Los Angeles Literature Events: 2/24/25 – 3/02/25 (2025)

Robertson Writers Group at Robertson Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person &OnlineHybrid Event

Writing a book, poem, or screenplay?

Need deadlines? Want constructive feedback?

Then this is the place for you.

Bring 5 – 10 double spaced typed pages to read. Everyone will get a chance to read.

This group mostly meets in person, but email rbrtsn@lapl.org if you’d prefer to join via Zoom.

Where:Robertson Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:11 am – 12:30 pm

Address: 1719 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/robertson-writers-group-0

Book Club: The Body: A Guide for Occupants at Fairfax Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person &OnlineHybrid Event

Participants will discuss The Body: A Guide for Occupants, by Bill Bryson.

Bill Bryson, bestselling author of A Short History of Nearly Everything, takes us on a head-to-toe tour of the marvel that is the human body. As addictive as it is comprehensive, this is Bryson at his very best, a must-read owner’s manual for everybody.

In this book the author guides us through the human body—how it functions, its remarkable ability to heal itself, and (unfortunately) the ways it can fail. Full of extraordinary facts (your body made a million red blood cells since you started reading this) and irresistible Bryson-esque anecdotes, The Body will lead you to a deeper understanding of the miracle that is life in general and you in particular. As Bill Bryson writes, “We pass our existence within this wobble of flesh and yet take it almost entirely for granted.” The Body will cure that indifference with generous doses of wondrous, compulsively readable facts and information.

Where:Fairfax Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:11 am – 12:30 pm

Address: 161 S. Gardner St., Los Angeles, CA 90036

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-body-guide-occupants

Bestsellers Book Club: Mercury Pictures Presents at Stevenson Ranch Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Participants will discuss Mercury Pictures Presents, by Anthony Marra.

Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to L.A. after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest. 15 years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won’t speak to her. Her boss has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.

Where:Stevenson Ranch Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:11:30 am – 1 pm

Introducing Online Teen Book Club! In this collaboration between the young adult librarians at the Hollywood Branch and Cahuenga Branch, teens are invited to meet virtually to discuss different themed readings each month.

February’s selection is If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson, a lyrical story of star-crossed love that explores topics of mixed race relationships, cultural heritage, family challenges and social equity. This is an online program for teens only and will take place via Zoom. Please RSVP to your respective branch to register.

Where:Cahuenga Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:4 pm – 5 pm

Address: 4591 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90029

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/online-teen-book-club

L.A. Zine Week Open Mic with Drifter Zine at Van Nuy Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us for Open Mic Night during L.A. Zine Week hosted by Drifter Zine! Ready to hop on the mic? Come read a section of your zine, a poem, a song, or anything you must get off your chest! Open to all artsy formats. Participants have 5 minutes or less. Sign-ups available as soon as you arrive

Where:Van Nuys Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:6 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 6250 Sylmar Ave., Van Nuys, CA 91401

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/la-zine-week-open-mic

LGBTQ+ Book Club:Cemetery Boysat Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event

Participants will discussCemetery Boysby authorAiden Thomas.

A trans boy determined to prove his gender to his traditional Latinx family summons a ghost who refuses to leave in Aiden Thomas’s New York Times-bestselling paranormal YA debut Cemetery Boys, described by Entertainment Weekly as “groundbreaking.”

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

Aiden Thomas is a trans, Latinx, New York Times Bestselling Author with an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Originally from Oakland, California, they now make their home in Portland, OR. Aiden is notorious for not being able to guess the endings of books and movies and organizes their bookshelves by color. Their books include Cemetery Boys and Lost in the Never Woods.

Where:Cellar Door Books

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Address:473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508

Website:https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/lgbtq-book-club-cemetery-boys

Writing for Children with José Chávez via Inlandia Institute –OnlineEvent

Alternating Mondays, 1/13, 1/27, 2/10, 2/24, and 3/10/25, 6:00-8:00 pm PT, on Zoom.

$50. Registration required. https://tinyurl.com/Winter2025CWW

This workshop is designed to meet the needs of those who wish to write or are writing for children. We’ll explore the writing voice for children, define a “picture book,” story arc, story introductions, appropriate vocabulary, children’s poetry, and more. There will be time to flex our writing muscles and develop the beauty and strength of our “voice” for children.

José Chávez is a retired bilingual teacher who dedicates his life to writing. His poetry has been published in the Multilingual Educator Journal, Acentos Review, and the Inlandia anthology, and he is the author of two award-winning bilingual poetry books for children. José lives in Riverside, California, is married, and has three grown children.

NOTE:See site for link and details.

Where:Inlandia Institute

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Address:Online Event (see site)

Website:https://inlandiainstitute.org/my-calendar/?mc_id=2475

Book Release: Marcella Kroll & Healing the Liminal at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event

Join us to celebrate the release of Healing the Liminal with Marcella Kroll.

Marcella Kroll’s newest book, Healing the Liminal, is a transformative guide for those navigating life’s uncertain paths. Drawing on her experiences as a multiracial, autistic intuitive and spiritual healer, Marcella explores themes of belonging, self-discovery, and embracing one’s “weirdo” nature. Through parables and channeled stories, she offers exercises to connect with ancestral lineages, honor forgotten legacies, and heal the messy, nonlinear aspects of identity.

This event will dive into the creative process behind Healing the Liminal, and Marcella and Michelle will share personal stories of marginalization, spiritual growth, and what it means to thrive outside of societal expectations.

A celebration of resilience and unconventional existence—this evening is for anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t fit in.

Come connect, reflect, and reclaim your story.

Marcella Kroll is a professional artist, intuitive, and healer. She’s been guiding clients and teaching workshops globally for over 25 years.

Where:Stories Books & Café

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: https://storiesla.com/events

Mar Vista Adult Book Club: Books and Communi-Tea: Madame Bovary at Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Participants will discuss Madame Bovary by author Gustave Flaubert.

Where:Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 12006 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles,CA 90066

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/mar-vista-book-club-books-and-communi-tea

Book Club: The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store via Sherman Oaks Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event

Participants will discuss The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by author James McBride

Where:Sherman Oaks Martin Pollard Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: Online Event (see site)

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/sherman-oaks-book-club-heaven-and-earth-grocery-store-james-mcbride

Mics and Mugs Open Mic: Every Monday Night at Equator Coffees – In-Person Event

Mics and Mugs Open Mic is offered every Monday Night at Equator Coffees Culver City.

See site for details.

2 Item purchase per person.

Where:Equator Coffees

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:6:30 pm

Address:8900 Venice Blvd., #105, Culver City, CA 90232

Website:https://www.instagram.com

R.U.P.O. Open Mic at Back to the Grind in Riverside – In-Person Event

RUPO Open Mic is every Monday Night at Back to the Grind in Riverside.

Every Monday at 7 pm to 9 pm. Sign-ups are at 6:30 pm and in person only, $4 cash admission. See you then!

NOTE:See site for link and details.

Where:Back to the Grind, Riverside

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:7 pm – 9 pm

Address:3575 University Ave. Riverside, CA 92501

Website:https://www.facebook.com/backtothegrind

Scott Ross & Upstart:The Digital Film Revolution Managing the Unimaginable at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Scott Ross will discuss and sign his book Upstart:The Digital Film Revolution Managing the Unimaginable.

Over the last couple of decades, a new generation of startups born from creative industries but enabled through new technologies has invaded the business world, stamping their mark in fields as varied as virtual to human avatars, augmented reality, video games, and even artificial intelligence. However, many such budding entrepreneurs lack the experience and knowledge to manage or scale such enterprises.

Scott Ross, former general manager of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), senior vice president of Lucasfilm, and co-founder of Digital Domain, brings unmatched experience to this discussion. Under his leadership, ILM transitioned into the world’s leading digital VFX Company, winning five Academy Awards. Founding Digital Domain with partners James Cameron (Avatar, Titanic) and Stan Winston (Jurassic Park) Ross led the company to three Oscar wins for Titanic, What Dreams May Come, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Where:Book Soup

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website:https://www.booksoup.com/event/scott-ross

Under the Tree We Dream: a Monthly Writing Circle with Alex Petunia at Holy Grounds Coffee – In-Person Event

An Invitation to write and dream with generative props and creative community.

Hosted byAlex Petunia.

