In it for the long haul? Surviving the Literary Life--six writers who have been there discuss the tricks for beating the odds as part of Pasadena/Altadena's LITFEST IN THE DENA. Join me and tremendous LA writers including Jervey Tervalon, Lisa Teasley and Gary Phillips, next Tuesday, May 2, 7:30 p.m, at the Altadena library. FREE! Full program of events at http://litfestinthedena.org

In Celebration of Francesca Lia Block’s new novel House of Hearts, I’ll be reading an LA based piece of fiction—perhaps from my Work in Progress!—along with editor, memoirist and fictioneer Samantha Dunn (Failing Paris, Not By Chance, Faith in Carlos Gomez) and the Oracle of LA, Amanda Yates Garcia (Initiated) for a witchy night at Los Angeles’s Skylight Books

The SLOW LIGHTNING: IMPRACTICAL POETRY Anthology launches with a table reading with contributors including well known and lesser known poets, fiction writers, playwrights, psychologists, artists, attorneys and other participants of the Slow Lightning meditation and poetry prompt group, edited by Peggy Dobreer. Participating will be Dobreer, David Francis, Maxie Jane Frazier, Maria Berry, David Orr, Brendan Constantine, Lucien Zell, Carrie Nassif, Ruthie Marlenee, Roberta H. Martinez and more. RSVP fo ZOOM LINK to adhocink@yahoo.com

(Virtual Event) Interview with poet PEGGY DOBREER celebrating the publication of her collection FORBIDDEN PLUMS: Poems in Quarantine (Glass Lyre Press). FORBIDDEN PLUMS was written during the first forty days of the covid lockdown in 2020—She’ll be reading from the collection and we’ll be talking about poetry, Dobreer’s writing process, and the effect of the pandemic on us all. RSVP: BBE InConversation Events.. Free. 5 p.m. pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern. FORBIDDEN PLUMS is available for purchase here. See you then!

On Thursday, July 29, 4 pm Pacific, 7 p.m Eastern, I’ll be in conversation with the ultimate literary gentleman, Matthew Specktor, on his new book, a memoir in criticism, ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR, a story of a peculiar kind of failure which haunts his life and art, the Hollywood failure. The chapters take up the stories of certain writers, directors, actors and musicians whose career arcs and plummets haunt Specktor, and through whose stories he tries to get a grip on his own sense of failure and his difficult relationship with his mother, who like Specktor, violated the family success story with her own downfall. Contact McNally Jackson Books for link.

As part of the Community of Writers Summer Writing Conference, FESTIVAL DAY is an All Day series of craft talks and readings open to the public on a donation basis. My craft talk, Writing With the Senses, about the importance of the senses in creating fiction a reader can inhabit, kicks off the day.

Following me, there are readings by Karen Joy Fowler, Gail Tsukyama. and Martin Smith, then a panel on literary nonprofits with Tom Lutz (LARB), Oscar Villalon (Zyzzyva), David Ulin (Alta), Jared Jackson (PEN),. David Kipen (Libros Schmibros), and David Hayes (Kimbilio/Fiction), moderated by Alex Espinoza; Leslie Daniels on Gil Dennis’s “Finding the Story” workshop; Screenwriting techniques to finding the story; Michelle Latoilais on “The Tyranny of Realism”; Conversation between Martin Smith and Julia Flynn Siler on what the fiction writer can learn from nonfiction, moderated by Sands Hall; “Deep Dive into a Short story” with Dana Johnson, Peter Orner and Krys Lee, moderated by Tom Barbash—the story is “Omakase” by Weike Wang (link to story on Community of Writers website)’ Readings by Peter Orrner, Kirstin Valdes Quade, Tom Luts and Andrew Tonkovich; Conversation with Amy Tan and Anna Devere Smith; reading by poet Robert Hass; and closing comments by Dana Johnson. For more information and link to Community of Writers’ Festival Day, go to https://communityofwriters.org/events/event/festival-day/

Celebrating the launch of PALM SPRINGS NOIR (Akashic Press), a reading and conversation with Janet “Sunrise,” Tod Goldberg, “A Career Spent Disappointing People,’ Alex Espinoza, “The Salt Calls Us Back, and Michael Craft, “VIP Check-in”. Hosted by Corey Roskin and the Rancho Mirage Library. EVENT LINK: PALM SPRINGS NOIR EVENT

