Skylight Books Podcast Series

Light Boxes (Penguin) Shane Jones will be here to read from and sign his book Light Boxes! This debut novel was a staff favorite when it came out from a small press last year; now that it's been optioned by Spike Jonze, it's getting a new release from Penguin! Shane Jones was born in February of 1980. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals, including New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Typo, and Pindeldyboz. He lives in upstate New York with two cats and one wife. This is his first novel. Director Spike Jonze (Where The Wild Things Are, Being John Malkovich) purchased the film option for Light Boxes in July 2009. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 30, 2010.

Tiny Acts of Rebellion: 97 Almost-Legal Ways to Stick It to the Man (Michael O'Mara Books) Rich Fulcher of the British TV hit The Might Boosh will be here to discuss and sign his new book, Tiny Acts of Rebellion! Rich Fulcher is an American comedian, writer and improviser. He is best known for smash-hit The Mighty Boosh, with whom he has toured and taken many roles in their BBC3 series. Most recently he has been seen as his alter-ego, Eleanor – aka "the world’s greatest groupie," playing sell-out seasons in Australia before heading up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this August. Rich released his book Tiny Acts of Rebellion in 2009 and is also known for his performances in the award-winning and subsequently televised Modern Problems in Science (BBC3), Snuff Box (BBC3), and Skins (E4). THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JULY 7, 2010.

The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles (Cambridge University Press) Editor Kevin McNamara and contributors William Mohr, Scott Bryson, and Eric Avila will read from their selected pieces in this great new anthology of local literature! William Alexander McClung and Mark Shiel, who were originally scheduled to appear, will be unable to make it. Kevin McNamara writes on cities and their cultures.  A professor of literature and American studies at the University of Houston–Clear Lake, he received his Ph.D. from UC Irvine and has also taught in Turkey and the Czech Republic. William Mohr is a poet who teaches literature and creative writing at CSU Long Beach. His longstanding project, Backlit Renaissance: Los Angeles Poets during the Cold War will be published by the University of Iowa Press in early 2011. (Photo of William Mohr by Linda Fry.) Scott Bryson is a professor of English at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles. He is the author of The West Side of Any Mountain: Place, Space, and Ecopoetry (University of Iowa Press, 2005) and has edited several collections of literary criticism. His current scholarship focuses on urban theory and culture, primarily as it relates to the phenomenon of Los Angeles literature. Eric Avila is the author of Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (University of California Press, (2004) and is currently working on second book project that considers the cultural history of urban highway construction in postwar America. He is a professor of History, Chicano Studies and Urban Planning at UCLA. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 24, 2010.

You Never Forget How to Ride a Bike: Lessons Learned by the Students of John Marshall High School (826LA) 826LA is releasing its newest book, You Never Forget How to Ride a Bike: Lessons Learned by the Students of John Marshall High School. The young authors lead us through the moments that have shaped their lives— among them encounters with Def Leppard albums, wormy peaches, campus police, and Mara Salvatrucha—and share with us the things they've learned about the kindness of strangers, letting go of love, resolve in the presence of naysayers, and the value of a dollar. 826LA is a writing and tutoring nonprofit, with centers in Echo Park and Venice, that provides after-school tutoring, evening and weekend workshops, in-school tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 23, 2010.

Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (Holt McDougal) A launch party for the debut novel by Los Angeles author Jenny Hollowell! "Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe tells us in quick witty scenes and sharp psychological details what it's like to be a needy spirit in a beautiful body, yearning for success. This novel is smart, spare, comic and sad. It rings beautifully true." --John Casey, National Book Award-winning author of Spartina Jenny Hollowell's short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, Scheherezade, and the anthology New Sudden Fiction, and was named a distinguished story by Best American Short Stories. She received an MFA from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Fiction and recipient of the Balch Short Story Award. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. This is her first novel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 21, 2010

Our second in a series of rant/rave nights featuring local authors talking about books that they love or love to hate!  This time, our ranters and ravers are Mark Haskell Smith (Moist), Amy Spalding, Amy Goldman Koss (The Girls), Justine Musk (Uninvited) and host Cecil Castellucci (Beige). THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 16, 2010.