All writing levels welcome.

Entrance requires a drink purchase.

Where:Holy Grounds

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address:5371 Alhambra Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90032

Website:https://www.instagram.com/p/DEOGc5KSBsC/?img_index=1

Amy Spaulding, with Kate Stayman-London, & On Her Terms at Skylight – In-Person Event

Amy Spaulding, in conversation with Kate Stayman-London,will Discuss her bookOn Her Terms.

Fresh off breaking up with her boyfriend and swerving away from the conventional, TikTok-ready married life she never wanted, Clementine is ready to explore the alternatives. Not that she wants to be single forever, much less die alone. But at thirty-six, it’s time for her to experience new things—including in her love life. And though an invitation to a fake relationship to appease family sounds like a recipe for disaster, Clem finds herself saying yes to smart, spirited dog groomer Chloe Lee anyway…

Amy Spalding is the author of several novels, including the bestselling For Her Consideration, We Used to Be Friends, and The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles), which was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, the Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews, and more. She is a recipient of the 2023 Human Rights Campaign Visibility Award for the authentic, funny, and diverse representation of the LGBTQ+ community in her books. Amy grew up in St. Louis and now lives in Los Angeles. She has a B.A. in Advertising & Marketing Communications from Webster University and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School. Amy studied longform improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. Visit her at TheAmySpalding.com

Kate Stayman-London is a novelist, screenwriter, political strategist, and bisexual double Libra. Her new novel Fang Fiction was an instant national bestseller, and her debut, One to Watch, was named a best book of the year by Time, NPR, Marie Claire, Mashable, and more. Kate has written for political icons including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Cher; she is also a television writer-producer and proud WGA captain. When not writing, Kate enjoys fabulous trips with friends, rewatching Buffy, and fighting for reproductive justice–as well as justice for Speak Now, Evermore, and Reputation. She lives in Los Angeles.

Where:Skylight

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027

Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-amy-spalding-presents-her-terms-w-kate-stayman-london

Sisters in Crime LA &Angel City Beat: A Sisters in Crime Los Angeles Anthologyat Vroman’s – In-Person Event

Sisters in Crime LA hosts a discussion of Angel City Beat: A Sisters in Crime Los Angeles Anthology.

The City of Angels has a dark side. Hidden beneath its shiny surface are misdeeds, miscreants, and murderers. From Santa Monica’s sandy beaches to Hollywood’s glitzy streets, from Boyle Heights to Holmby Hills to the dirt trails of the San Gabriel Mountains, there are so many tales to tell. So many people on the beat. The police detectives seeking justice. The reporters seeking truth. Writers who build beats into their movies and TV shows. And people who choose violence to beat others and come out on top. Angel City Beat is an anthology of stories that show life behind the plastic smiles of the rich and famous, the desperate pleas of the overlooked, and the promises of dreams forgotten. Angel City Beat is the beat of a city told by those who love her.

Where:Vroman’s

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2025-02-24/sisters-crime-la-host-discussion-angel-city-beat-sisters-crime-los-angeles

LARB Presents Fire Relief Readingat Zebulon Concert Café – In-Person Event

Join LARB at Zebulon on February 24 at 7 p.m. for a Fire Relief Benefit in support of the Pasadena Community Job Center.

Los Angeles is a different city than it was six weeks ago. In early January 2025, wildfires swept across our beloved city, displacing many members of our community and destroying homes, businesses, schools, parks, libraries, and so much more. Rebuilding is going to take a collective effort, and it will require sustained attention and resource direction towards those most affected.

In that spirit, on Monday, February 24 at 7 p.m., LARB is hosting a Fire Relief Reading in support of the Pasadena Community Job Center, an organization whose immediate response made them a community hub during the fires and whose consistent, continued support keeps them on frontlines of the wildfire response.

The event will feature readings from Rosecrans Baldwin, Maya Binyam, Sesshu Foster, Brittany Menjivar, Christina Catherine Martinez, and more. Inspired in part by Sesshu Foster’s experience volunteering at the Pasadena Community Job Center in the immediate wake of the fires for LARB, written about here for LARB, all proceeds will benefit the work they do. Learn more about the Pasadena Community Job Center’s work.

Rosecrans Baldwin is the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. Other books include The Last Kid Left and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. His debut novel, You Lost Me There, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.

Maya Binyam is the author of Hangman, which was named a 2024 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, and the Dublin Literary Award. She is the recipient of the 2025 Bard Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.

Sesshu Foster’s most recent books include City of the Future (Kaya Press), and ELADATL: The History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines (City Lights Books), a novel co-authored with Arturo Ernesto Romo. He is winner of the 2024 George Drury Smith Award from Beyond Baroque Literary Center.

Brittany Menjivar is an arts and culture journalist based in LA. In addition to contributing to the Los Angeles Review of Books, she has written for Coveteur, V Magazine, Document Journal, Artillery, and the Contemporary Art Review of Los Angeles, among other outlets. She is the author of poetry and prose collection Parasocialite and the co-founder of late-night literary reading series Car Crash Collective. She also works as a screenwriter and is currently developing two features about fringe ideologies.

Christina Catherine Martinez is the author of the essay collection Aesthetical Relations from Hesse Presse. She is the recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and has been named a Comedian You Should Know by Vulture and TimeOutLA. She co-starred in FX/Hulu’s late-night sketch series “Two Pink Doors,” served as a creative consultant for “The Eric Andre Show” and is a staff writer for the forthcoming animated series “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads,” the first ever Spanish-language program on Adult Swim. She can be seen on Tim Heidecker’s Office Hours Live, and starring in episode 4 of the PBS docu-series “United States of Comedy.” She has performed commissions for REDCAT, The Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and is a regular fixture of the SXSW Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas. Her 2024 comedy special How to Bake a Cake in the Digital Age was named “A Special You Should Definitely Watch” by New York Magazine.

$5 donations.

Where:Zebulon Concert Café

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:7 pm

Address:2478 Fletcher Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90039

Website: https://lareviewofbooks.org/event/fire-relief-reading/

Monday Night Fiction Workshop via Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center –OnlineZoomEvent

This free Monday Night Community Writing Workshop led byRaquel Bakeris a workshop in which participants are asked to bring copies of 2-3 pages of fiction to read, and to use for critique and discussion. Registration is required.

Raquel Bakerearned a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial and Transnational Literatures at California State University Channel Islands, teaching courses on creative writing and contemporary African literatures. Raquel has published poetry in Africology and The Arrow; fiction in Enculturation, The Daily Palette, The Womanist, and Crux; and non-fiction in Little Village; and has done readings with the Ventura County Poetry project. Raquel lives for talking about all things about the craft and social meanings of literature!

Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – Online event

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:7:30 pm – 10 pm

Address:Zoom Online Event (see site)

Website:https://www.beyondbaroque.org/calendar.html

Celebrating the Renowned Nikolai Garcia at Club Tee Gee – In-PersonEvent

This event will celebrate Nikolai Garcia and his latest rotation around the sun ! Come one come all ! FREE like Nikolai’s spirit !

Thee After After will play. Music at 8:30. 21+

Where: Club Tee Gee

Date:Monday the 24^th

Time:8:30 pm (Doors at 8 pm)

Address: 3210 Glenoaks Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90039

Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/DF8jolgSMXx/?hl=en&img_index=1

No Pulp Open Mic at Work Evolution Laboratories, Long Beach – In-Person Event

No Pulp Open Mic is held every 2^nd and 4^th Monday.

All ages.

Doors at 7:30 pm.

Where:Work Evolution Laboratories

Date:Friday the 28^th

Time:8 pm – 11 pm

Address:235 E. Broadway, Suite 800, Long Beach, CA 90802

Website: https://www.lbpoetry.com/

Lit Angels: Healing Through Writing with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Let Francesca help you with all aspects of your writing!

Francesca Lia Blockis the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel isHOUSE OF HEARTSnow out in paper ack.https://www.francescaliablock.com/

Note: Please RSVP at site.

Where:Village Well Books & Coffee

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:10 am – 11 am

Join us at storytime to welcome local children’s book author, Sasha Mayer, and celebrate the release of Squash, the Cat: Stuck In the Middle, the sequel to Squash, the Cat. Signed copies of Sasha’s books will be available on the day of her visit and she will happy to personalize.

