson, playwright Katy Hickman, and well-read physicist Clifford Johnson. The behind-the-scenes team includes poetry seekers Tori Patterson and Laura Louden, who is also a baker of delicious things for the slam. Smart Gals is a nonprofit, public benefit organization dedicated to developing the greater arts community in Los Angeles, by constructing original events in unlikely places and creating transformative social gatherings through The Reading Preserve™, our site-specific performance series Are You Interested?™ and the recently-deceased semi-literary salon, The Speakeasy™. Now in its 11th year, Smart Gals has been featured in the LA Weekly, Los Angeles City Beat, LA Alternative Press, The Los Angeles Times, Bitch, Los Angeles Magazine and on KPFK radio. Smart Gals’ visionary approach to collaborative work has introduced audiences and artists to a wide array of alternative venues, from a local church basement, to a machine shop in El Segundo, to Cleveland High in Reseda, to the land and sites along the Metro Gold Line. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS APRIL 9, 2011

The Bad Mother (Dymaxicon) Award-winning journalist Nancy Rommelmann launches her first novel here at Skylight Books! Nancy Rommelmann's first novel, The Bad Mother (Dymaxicon, 2011), is set among Hollywood's transient population of street kids. The idea for this book grew out of Rommelmann's experiences chronicling the under-told stories of Hollywood's various underground populations for the LA Weekly and the LA Times: a crew of Mexican gardeners working the Hollywood Hills; the "cop groupies" who hang out at the LAPD's favorite bar, and the dream-broke residents of Sunset Boulevard's transient hotels. Hollywood is hard on everyone, from aspiring actors and actresses to those on the way back down, but it is particularly indifferent to the children who ghost along the boulevard, unseen by the tourists squatting over Marilyn Monroe's hand prints in front of Grauman's Chinese. As Rommelmann explains, "Hollywood herself is the bad mother of the title." Nancy Rommelmann's articles and profiles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Reason, and other publications. Her Op-Ed pieces and book reviews appear in the Oregonian. She is also a contributor to the media website LA Observed. Rommelmann received Best Arts Feature 2009 from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), as well as Best Entertainment Arts Feature 2009 from the Los Angeles Press Club. An LA Weekly feature about the actress Jena Malone's bid for emancipation from her mother received the identical awards in 2001. Rommelmann's food writing appears in Bon Appetit magazine. She has worked as a restaurant reviewer for the LA Weekly and Willamette Week. In 2002, she shared an AAN award, for food coverage, with Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold. Rommelmann has published three books, including The Real Real World (with Hillary Johnson), which spent fourteen weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and Everything You Pretend to Know about Food.

Walking Through a River of Fire: 100 Years of Triangle Fire Poetry On March 25, 1911, a fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. The owners had locked the doors. Within the hour 146 immigrant workers—mostly women--were dead. The Triangle fire galvanized a national social justice movement to protect workers’ health and to build unions. The poetry in this anthology have already won major American poetry prizes: Chris Llewellyn’s book on the Whitman Award for Poetry, Mary Fell’s won the National Poetry Series. These poems brilliantly capture this major turning point in 20th century American history. These poets recapture the lives of immigrant women and of women workers and inscribe  an American tragedy into literature. Over the last 100 years a huge literature of poems, dramas, and fiction has been written about the Triangle factory fire tragedy. This book is the first anthology ever of this important literature. This event features Julia Stein, editor/poet/anti-sweatshop activist; Lee Boek, writer, actor, activist, and artistic director of Public Works Improvisational Theatre project, and Lynne Bronstein, who has written four books of poetry--Astray From Normalcy, Roughage, Thirsty in the Ocean, and Border Crossing. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 18, 2011

Blowout!: Sal Castro and the Chicano Struggle for Educational Justice (University of North Carolina Press) Mario T. Garcia and Sal Castro will discuss and sign this fascinating oral history transcribed and presented in Castro's voice by historian Garcia, about Castro's historic leadership in the school walk-outs of 1968, the largest civil rights protests by Mexican Americans in U.S. history. Mario T. García was born in El Paso Texas. He has taught at San Jose State University, San Diego State University, Yale University, and at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright teaching Fellowship and is the author of numerous books in Chicano history. Los Angeles native Sal Castro is an American educator and activist. In 1968 he was the leader of a series of school walkouts in East Los Angeles protesting years of inferior and discriminatory education for Mexican Americans. These "blowouts," as they were called, are the largest and most widespread civil rights protests by Mexican Americans in U.S. history, and the beginning of the urban Chicano Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS MARCH 23, 2011