To celebrate the publication of PALM SPRINGS NOIR, the newest addition to the Akashic Noir series, I will be reading from my story “Sunrise,” along with co-authors, editor Barbara De Marco Barrett, Eric Beetner, and T. Jefferson Parker. Broadcast through crowdcast, RSVP here to attend or to see the recording:

Due to popular demand, Fiction First Aid in December will be held on a Saturday rather than the usual Friday. Join me, Alex Espinoza, Sands Hall and Dana Johnson for another round of Fiction First Aid! These are fifteen minute “lightning round” consults, where you can bring a sticky problem you’ve been having, and I or another experienced writer/teacher will brainstorm it with you, one on one—or bring a page of your prose if you ever wanted to privately ask an experienced writer “what is wrong with my writing?” The results of these little consults are amazing. Register now! www.communityofwriters.org {formerly Squaw Valley]

Join me, Natalie Bazile, Glen David Gold and Michael Jaime-Becerra for another round of Fiction First Aid! Held monthly, these are fifteen minute “lightning round” consults, where you can bring a sticky problem you’ve been having, and I or another experienced writer/teacher will brainstorm it with you, one on one—or bring a page of your prose if you ever wanted to privately ask an experienced writer “what is wrong with my writing?” The results of these little consults are amazing. Register now! www.communityofwriters.org {formerly Squaw Valley]

Fiction Firist Aid through the Community of Writers. Fifteen minute consults with well-known writer/teachers offered once a month, for $25! It’s amazing how much you can get done in 15 minutes. This month I’ll be mentoring along with Tom Lutz, exec. editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, SF novelist and columnist Vanessa Hua, and short story writer and novelist Dylan Landis. Deadline to register—8 a.m. that Friday morning.

Every final Friday of the month, I and a couple of other experienced teacher/writers will be taking your writing questions through the Community of Writers (formerly Squaw Valley) Fiction First Aid, a 15 minute, one on one consult, where we answer a burning question or looking at a page of your prose—the time is yours. Mark your calendars. www.communityofwriters.org.

Fiction: A Reading

11 a.m. / Room 3314 (Bldg. 3, 3rd Floor)
A young Russian woman comes into
her own in the midst of revolution and
civil war in JANET FITCH’s Chimes of a
Lost Cathedral. In her novel A Student
of History, NINA REVOYR explores both,
the beginnings of Los Angeles and the
present-day dynamics of race and
class. In SUSAN CHOI’s novel, The Trust
Exercise, students at a highly competitive
performing arts high school struggle and
thrive in a rarified bubble in the 1980s.

Come to the Bowtie Project for an evening around the fire as two Angelenx natives—best-selling novelist Janet Fitch and poet Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo. Janet will read from her Los Angeles classic White Oleander, while the moon rises over the Los Angeles River.

Join us on Thursday, October 10th at 6:30 pm as we welcome Rene Denfeld to the store to discuss and sign The Butterfly Girl! Joining her in conversation will be Janet Fitch author of Chimes of a Lost Cathedral.

After the loves and betrayals of The Revolution of Marina M., young poet Marina Makarova finds herself alone amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War in the concluding volume of her epic journey, CHIMES OF A LOST CATHEDRAL. Pregnant and adrift, she is forced onto her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child and then return to her beloved city—Petrograd.

But after two years of  revolution, the city that was once St. Petersburg is unrecognizable, haunted, half-emptied, the starving Capital of Once Had Been. Its streets teem with homeless children. Moved by their plight, though hardly better off herself, she takes on the challenge of caring for these orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction.

 Shaped by her country’s ordeals and her own—betrayal and privation and unimaginable loss—Marina evolves as a poet and a woman of sensibility and substance hardly imaginable at the beginning of her transformative odyssey

 Chimes of a Lost Cathedral culminates the saga of one woman’s journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century— the story of an artist who discovers her full power, passion, and creativity just as her revolutionreveals its true direction for the future.

I’ll be in conversation at West Hollywood’s Book Soup with my brilliant student Saskia Vogel, on the launch of her erotic debut novel, PERMISSION—a subtle and beautiful exploration of the sliding panels of desire, as a young actress, unbalanced by the accidental death of her father, becomes intrigued by a woman running a dungeon in the suburban house across the street.

Book Soup is located at 8818 Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood.

A reading and talk at the prestigious Literary Southwest Reading Series held at Yavapai College, Prescott, AZ.