Squash, the Cat and best friend Maggie find out that true friendship can thrive after a bout of green-eyed jealousy.

Sasha Mayer is an illustrator and writer with a background in children’s entertainment. She is a former brand designer for Mattel and was one of the creators of the billion-dollar doll brand Monster High. She lives in Los Angeles with her boys, husband, and Maltipoo. Sasha wishes she could have a cat too, but her husband is allergic. So, she wrote about one instead. Squash is her debut picture book.

NOTE: See site for details.

Where:pages: a bookstore

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:10:30 am

Address:904 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/2025-02-24/kids-storytime-special-guest-sasha-mayer

Virtual Book Club:Colored Televisionat La Crescenta Library, LACL –OnlineEvent

Join us for a weekly discussion on Zoom ofColored TelevisionbyDanzi Sennato celebrate African American & Black History Month.

A brilliant dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity-industrial complex Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. When she finagles a meeting with a hot young producer with a seven-figure deal to create “diverse content” for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer” to create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy ever to hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.

Please contact Marta Wiggins at mwiggins@library.lacounty.gov for more information and the link to the Zoom Meeting.

Where:La Crescenta Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:11 am – 12:30 pm

Participants will discuss Mercury Pictures Presents, by Anthony Marra.

Like many before her, Maria Lagana has come to Hollywood to outrun her past. Born in Rome, where every Sunday her father took her to the cinema instead of church, Maria immigrates with her mother to L.A. after a childhood transgression leads to her father’s arrest. 15 years later, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Maria is an associate producer at Mercury Pictures, trying to keep her personal and professional lives from falling apart. Her mother won’t speak to her. Her boss has been summoned to Washington by congressional investigators. Her boyfriend, a virtuoso Chinese American actor, can’t escape the studio’s narrow typecasting. And the studio itself, Maria’s only home in exile, teeters on the verge of bankruptcy.

Where:Stevenson Ranch Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:11:30 am – 1 pm

Join participants to discuss James McBride’s novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. For adults.

James McBride has written a compassionate novel showing that love and community – heaven and earth – will ultimately sustain us. In celebration of African American & Black History Month.

Where:Agoura Hills Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:2 pm – 3 pm

Join us in celebrating African American History Month by exploring comic books that highlight African American history, culture, and contributions or are created by African American authors.

Where:Vermont Square Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:4 pm – 5 pm

Address:1201 W. 48^th St., Los Angeles, CA 90037

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/comic-book-club

Online Book Club: Erasureat Venice – Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event

Join participants to discuss Erasure by author Percival Everett.

Copies available at the front desk.

Where:Venice Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:5 pm – 6 pm

Address:Online Event (see site)

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/online-book-club-0

Book Club: The Seventh Veil of Salomeat El Monte Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Bibliophiles are welcomed! Join us each month for a facilitated discussion of fiction and non-fiction titles. A limited number of copies are available for book club attendees at the library. For adults.

February’s Book Pick is The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Where:El Monte Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:5 pm – 6 pm

Join participants for our monthly book club! This month we’ll be discussing Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.

Copies of the book will be available at the customer service desk. This program is for adults.

Where:Angelo M. Icobani Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:6 pm – 7 pm

Join participants for our monthly book club to discuss Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez.

Copies of the book will be available at the customer service desk. This program is for adults

Register at the link below to receive the link to the meeting via email.

https://library-lacounty-gov.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pd-Goqz4uGNNbzVuW720zsRrGxTK1VeLG

West Hollywood Library’s LGBTQ+ Book Club meets on the last Tuesday of the month to discuss literary works of relevance and interest to the LGBTQ+ community.

Summary provided by the publisher:

In the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has immigrated to Britain with his wife and children to secure a brighter future. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient, but are all too aware that their family will need more than just hope to survive in their new country.

At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives, he finds himself at a loss for a new center of gravity, and turns to sex work, music and art to create his own notions of love, masculinity and spirituality.

Where:West Hollywood Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:6 pm – 7 pm

For African American and Black History Month, , join us as we peruse James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them. For adults.

Copies are available at the Customer Service desk and newcomers are always welcome!

Where:Quartz Hill Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:6 pm – 7 pm

Participants will discuss Artificial Intelligence A Guide for Thinking Humans by author Melanie Mitchell.

A leading computer scientist brings human sense to the AI bubble

No recent scientific enterprise has proved as alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promise and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. The award-winning author Melanie Mitchell, a leading computer scientist, now reveals AI’s turbulent history and the recent spate of apparent successes, grand hopes, and emerging fears surrounding it.

Interweaving stories about the science of AI and the people behind it, Artificial Intelligence brims with clear-sighted, captivating, and accessible accounts of the most interesting and provocative modern work in the field, flavored with Mitchell’s humor and personal observations. This frank, lively book is an indispensable guide to understanding today’s AI, its quest for “human-level” intelligence, and its impact on the future for us all.

Melanie Mitchell has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan, where she studied with the cognitive scientist and writer Douglas Hofstadter; together, they created the Copycat program, which makes creative analogies in an idealized world. The author or editor of several books (such as Complexity: A Guided Tour) and numerous scholarly papers, Mitchell is currently professor of computer science at Portland State University and external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Where:Cellar Door Books

Date: Tuesday the 25^th

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Address:473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508

Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/phy-sci-book-club-artificial-intelligence-guide-thinking-humans

The Art and Craft of Writing Poetry with Romaine Washington via Inlandia Institute –OnlineEvent

(All Levels)

Alternating Tuesdays, 1/14, 1/28, 2/11, 2/25, and 3/11/25, 6:00-8:00 pm PT, on Zoom.

$50. Registration required. https://tinyurl.com/Winter2025CWW

Discover the art and craft of writing poetry with generative prompts and other forms of poetic inspiration. Brief group feedback will help you uncover images and language that resonate for you and for your audience.

Romaine Washington, M. Ed., is the editor of These Black Bodies Are…A Blacklandia Anthology and the author of Purgatory Has an Address and Sirens in Her Belly. She has been published in various anthologies and periodicals. Ms. Washington is a graduate fellow of The Watering Hole, South Carolina, and the Inland Area Writing Project at the University of California, Riverside. She was a public school educator for over twenty years. The proud mother of two sons, Romaine Washington is a native Californian from San Bernardino who resides in the Inland Empire.

Where:Inlandia Institute

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Address:Online Event (see site)

Website: https://inlandiainstitute.org/my-calendar/?mc_id=2480

Agoura Readers Book Club:Heaven & Earth Grocery Storeat Agoura Hills Library, LACL – Online Event

Join participants to discuss James McBride’s novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. For adults.

James McBride has written a compassionate novel showing that love and community – heaven and earth – will ultimately sustain us. In celebration of African American & Black History Month.

To attend this meeting virtually, contact Nina Hull at 818-889-2278 or email nhull@library.lacounty.gov

Where:Agoura Hills Library, LACL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Join participants to discuss A Trick of Light by author Louise Penny.

Where:Playa Vista Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 6400 Playa Vista Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90094

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/mystery-book-club-57

Conchas y Café Bilingual Writing Zine Workshopvia DSTL Arts –OnlineEvent

Our Conchas y Café bilingual community writing workshop series is a 15-week virtual course that explores skills in poetry and other forms of creative writing. Writers of all skill levels are welcome to join.

The SPRING 2025 SEMESTER will culminate with the publishing of Conchas y Café Zine; Vol. 10, Issue 2.

The theme we will be exploring during this series and zine is the concept: “TBD.”

Days and Times: Tuesdays (weekly); 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

To enroll in our series, visit:https://classroom.google.com/c/NzAzMDE4NzMyODY4?cjc=ixjqfbg

Nuestra serie de clases bilingües comunitarias de escritura ‘Conchas y Café’ es un curso virtual de 15 semanas que explora técnicas poéticas y otras formas de escritura creativa. Autores de todo nivel técnico son bienvenidos a participar.

Where:DSTL Arts

Date:Tuesday the 25^th(through May 6, 2025)

Time:6:30 pm – 8 pm

Address:Online Event

Website:https://www.dstlarts.org/calendar

Altadena Poets Laureate Reading: After the Fire: Honoring Historiesat Octavia‘s Bookshelf, Pasadena – In-PersonEvent

Altadena Poets Laureate Reading: After the Fire: Honoring Historiesfeatures readings by: Shonda Buchanan, Sesshu Foster, Maryam Hosseinzadeh, Cassandra Lane, Lester Graves Lennon, Sehba Sarwar and others.

