Feathers are a gift and flexible protein. Mom put down tobacco and ran her fingers over its exposed parts. She told me the salmon run is coming and this bird would have wanted for nothing. ...more
Ben H. Winters discusses his new novel Underground Airlines about an America where the Civil War never took place, writing speculative fiction, and modern racism. ...more
Because Cooked samples from all of its predecessors in style and topic, it becomes a show that can't be pigeonholed into the tired and dry mechanisms of foodie-media....more
As we sat around telling the funniest stories we could remember from our time in Iraq, I noticed that the easy cynicism of our twenties was gone, and so was the rigid hierarchy of the military....more
What’s interesting, of course, is how modern life could easily be seen in the opposite way—as an ever-expanding domain of individuality and self-expression....more
When I sat down at the hotel’s round dining room table, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn asked me for permission to eat his breakfast. This moment of deference was the only one he made during the course of our interview....more
Summer works like this. Every day small moments cycle like waves within tides, eroding our opportunities on a geological scale invisible from our point of immersion....more
Allyson McCabe talks with Alice Bag, one of LA punk’s first frontwomen in the mid-70s as the lead singer and co-founder of the Bags, and who has just released her self-titled debut solo album. ...more
Our house, we believed, was a microcosm of that country. Every month, we’d gather at the kitchen table for our house meeting, where we, like politicians, unveiled our big plans for change. ...more
John Reed discusses Snowball’s Chance, his parody of Animal Farm, and the lawsuits, debates, and discoveries that followed the book's publication. ...more
Jamie Brickhouse discusses Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir of Booze, Sex, and My Mother, a memoir that chronicles his intimate, near-fatal journey through alcoholism, and living HIV positive. ...more
In that favorite summer of my memory, Mom is perched on the edge of the rickety folding chair in box seats that the team manager reserved for us....more
Garrard Conley, author of the new memoir Boy Erased, discusses growing up in the deep South, mothers, writing for change, and political delusions. ...more
Sunday 7/10: David Tomas Martinez, Sassafras Lowrey, and Kendra Eash join The Hustle, a series about habits of writers supporting their work. WORD Brooklyn, 2 p.m., free.
Christine Reilly, Jenna Carindale, Derick Dupre, and Joseph Ponce join Sunday’s at Erv’s, a monthly reading series. 2122 Beekman Place, 6 p.m., free.
Sasha Fletcher, Laura Warman, and Elizabeth Schmuhl read poetry. Berl’s Poetry Shop, 4 p.m., free.
Our friends at the Slamdance Cinema Club are making sure the indie film scene is alive and kicking in Los Angeles. If you’re in the LA area, head here for more info on upcoming events and screenings!
Thirty years on, however, we’ve dropped the rose-coloured glasses, and our response to realizing he sold us out to suburbia echoes Molly Ringwald’s response in Vanity Fair when he dropped her once she grew out of it. “It was very hurtful and it still hurts.”
While promoting his new show Roadies, Cameron Crowe was asked to recount the most ridiculous tour story he’d ever heard. Of course the story had to do with a crazy demand made by Axl Rose:
There was a guy that worked with Guns N’ Roses, and there was a show and Axl Rose needed a yellow jacket that he’d left in England before he would perform. So a roadie was given the job to get on a plane as fast as possible, go to London, find Axl Rose’s yellow jacket, and come back so he could play the show.
According to Crowe, this story spawned the term “yellow jacketing,” which is still used to describe the insane demands of stage performers. Axl wins, as per usual.
This week, Guernica has a new story from author and veteran Odie Lindsey, whose debut story collection about soldiers coming home from war, We Come to Our Senses, will be published by W.W. Norton later this month. Included in the collection, “Bird (on back)” picks up in the middle of a disintegrating relationship between an unemployed diorama artist and his vibrant but terminally ill girlfriend, who before they met contracted a sexually transmitted autoimmune disease from a soldier on leave.
When the story opens, the boyfriend/narrator and the girlfriend, Darla, have moved down South to Darla’s home state of Mississippi after her “homeopathic hippie nurse” (boyfriend’s term) told her the big city was making her illness worse. It is immediately apparent that the boyfriend is not taking the move well. (more…)
A lurid tale of sexual dishevelment, “Bobby Brown Goes Down” couldn’t get within a hundred miles of US radio but was, Zappa points out with some amusement, “the song to slow dance to in Norwegian discos.”
…while poems often proceed by way of large imaginative leaps, I found that prose urged me to stay put longer and extrapolate more.