Cut Away (Arktoi Books) Writer Catherine Kirkwood will read from and sign her first novel, Cut Away. Catherine Kirkwood holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard University, a PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of York, England, and a BS in psychobiology. Her work has appeared in the Pitkin Review, and in the fiction anthology Under the Flesh of Oranges. Her acclaimed feminist work, Leaving Abusive Partners, has been translated and sold internationally. Cut Away is her debut novel. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up in a family that held science—physics and math—as the main form of faith, but her mother firmly believed in the power of wonder that resides in nature. She took her into the back-country as soon as she could walk and taught her never to be afraid of the urge to go deep into the wilderness, to always trust her instincts in finding her path. Catherine now lives in Seattle in a small, yellow cottage with her partner, a border collie mix, and two geriatric cats. When she’s not writing, she works as a systems analyst in cancer research. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 6, 2010.

This Is Where We Live (Spiegel & Grau) A launch party for the new novel by L.A. writer Janelle Brown (All We Ever Wanted Was Everything). Janelle Brown is a freelance journalist who writes for The New York Times, Vogue, Wired, Elle, and Self, among other publications, and was formerly a senior writer for Salon. She lives in Los Angeles. Praise for All We Ever Wanted Was Everything: "A razor-sharp critique of the absurd expectations that, these days, have come to stand for ambition, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is wrenching, riveting, and still manages to be great fun. This is a wise, intimate chronicle of one family's struggle to take off their masks and live in the place they most feared: the real, imperfect world." --Meghan Daum, author of The Quality of Life Report "A withering Silicon Valley satire . . . From the ashes of their California dreams, the three [women] must learn to talk to each other instead of past each other, and build a new, slightly more realistic existence--but not without doses of revenge and hilarity. Brown's hip narrative reads like a sharp, contemporary twist on The Corrections." --Publishers Weekly THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 21, 2010.

The students from the Thomas Starr King Middle School Writers Club will be sharing their work with the world with author/teacher Steve Abee.  It is an inspiring evening of young poets and artists telling it like it is. Steve Abee was born in Santa Monica, California and began writing after high school when he held a job as an orderly at St. John’s Hospital. His mind started to unfold itself and he thought if he was going to save it he better start writing things down. “I saw the fragility and blessedness of lives and started to come apart in the wonderment of it all.” He is the  author of the new poetry collection, Great Balls of Flowers out now with Write Bloody books, and the upcoming novel Johnny Future with MacAdam/Cage; also he authored the Los Angeles underground classic The Bus: Cosmic Ejaculations of the Daily Mind in Transit (Phony Lid Books), and the  collection of short stories and poems King Planet (Incommunicado). He lives and teaches in Los Angeles. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 9, 2010.

What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding on to and Letting Go of Their Daughters (Harlequin) Editor Andrea Richesin and contributor Michael Kearns will read from and sign the new anthology What I Would Tell Her. Andrea N. Richesin is the editor of four anthologies, What I Would Tell Her, Because I Love Her, The May Queen, and Crush (forthcoming in summer 2011). Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, and Parenting, among many other publications. She lives in the San Francisco bay area with her husband and daughter. For more information please visit www.nickirichesin.com. Michael Kearns is an award-winning writer-performer who lives in Los Angeles with his daughter, Tia. He is the author of six theatre books (all published by Heinemann), more than a dozen produced plays, numerous solo performance pieces, and his work is widely anthologized. As an actor-writer-director-producer-fundraiser-journalist-teacher, his work surrounding HIV/AIDS—spanning more than a quarter of a century—is encyclopedic in its comprehensiveness, including work as an actor in film and television. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS JUNE 12, 2010.