This event is a fundraiser for the Altadena Library Foundation. Please join these LA locals and literary powerhouses for a night of readings of their wonderful works!

NOTE: See site for bios and further information.

Limited space. First come, first serve.

Where:Octavia’s Bookshelf

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:6:30 pm – 8 pm

CALLING ALL WRITERS! Every Tuesday we’ll be having Open Mic Readings open to the public! Read your poems, fiction, and spoken word at our open mic reading EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT from 7 pm – 10 pm!

Read your poetry, fiction, spoken word, or lyrics.

Free event. 21+

Note: Please RSVP at site.

Where:The Aftermath Bar

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:7 pm – 10 pm

Address:14537 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403

Website:https://www.instagram.com/p/DDniBCVy64L/

New Date: Shannon Luders-Manuel, with Santana Dempsey, & The One Who Loves You: A Memoir of Growing Up Biracial in a Black and White World at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Shannon Luders-Manuel, in conversation with Santana Dempsey, will discuss her book, The One Who Loves You: A Memoir of Growing Up Biracial in a Black and White World.

As a child, Shannon Luders-Manuel felt like an outsider in every environment she entered. Born to a Black father and white mother who separated when she was three, Luders-Manuel grew up with her white extended family, in largely white areas of California. Throughout her life, she yearned to understand her charismatic, transient father—whose promises were rarely kept, who struggled with alcohol and violence, and whose love she desperately needed. How could she find a place among two worlds—one white and one Black—when they felt so different?

Luders-Manuel sought guidance in Baptist religion, becoming a born-again Christian at age fourteen, and eventually found herself in an abusive relationship. When her father entered hospice care when she was just twenty-four, she became his caretaker despite their long estrangement and hoped to find connection while she still could. Instead, she learned that neither man nor God could give her the home she needed—she would have to build her own sense of self.

The One Who Loves You eloquently speaks not only to mixed-race individuals but to anyone who struggles with being labeled by others and to those who seek to reconcile the most contradictory parts of their own identities.

Where:Book Soup

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/shannon-luders-manuel

Book Release: Fernando Flores, with Hector Tobar, & Brother Bronte at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event

Fernando Flores, in conversation with Hector Tobar, will discuss his bookBrother Bronte.

Brother Bronte is a dystopian novel where two women fight to save their dystopian border town―and literature―in this gonzo near-future adventure.

The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of the town’s mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick’s pockets.

Scraping by in this godforsaken landscape are best friends Prosperina and Neftalí―the latter of whom, one of the town’s last literate citizens, hides and reads the books of the mysterious renegade author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas, whose last novel, Brother Brontë, is finally in Neftalí’s possession. But after a series of increasingly violent atrocities committed by Crick’s forces, Neftalí and Prosperina, with the help of a wounded bengal tigress, three scheming triplets, and an underground network of rebel tías, rise up to reclaim their city―and in the process, unlock Rivas’s connection to Three Rivers itself.

An adventure that only the acclaimed Fernando A. Flores could dream up, Brother Brontë is a mordant, gonzo romp through a ruined world that, in its dysfunction, tyranny, and disparity, nonetheless feels uncannily like our own. With his most ambitious book yet, Flores once again bends what fiction can do, in the process crafting a moving and unforgettable story of perseverance.

Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and grew up in South Texas. He is the author of the collections Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas and Valleyesque and the novel Tears of the Trufflepig, which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and named a best book of 2019 by Tor.com. His fiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, Frieze, Porter House Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Héctor Tobar is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and novelist. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, New York Times bestseller, Deep Down Dark, as well as The Barbarian Nurseries, Translation Nation, and The Tattooed Soldier. Héctor is also a contributing writer for the New York Times opinion pages and an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. He’s written for The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times and other publications. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, L.A. Noir, Zyzzyva, and Slate. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of Los Angeles, where he lives with his family.

Where:North Figueroa Bookshop

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/event/#calendar-8a0f87f6-17d6-4f10-9815-04df4c8251ba-event-m6qxlvdp

Nonfiction Book Clubat pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event

Nonfiction Book Club meets monthly, generally on the Fourth Tuesday of each month at 7:00 pm. We read nonfiction. Book selection is conducted via email prior to each meeting so that the following month’s book will be available at the preceding month’s meeting.

NOTE: See site for details.

Where:pages: a bookstore

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:904 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/2025-02-25/nonfiction-book-club

Book Release:The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers in paperback with Sarah Tomlinson at Skylight – In-Person Event

Filled with all of the glamour and attitude of rock and roll, The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers is a bighearted page-turner that will appeal to fans of Daisy Jones & The Six and Almost Famous.

Sarah Tomlinson, a former music journalist, has been a ghostwriter since 2008, penning more than 20 books, including five New York Times bestsellers. In 2015, she published the father-daughter memoir, Good Girl (Gallery Books). She wrote The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers, her first novel, in-between assignments for a who’s who of celebrity clients.

In conversation with Katey Sagal. She has entertained audiences in a variety of dramatic and comedic roles throughout her notable career. Her television credits include the upcoming Netflix series “One Piece,” “The Abandons,” “The Conners,” “Rebel,” “Sons of Anarchy” (Golden Globe Award), “Superior Donuts,” “8 Simple Rules,” and “Married…With Children.” She has also appeared in feature films including “Trust,” “Bleed for This,” “Pitch Perfect 2” and “The Good Mother.” An accomplished singer, Katey has released the CDs “Well” and “Room.” Her first book, “Grace Notes: My Recollections,” was published in 2017 by Simon and Schuster.

Where:Stories Books & Café

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:7 pm

Address:1718 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: https://storiesla.com/events

Sci-Fi Fantasy Book Club: Annihilation at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

This month’s pick is Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.

The Village Well Book Club offshoot, the Sci-fi Fantasy Book Club! To the Tolkien nerds, SJM stans, and R.F. Kuang enjoyers, this group is for you! On the fourth Tuesday of every month, we will come together and discuss a story that falls within the realms of either science fiction or fantasy (or sometimes both!). To join our emailing list, reach out to events@villagewell.com. Hope to see ya there!

Reserve your tickets on EVENTBRITE!

Where:Village Well Books & Coffee

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Jennifer Finney Boylan, in conversation with Colm Tóibín, will discuss her bookCleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us.

What is the difference between men and women? Jennifer Finney Boylan, bestselling author of She’s Not There and co-author of Mad Honey with Jodi Picoult, examines the divisions—as well as the common ground—between the genders, and reflects on her own experiences, both difficult and joyful, as a transgender American.

Cleavage is more than a deep dive into gender identity; it’s also a look at the difference between coming out as trans in 2000—when many people reacted to Boylan’s transition with love—and the present era of blowback and fear.

How does gender affect our sense of self? Our body image? The passage of time? The friends we lose—and keep? Boylan considers her womanhood, reflects on the boys and men who shaped her, and reconceives of herself as a writer, activist, parent, and spouse. With heart-wrenching honesty, she illustrates the feeling of liminality that followed her to adulthood but demonstrates the redemptive power of love through it all.

This event is co-sponsored by PEN America.

NOTE:See site for details.

Where:Vroman’s

Date:Tuesday the 25^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: https://vromsbookstore.com/event/2025-02-18/ticketed-kelsey-mckinney-normal-gossip-conversation-amanda-montell-discusses-you

Muse of Fire Open Mic at The Wicked Wolf, Long Beach – In-Person Event

Where:TheWicked Wolf

Time:7 pm – 9 pm

Address:2332 Pacific Ave., Long Beach, CA 90806

Website: https://www.lbpoetry.com/

The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic: Rick Lupert & Guest Valerie Sopher –OnlineZoomEvent

The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic with hostRick Lupertpresents guest readerValerie Sopher.

When she’s not writing poetry, Valerie Sopher sings, plays guitar and gets her hands dirty with fabric and thread. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Valerie is grateful to Canary, SLANT, Science Write Now, Comstock Review and Wingless Dreamer (contest winner Dawn of the Day), among others, for publishing her work and to the Ina Coolbrith Circle and Benicia Love Poetry Contest for honors bestowed. Her first chapbook, Day for Night, is available from The Orchard Street Press.