At Guernica, Christopher Kondrich and Tracy K. Smith talk about differences between poetry and prose, and writing grief and memory in Smith’s memoir Ordinary Light. Smith describes how she toggles between genres, constantly coaxing and questioning the speaker, the “I.”
Saturday 7/9: Queen’s Ferry Press presents readings by Theodore Wheeler, Tyrone Jaeger, and Dave Madden. The Book Cellar, 6 p.m., free.
The legendary Dollhouse Reading Series is coming to an end, but not before one final reading featuring a whole host of great writers, including Danielle Susi, Hannah Gamble, and many more. Check out the full lineup here. 2274 W. Leland Ave., 1W. 7 p.m., free.
For the Los Angeles Review of Books, essayist Patrick Madden discusses why he was drawn to the medium and how he finds his wide-ranging subjects:
In terms of art — whether sounded or painted or written — a big part of making it is getting beyond the seeming clarity, or admitting that clarity isn’t possible, seeing things in new ways that give hearers, viewers, readers access to a beauty they’ve not experienced before. Often, with writing, this is beauty that’s been right in front of them, but which they’ve not recognized because of the way their minds organize experience.
There is a new name to add to this list—Alton B. Sterling, 37, killed by police officers in Baton Rouge, La. It is a bitter reality that there will always be a new name to that list. Black lives matter, and then in an instant, they don’t.
There’s a tendency to take writers who write about race and shuffle them into a genre, into a predetermined conversation, whether they wanted to be there or not. But even if the constraints of the game are rigged, what Jenny Zhang, Tanwi Nandini Islam, and Karan Mahajan have to say cuts through the BS pretty quickly:
It’s a real detriment to the quality of these spaces when they end up being dominated by white folks. I WANT QUALITY. The way is to PUBLISH MORE ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS. South Asians, East Asians, Southeast Asians, first-generation immigrants, second generation, people who have been here for over a century, Asian Americans of every socioeconomic background, those who write about their identity in obvious ways and those who do not. Bill Cheng wrote about the blues in the South instead of about being Taiwanese American in Queens and everyone gasped. It’s like, “Get over it.”
The Internet is flooded with copied and re-copied lists of writing advice from “legendary” writers from all genres and time periods, shuffled over and over in “Top Ten Quotes About Writing” articles. At Lit Hub, Guy Gavriel Kay wants us to ditch these over-processed listicles, make our own rules, and remember that there is value in “being ‘alone’ in creativity.”
We burn old love letters and photographs to be reborn. The action of burning is often a process. Find a match or a lighter. Put the papers in a container or can or shove them in a fireplace. There are so many moments along the way when we can have second thoughts, when we can decide to put memories in a drawer rather than reduce them to ash, but it is so tempting and comforting to watch the flames swallow our pain.
Every writer knows the frustration of staring at their own work, writhing at every imperfection. Sometimes a writer’s frustration can build up to the point where only burning the work into ashes can bring relief. At The Millions, Nick Ripatrazone writes on several instances in which writers have chosen such destructive paths for their work.
In case anyone has missed it, this lip sync video advocating for gender equality as a part of the United Nations’s Global Goals #WhatIReallyWant campaign is just amazing. Read more about the initiative via Billboard and watch the video after the jump. (more…)
Veliz Books, a new literary press based out of El Paso, has just begun work delivering contemporary literature to the borderlands. The press has already published three books by talented Latino authors, and each is translated into English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Veliz translated means “suitcase,” reflecting the press’s mission to “create books that travel.” Find out more information on their website.
We’re getting ready to send out our next Letter in the Mail, and it’s from Ben Fama! Ben writes about the release of his 2015 poetry collection, Fantasy, a hot summer spent with a difficult dog as a favor to a friend, an absent partner in Berlin, and the very little writing he’s managed to accomplish given all that.
Male siblings seem to dominate many famous musical groups. Examples range from contemporary bands like Kings of Leon and The National to household names like The Jackson 5, The Beach Boys, The Allman Brothers, The Isley Brothers and The Neville Brothers. So it’s about time the ladies earned a bit of the spotlight. Though the sisters in HAIM—Este, Danielle, and Alana—grew up playing covers at weddings, the trio’s collective sound evolved into something completely unique after their musical parents, Donna and Moti, bowed out of the lineup. Since the release of their full-length album, Days Are Gone, fame has come quickly to them. HAIM’s pitch-perfect harmonies and tasteful use of synth makes their single “Don’t Save Me” a song the whole family can enjoy.
Despite the lack of body cameras, Castile’s girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter were also in the car. She uploaded the footage to the Internet and it disseminated quickly through social media.(more…)