Where:Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event

Date:Tuesday, the 25^th

Time:7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Address:Online event (see site)

Da Poetry Lounge Open Mic Night at Greenway Court –In-PersonEvent

The nation’s largest weekly Open Mic event is 25 years strong. At an open mic, all are welcome to share their poetry or sit in their audience.

NOTE:See sign-ups, details, and guidelines at website link.

$10 donation. Do NOT line up prior to 7:30 pm Free parking adjacent to the theater.

Masks are encouraged. All ages are welcome.

Where:Greenway Court Theatre

Date:Tuesday, the 25^th

Time:9 pm – 11 pm

Meets at 9:00 am on the fourth Wednesday of each month. We think talking about books is the best way to start a morning! Find out what the next book at website.

Books are available in print, and when possible as an e-book and a digital audiobook

Participants will discuss The Proof of the Pudding by author Rhys Bowen. This novel is A Royal Spyness Mystery #17.

Where:Once Upon a Time

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:9 am – 10 am

Address:2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020

Website:https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/mystery-book-group-proof-pudding-rhys-bowen

Big Read Book Club:The House on Mango Streetat Westchester Loyola Village Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss the Big Read novelThe House on Mango StreetbySandra Cisneros.

Where:Westchester – Loyola Village Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:12 pm

Address: 7114 W. Manchester Ave., Lois Angeles, CA 90045

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/big-read-book-club-house-mango-street-4

Poets Café via KPFK 90.7 FM – Live On-Air Event

Poets Café celebrates Poetry. This program is a weekly half-hour literary arts discussion and reading program featuring guest authors and their works.

Poetry From Around the World is a segment of this series offered monthly on the 2^ndMonday of the month on KPFK Los Angeles 90.7 FM.

NOTE: See site for details.

Where:KPFK 90.7 FM

Date:Wednesday, the 26^th

Time:2 pm – 2:30 pm

Address:On-air Event (live)

Website:https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/poets-cafe/

Iocabani Book Club:Brown Girl Dreamingat Angleo M. Iocabani Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for our monthly book club! This month we’ll be discussing Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. Copies of the book will be available at the customer service desk. This program is for adults.

Where:Angelo M. Iocabani Library, LACL

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:3 pm – 4 pm

Join Dr. Andrea Liss for our next Good Trouble Reading Group. We’ll be discussing a selection of poems by Joy Harjo. A citizen of the Muscogee Nation, Harjo began writing poetry in the early 1970s, inspired by the takeover at Wounded Knee and the long-overdue rejuvenation of indigenous cultures through poetry and music. Her poems raise questions of identity, justice, and community and search for answers with compassion, love, and sustaining grace. Harjo has won many awards, including the Arrell Gibson Award for Lifetime Achievement and Yale’s Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and from 2019 to 2022, she served as the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States. “To read the poetry of Joy Harjo is to hear the voice of the earth, to see the landscape of time and timelessness, and, most importantly, to get a glimpse of people who struggle to understand, to know themselves, and to survive”—Poetry Foundation.

The Good Trouble Reading Group shares books that engage themes of social justice with love and family at their core. Our group leader, Dr. Andrea Liss, is Professor Emerita of Visual Culture and Cultural Theory at California State University San Marcos and a local Echo Park resident. Her teaching and research focus on artwork, photography, and poetry that connect deeply with historical events and their echoes today in the fight for justice.

RSVP:

Email eden@lapl.org for the link to read the poems online and for the Zoom link to attend.

Where:Edendale Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:4 pm – 5 pm

Address: Online Event (see site)

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/good-trouble-reading-group-poems-joy-harjo

Science Fiction Book Club:Slaughterhouse Fiveat Van Nuys Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Slaughterhouse Five by author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Copies are available at the library.

Synopsis: Meet Billy Pilgrim, a survivor of unspeakable horror in World War II. Billy believes that an extraterrestrial species from the planet Tralfamadore held him captive in an alien zoo and that he has experienced time travel.

Where:Van Nuys Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:5 pm – 6 pm

Address:6250 Sylmar Ave., Van Nuys, CA 91401

Website:https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/science-fiction-book-club-slaughterhouse-five

Community in Conversation with ACLU: Highest Law in the Land at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event

On Wednesday, February 26th at 6:00 pm, we will be hosting the fourth conversation on Jessica Pishko’s The Highest Law in the Land, in partnership with the American Civil Liberties (ACLU)! We will only be discussing the end of the book during this meeting.

Where:Cellar Door Books

Date: Wednesday the 26^th

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Alternating Wednesdays, 1/15, 1/29, 2/12, 2/26, and 3/12/25, 6:00-8:00 pm PT, on Zoom.

$50. Registration required.

In this workshop, participants will explore moments from their lives and use research to uncover connections between themselves and the wider world – topics can include nature, science, travel, culture, history – to write personal essays that ring with humanity.

J.D. Mathes grew up a feral child in the deserts of the American Southwest who loved to read library books and take photographs. He is a 2019-2020 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow, a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar alumnus, an award-winning author of four books, photographer, screenwriter, and arts reporter. Although Mathes still struggles with subject-verb agreement and where to put commas, he is finishing work on his memoir Of Time and Punishment.

NOTE:See site for link and details.

Where:Inlandia Institute

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Address:Online Event (see site)

Website: https://inlandiainstitute.org/my-calendar/?mc_id=2485

Reading in Bed with Jessica: L.A. Poet Society via 101.5 FM – Live On-Air Event

Reading in Bed with Jessica hosts poets and writers in conversation and is aired weekly on 101.5 FM.

Jessica Wilson Cardenasis the founder of the Los Angeles Poet Society.

Guests: TBA

This program is offered weekly on radio in Los Angeles 101.5 FM.

NOTE: See site for details.

Where:101.5 FM

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Address:On-air Event (live at 101.5 FM)

Website:https://www.lapoetsociety.org/events

Mystery & Thriller Book Club:One Shot Harryat Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us on the last Wednesday of every month for our Mystery & Thriller book club!

February 26: One-shot Harry by Gary Phillips

Where:Studio City Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:6:30 pm

Address:12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604

A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family—and a new love—changes the course of her life.

Where:Agoura Hills Library, LACL

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:6:30 pm

Join us to enjoy a presentation by Reggie Miles, an established spoken word and poetry artist from Pasadena, CA whose work explores and centers on the Black experience.

Where:City of West Hollywood

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:6:30 pm

Address: Online Event (see site)

Website: https://www.instagram.com/

Kerry Madden, with Susan Kaiser Greenland, &Werewolfat Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person MG Event

Kerry Madden,in conversation with Susan Kaiser Greenland, will discussWerewolf.

Humor, heart, and Shakespeare abound in this middle-grade novel about Angus, a 10-year-old theater fanatic, his struggling family, and his changing relationship with big brother Liam.

Ten-year-old Angus is unique. He quotes Shakespeare and wants to stage a Werewolf Hamlet play for his 5th grade legacy project. Angus’s 17-year-old brother, Liam, is like a werewolf now—Angus never knows if he’ll be nice or mean or when he’ll sneak out to get drunk or worse.

Meanwhile, tension continues to build for Liam’s family in Los Angeles. Mom and Dad are going to default on the mortgage. Older sister Hannah is fed up and ready to move herself to Maine, and little sister Sidney doesn’t really get what’s happening. Then Liam goes missing, and Angus decides he has to find him.

Kerry Madden-Lunsford has been a regular contributor to the LA Times Op-ed page. For several years, she directed the creative writing program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she is still a professor, and she taught in Antioch University’s MFA program in Los Angeles for a decade. She is the author of the picture book Ernestine’s Milky Way. She also wrote the Maggie Valley Trilogy, which includes Gentle’s Holler, Louisiana’s Song, and Jessie’s Mountain. Her book, Up Close Harper Lee, was one Booklist’s Ten Top Biographies for Youth. Her first novel, Offsides, was a New York Public Library Pick for the Teen Age. Kerry is the mother of three adult children, and she now lives full-time in Birmingham, Alabama.

Susan Kaiser Greenland is a mindfulness educator and bestselling author, specializing in distilling global wisdom traditions and scientific research into straightforward everyday practices. In the early 2000s, she helped pioneer the introduction of secular mindfulness into classrooms through her Inner Kids model. After decades of working with children and adults and writing two widely translated books, Susan’s latest work has culminated in a new book called Real-World Enlightenment. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and CNN

Note: Please RSVP at site.

Where:Diesel, A Bookstore

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:6:30 pm

Address:225 26^thSt., Suite 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402

Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Kerry-Madden-Lunsford-Susan-Kaiser-Greenland-Author-signing

Power and Progress: Black History Month Readingvia WEHO Reads & City of West Hollywood Arts Division –OnlineEvent

The series opener for WeHo Reads 2025 will feature four dynamic writers delving into untold histories, urgent social issues, and resilience. Features poets and writers: Angela M. Franklin, Jenise Miller, Pam Ward, and Romaine Washington.

How do writers use their imaginations to empower themselves and their audiences? How do their stories shape the future?

The series opener for WeHo Reads 2025 will feature four dynamic writers whose work delves into untold histories, urgent social issues, and enduring legacies of resilience during Black History Month.

Participating writers will include: Angela M. Franklin, whose poetry and essays confront topics often left unspoken and who recently won an Honorable Mention Award from the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest for her poem “Unbroken Habit”; Jenise Miller, a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of The Blvd, whose work explores intersectional history and geography; Pam Ward, a California Arts Council Literary Fellow and author of Want Some Get Some, Bad Girls Burn Slow, and Between Good Men & No Man At All; and Romaine Washington, editor of These Black Bodies Are…A Blacklandia Anthology and author of the poetry mini-memoir Purgatory Has an Address and the artivist collection Sirens in Her Belly.

The event is free and available to watch via YouTube Live on the WeHo Arts channel. Learn more at http://www.weho.org/wehoreads.

WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood. For more information and events, visit http://www.weho.org/wehoreads. The 2025 season is produced by BookSwell, a literary media company amplifying historically excluded voices. Additional support is provided by Poets & Writers and media partnerships with Book Soup and Los Angeles Review of Books.

Where:WEHO Reads

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:6:30 pm – 8 pm

Address:Online Event

Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/weho-reads-power-and-progress-during-black-history-month-tickets-1221516230929?aff=erellivmlt

Adele Bertei, with Evelyn McDonnell, &Twist: Tales from a Queer Girlhood & Sinead O’Connor’s Universal Mother (33 ⅓) at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Adele Bertei, in conversation with Evelyn McDonnellwill discuss and sign her memoir, Twist: Tales from a Queer Girlhood & Sinead O’Connor’s Universal Mother (33 ⅓).

From iconoclastic writer and musician Adele Bertei comes “a powerful look at survival and redemption despite extremely challenging obstacles” (Kirkus Reviews, Best Nonfiction of 2023). Set in a 1960s and ’70s American neighborhood rife with poverty and violence, fatherless Irish mothers and Italian mobsters, women crucified into madness by misogyny, and an unforgettable supporting cast of characters, Bertei speaks through her electrically alive avatar Maddie Twist to flip the victim script. Through her unshakable belief in imagination, poetry, music, and community, she transforms trauma into survival.

Where:Book Soup

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website:https://www.booksoup.com/event/adele-bertei-2025

RECESS Open Mic is at SIPA HQ, Palms Up Academy – In-Person Event

RECESS Open Mic is at SIPA HQ on Wednesdays.

This dynamic open mic is the most accessible public program in the Palms Up Academy curriculum and manifests their mission statement in a physical (and digital) space.

Join them at the intersection of Historic Filipino town & The World: Search to Involve Pilipino Americans.

NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, guidelines, and details.

Where:SIPA HQ

Date:Wednesday, the 26^th

Time:7 pm – 9:30 pm (Doors at 6:30; Open Mic at 8 pm)

Address:3200 W. Temple St., Ste. 100, Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website:https://www.palmsupacademy.com

At Skylight:Emily J. Smith, with Kate Brody, & Nothing Serious at Skylight – In-Person Event

Emily J. Smith,in conversation withKate Brody,will discussNothing Serious,

This is a scintillating debut about a disillusioned tech executive who goes into an obsessive spiral when her best friend-—and longtime crush—is implicated in a woman’s death.

Edie Walker’s life is not going as planned. At thirty-five, she feels stuck: in her career, in her love life, and in her tiny San Francisco studio apartment. It doesn’t help that her best friend, Peter Masterson, is basically the über successful male version of her—and she’s hopelessly, unrequitedly in love with him. But when Peter breaks up with his girlfriend of seven years, Edie thinks her life might finally be turning around. He’ll discover how toxic dating app culture is and realize that Edie has been right for him all along.

Except Peter almost immediately lands a date with Anaya Thomas, a gorgeous, whip-smart professor and writer of feminist literature who even Edie—reared in the culture of tech bros—is smitten by. Unlike the women Peter has dated before, Anaya is like an alternate reality version of Edie—one with shampoo commercial hair and a meaningful career, who definitely doesn’t spend her weekends scrolling social media alone in her apartment. It’s only a matter of time before Peter falls head over heels for this woman; Edie herself is infatuated after one meeting.

Then, Anaya is found dead in her apartment. Right after a date with Peter.

Emily J. Smith’s debut novel, NOTHING SERIOUS, will be published by William Morrow (HarperCollins) in Feb 2025. Both a writer and tech professional, Emily has led teams at top tech companies and founded the dating app, Chorus. She has a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell, and an MBA from UC Berkeley. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, Slate, Hobart, The Washington Post, Vice, Curbed, and other publications. You can find more on her website and socials @emjsmith.

Kate Brody is the author of the literary thriller RABBIT HOLE, published by Soho Press in 2024. RABBIT HOLE was an Elle Magazine Best Book of the Year and a Jennette McCurdy Book Club Pick. Kate’s other writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, Parents, Lit Hub, Electric Literature and The Rumpus, among other publications. She holds an MFA from NYU, and she lives in North Hollywood with her family.

Where:Skylight

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:7 pm

Address:1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027

Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-emily-j-smith-presents-nothing-serious-w-kate-brody

Vroman’s Fiction Reading Group:The Intuitionistat Vroman’s – In-Person Event

Participants will discuss The Intuitionistby author Colson Whitehead.

This debut novel by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys wowed critics and readers everywhere and marked the debut of an important American writer.

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years.

It is a time of calamity in a major metropolitan city’s Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector in the history of the department, is at the center of it. There are two warring factions within the department: the Empiricists, who work by the book and dutifully check for striations on the winch cable and such; and the Intuitionists, who are simply able to enter the elevator cab in question, meditate, and intuit any defects.

Lila Mae is an Intuitionist and, it just so happens, has the highest accuracy rate in the entire department. But when an elevator in a new city building goes into total freefall on Lila Mae’s watch, chaos ensues. It’s an election year in the Elevator Guild, and the good-old-boy Empiricists would love nothing more than to assign the blame to an Intuitionist. But Lila Mae is never wrong.

The sudden appearance of excerpts from the lost notebooks of Intuitionism’s founder, James Fulton, has also caused quite a stir. The notebooks describe Fulton’s work on the “black box,” a perfect elevator that could reinvent the city as radically as the first passenger elevator did when patented by Elisha Otis in the nineteenth century. When Lila Mae goes underground to investigate the crash, she becomes involved in the search for the portions of the notebooks that are still missing and uncovers a secret that will change her life forever.

Colson Whitehead is the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad. His other works include The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York. A National Book Award winner and a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, he lives in New York City.

NOTE:See site for details.

Where:Vroman’s

Date:Wednesday the 26^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2025-02-26/vromans-fiction-reading-group

Anansi Virtual Writers Workshop at The World Stage –In-PersonEvent

The Anansi Writers Workshop was founded in 1990 by Kamau Daáood, Akilah Oliver, Nafis Nabawi and Anthony Lyons. In 1993, Michael Datcher initiated the development of a three-part format for the workshop. Our tradition of a community workshop began in the late 1960s at the Watts Writers’ Workshop, where World Stage co-founder Kamau Daáood started his writing career. For general information and booking, contact V. Kali, the Anansi Writers Workshop Coordinator, atvkaliflowers@gmail.com.

• 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm—Formal workshop;
• 8:30 pm – 9:00 pm —Yazmenne Archer&Yaha Is Home Alone;
• 9:05 pm – 10:00 pm — Open mic.

Suggested:$5.00 Donation via PayPal: The World Stage Gallery.

NOTE:See site for further details and any change in the schedule. Contactkaliflowers@gmail.comor call (323) 293-2451.

Where:The World Stage

Date:Wednesday, the 26^th

Time:7:30 pm – 10 pm

The West Coast’s longest-running free poetry workshop is offered by Beyond Baroque on Zoom and welcomes new and seasoned poets to share their work and provide feedback. Please be prepared to share one poem. This workshop will be hosted via the Zoom video-conferencing platform. Please be prepared to share one poem.

Please spend some time before the workshop learning how to share documents via Zoom. It will keep the session moving if you’re able to make your poem viewable quickly and easily. An instructive video is available at the site.

The workshop can sometimes reach high levels of attendance, which means not everyone will get a chance to read every session.

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.

Where:Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date:Wednesday, the 26^th

Time:8 pm – 10 pm

Address:Online event (see site)

Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wednesday-night-poetry-workshop-tickets-1255563096019

Poetry Nights with East Los Soul at East Los Angeles Rising Youth Club –In-PersonEvent

East Los Soul presents Poetry Nights every Wednesday from 8 pm – 9:45 pm at East L.A. Rising Youth Club. Poetry starts at 8:15 pm.

Every 2^ndWednesday will be a poetry contest with a $200 prize for the poet winner, via unanimous vote.

Every 4^thWednesday will be an art contest with a $200 prize for the artist winner, via unanimous vote.

$2 entrance fee

Where:East Los Angeles Rising Youth Club

Date:Wednesday, the 26^th

Time:8 pm – 9:45 pm

Address:324 N. McDonnell Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90022

Website:https://www.bgcela.org/

Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry with Ben Trigg and Guest Brendon Constantine at The Ugly Mug –In-PersonEvent

HostBen Triggand Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug on Wednesday Nights and the feature isBrendon Constantine.

Brendon Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many standards, including Poetry, The Nation, Best American Poetry and Poem A Day. He currently teaches at The Windward School and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His fifth collection, The Opposites Game, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press.

$4 cover fee, cash only

NOTE: See site for further details.

Where:The Ugly Mug, Orange

Date:Wednesday, the 26^th

Time:8 pm – 10 pm

Address:261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA

Website: https://www.instagram.com/poetryidiots/

Book Launch: Natasha Hakimi Zapata & Another World Is Possible at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Join us at Village Well Books & Coffee for the launch of Another World Is Possible by Natasha Hakimi Zapata.

Zapata will converse with journalist Meagan Day about her travel experiences, and how we can offer real-world solutions to American problems. Don’t miss this book from The New Press of which Publisher’s Weekly says “The result is a fascinating and inspiring glimpse of how rational governance operates.”

Natasha Hakimi Zapata is an award-winning journalist, university lecturer, and literary translator. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, In These Times, Truthdig, Los Angeles Magazine, and elsewhere. The former foreign editor of Truthdig and the author of Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe (The New Press), she lives in London.

Meagan Day is a writer and editor at Jacobin magazine. Her articles have been published in the New York Times, the New Republic, and The Guardian, and she is the co-author of Bigger Than Bernie: How We Can Win Democratic Socialism in Our Time (Verso 2020). She is also the editor of the Global Labour Column and a consulting editor at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Reserve your tickets on EVENTBRITE!

Where:Village Well Books & Coffee

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:9 am – 5 pm

Address:9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events

Lit Angels: Heal Through Writing with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Let Francesca help you with all aspects of your writing!

Do you want to write professionally or for personal satisfaction and healing but aren’t sure where to start and need some inspiring tips and support? Do you have a project that needs revision? Are you feeling stuck creatively? Join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block for a discussion of her 12 Questions followed by free writing and Q&A. Come be a part of the supportive Lit Angels writing community and consider writing a story to share at our Valentine’s event on 2/7 for possible submission in Lit Angels Journal.

Francesca Lia Blockis the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel isHOUSE OF HEARTSnow out in paper back.https://www.francescaliablock.com/

About Lit Angels Writing Studio:

There are so many fitness classes available for the body, but what are you doing to exercise your creative mind?

Lit Angels offers classes that provide just that—a fun and freeing way to work out the creative muscles and eliminate the stumbling blocks that might be holding you back, not only in your writing, art, or performance projects, but in all areas of your life—uplifting and refreshing your mind and soul, improving relationships, work, and your outlook on the future. Taught by top-level working professionals, Lit Angels classes cultivate community and connection, something we all desperately need in these challenging times.

Come make some magic at the Village Well! All genres and levels are welcome!

Reserve your tickets on EVENTBRITE!

Where:Village Well Books & Coffee

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:10 am – 11 am

Thursdays, 11:15 am – 1:15 pm, In person at the Redlands Community Center, 111 W. Lugonia Ave, Redlands, Ongoing. Meets Weekly. (A Zoom option may be available; contact Inlandia for details.)

This ongoing writing workshop meets weekly at Redlands Community Center. Memoir writing, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writing are all encouraged and welcome. Discover the pure joy of writing and creating with others in a supportive environment.

Mae Wagner Marinellohas been a part of Inlandia since a 2008 writing workshop with Ruth Nolan. In 2014, she began facilitating a weekly writing workshop called Joslyn Joy Writers, at the Joslyn Senior Center in Redlands. During the pandemic lockdown, the weekly workshop continued on Zoom; it is now a hybrid class averaging between 10-20 combined participants on Zoom and in-person.

NOTE:All Levels. See site for details.

Where:Inlandia Institute at the Redlands Community Center

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:11:15 am – 1:15 pm

Address:111 W. Lugonia Ave, Redlands, CA 92374

Website: https://inlandiainstitute.org/my-calendar/?mc_id=2505

Afternoon Book Club:An American Marriage at Culver City Julian Dixon Library, LACL – In-Person &OnlineHybridEvent

Participants will discussAn American Marriage,by authorTayari Jones.

Summary provided by the publisher:

“Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.”

Where:Culver City Julian Dixon Library, LACL

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:12 pm – 1 pm

Participants will discussThe House on Mango Street,by authorSandra Cisneros.

Are you an English language learner and interested in practicing your reading? This book club is for ESL/ELL adults who want to work on vocabulary, grammar, and reading skills. Read selections fromThe House on Mango StreetbySandra Cisnerosin class with other learners. Books will be provided. For more information, please call 213-228-7037 ext. 0 or emailsingleton@lapl.org.

Where:Central Library, LAPL, Singleton Adult Literacy Center

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:1 pm – 2:20 pm

Address:630 W. 5^thSt., Los Angeles, CA 90071

Website:https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/big-read-book-club-house-mango-street-0

Book Discussion:Wickedat Sunland – Tujunga Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us for this community-led book discussion of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire.

Where:Sunland – Tujunga Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:1 pm

Address:7771 Foothill Blvd., Tujunga, CA 91042

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-discussion-6

Marina del Rey Book Club:Harlem Shuffleat Lloyd Taber-Marina del Rey Library, LACL – In-Person Event

This month, we’ll explore Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead. Set in 1960s New York City, Ray Carney is a furniture salesman trying to change his family’s reputation. For adults.

Where:Lloyd Taber-Marina del Rey Library, LACL

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:2 pm – 3 pm

Address:4533 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292

The selection for February is The Perishing by Natashia Deón. This historical and speculative fiction novel is set against the backdrop of 1930s Los Angeles. It follows Lou, a young black woman who wakes up in an alley with no memory of her past. As she puts together the pieces of her identity, she learns that her fate is linked with that of the city she calls home.



The library will have copies to check-out, or check our e-media page for electronic access on Libby and hoopla.

Where:Eagle Rock Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:3 pm

Address:5027 Caspar Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90041

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/we-love-la-book-club-19

Marina del Rey Book Club:Harlem Shuffleat Lloyd Taber – Marina del Rey Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Time:6 pm – 7 pm

Explore Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s collaborative, timeline-traveling novella This Is How You Lose the Time War with sci-fi lovers from across the universe via Zoom. This month’s reading was selected by Venita Blackburn, author of Dead in Long Beach, California and Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, who will join us for this discussion.

This Is How You Lose the Time War is available in print, eBook, eAudiobook and Book on CD from LAPL. It is also available in print in Korean.

RSVP:

RSVP here or email mtwain@lapl.org for the Zoom link.

Where:Mark Twain Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:6 pm – 7 pm

Address:9621 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90003

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/sci-fi-short-story-club-how-you-lose-time-war-venita-blackburn

Trailblazers in Conversation with Beverly Mahone, aka Auntie Bev via Virtual Library Program, LACL – In-Person Event

Join LA County Librarian and CEO, Skye Patrick, in a conversation with Beverly Mahone, aka Auntie Bev the Vocabulary Builder, that promises to be compelling, illuminating—and maybe a little bit trenchant.

A former journalist and media consultant, Auntie Bev uses her social media channels to introduce new and fascinating words to her audience. Skye and Auntie Bev will be exploring why growing your vocabulary—and using it correctly!—are important skills, how to become a more confident communicator, and what it means to be truly heard and understood. Will it be a little sesquipedalian? Probably.

Beverly Mahone, also known as “Auntie Bev” to nearly 2.5 million followers across all social media platforms, is a veteran journalist who spent more than 40 years in radio and television news. She has worked as a radio news anchor, talk show host, television reporter, videographer, and as an Assignment Editor. After leaving the business in 2006, she decided to create a media marketing consulting business where she coached baby boomer women on how to market and promote themselves for media exposure via creating videos.

She currently works as a part-time Writing Consultant at a University in North Carolina and hosts online public speaking and writing sessions on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. She has written for or been covered by HuffPost50, Forbes.com, and U.S. News & World Report. Her video podcast, The Boomer Beat, airs on YouTube.

You can learn more about her by visiting her website: http://www.allwordzmatter.com.

Where:Virtual Program, LACL

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:6 pm – 7 pm

Do you love graphic novels? Does your family get tired of having to talk about Watchmen—again? Looking for someone to geek out with you over the new stuff from Brian K. Vaughan? Then this is the club for you!

This month, we’ll discuss The Scumbag Vol. 1: Cocainefinger (2021) by Rick Remender. The fate of the world rests in the hands of the worst person on it! Here comes the story of Ernie Ray Clementine – a profane, illiterate, drug-addicted biker with a fifth-grade education who accidentally received a power-imbuing serum making him the world’s most powerful super spy. You can grab this title on Hoopla with your library card.

The intended audience for this monthly Zoom event is teens aged 16+ and adults.

RSVP:

Email wwood@lapl.org to be included on the monthly mailing list and for the Zoom link.

Where:Westwood Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address:Online Event (see site)

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/cookies-and-comics-graphic-novel-club-1

Between the Lines Book Club: The Personal Librarian at Castaic Library, LACL –In-Person Event

For African American and Black History Month, join us as we compare notes about The Personal Librarian. For adults.

The Personal Librarian is the story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan’s librarian who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite keeping a risky secret.

Where:Castaic Library

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address:Castaic Library, LACL

Kim and Grant are at a turning point. A couple for thirty years, their “separate but together” partnership is running up against the realities of late middle age: Grant’s mother has died, the college where he taught philosophy was shuttered, and their twin girls are grown and gone. Escaping the bitter cold of a Midwestern winter for the hot desert sun of Palm Springs seems as good a solution as any to the more intractable problems they face.

Is it ever too late to become the person we wanted to be—and is there still time to change into someone better? The exhilarating, but often confusing transitions of midlife are pitched against the promise and glamour of Palm Springs in this tender, honest story of what it takes to commit to someone for a lifetime. With compassion and humor, Clancy explores the redemptive power of finding ourselves, and of being found.

Christina Clancy is the author of The Second Home and Shoulder Season. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, The Sun magazine, and in various literary journals. She splits her time between Madison and Palm Springs.

Rufi Thorpe received her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. She is the author of four novels, The Girls from Corona Del Mar, Dear Fang, With Love, The Knockout Queen, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award, and Margo’s Got Money Troubles. She lives in California with her husband and two sons.

Note: Please RSVP at site.

Where:Diesel, A Bookstore

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:6:30 pm

Address:225 26^thSt., Suite 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402

This is the second in our series, covering chapters 3-5, but this is a very special week where @mid.east.eats will be hosting. @mid.east.eats is Palestinian owned, offering delicious Palestinian food and they are the best comrades so the vibes are immaculate. RSVP for address! RSVP is required so please scan that QR code and get in, no purchase required but the food is so good you’ll want to.

Note: Please RSVP at site.

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:6:30 pm – 8 pm

Goth Prom is a night to remember! Bring a date to enjoy a night of music, aiding incarcerated firefighters in the recent LA wildfires.

Calling all Kings & Queens! Bring a date to Beyond Baroque for a weekend full of dark wave music, zines, books, and more! This event is a community fundraiser for The Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), an organization that works to end mass incarceration in California.

In the aftermath of the Palisades, Eaton, and several other fires that erupted across Los Angeles in early January, ticket sales of this program will go towards The ARC’s firefighter fund. The ARC empowers formerly and currently incarcerated people to thrive by providing a support network, comprehensive reentry services, and opportunities to advocate for policy change. There are nearly 1,000 incarcerated firefighters currently battling the Los Angeles fires.

Music performances in the Wanda Coleman Theater feature SFV’s Surf-Punk band, The Martian Sunset, and the darkwave industrial sounds of Spiral Teeth and EAM (Empathic Assesment Module).

Vendors will sell zines and other goth merch. Get a facepaint by Tesorito, and a Tarot Reading by poet Ingrid M. Calderon!

Vendors: Mattazine Society, Genesis Perez, Unitedwemosh, Drifter Zine, Cartoon Distortion, Chica de Luz, Tarot by Ingrid, Tesorito Facepaints, & Dead Relatives Mag.

NOTE: See site for guidelines and details $15.

Where:Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:7 pm – 10:30 pm

Address:681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/goth-prom-night-martian-sunset-eam-spiral-teeth-vendors-fundraiser-tickets-1247562646459?aff=oddtdtcreator

Elle McPherson &elle: Life, Lessons, and Learning to Trust Yourself at Book Soup – In-Person Event

In the dazzling world of fashion, Elle Macpherson is synonymous with elegance and timeless beauty. Her inimitable, ‘give-it-a-go’ spirit underpins all her achievements as an iconic supermodel, businesswoman, and wellness advocate—a remarkable career concealing profound inner challenges.

A powerful journey of personal transformation and a meditation on public image, self-image, and the meaning of real beauty, Elle peels back decades of curated perfection to share rare wisdom and intimate, messy realness from life in the limelight.

NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.

Where:Book Soup

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/elle-macpherson

Book Launch: At Skylight: Jaime Hernandez presents LIFE DRAWINGS at Skylight – In-Person Event

Jaime Hernandez presents Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection.

Ten years in the making (and torn from the pages of the legendary Love and Rockets), Jaime Hernandez’s newest graphic novel skillfully weaves two generations of his beloved characters into a satisfying story of love—both young and middle-aged. Life Drawing darts primarily between the youthful Tonta and the venerable Maggie. Tonta has a crush on her art teacher, Ray, as well as an axe to grind with an older woman in the neighborhood. When Tonta finds that the woman, Maggie, is married to Ray, things get complicated. And Tonta does not handle complications well.

Life Drawing showcases Hernandez’s brilliant talent for character, weaving relationships, rejections, infidelities, and adventures involving: Tonta’s self-involved sisters Vivian, Violet, and Muñeca; her colorful pals Gomez, Judy Fair, and Brown Alice; her mother, the infamous ‘Black Widow of the Valley’; and of course, the two great loves of Maggie’s life, Ray and Hopey. There’s also a forest spirit, two weddings, some cosplay, a little pole dancing, and page after page of breathtaking comics by the medium’s most wide-eyed romantic. Did we mention the weddings?

Jaime Hernandez was one of six siblings born and raised in Oxnard, California. His mother passed down a love of comics, which for Jaime became a passion rivaled only by his interest in the burgeoning punk rock scene of 1970s Southern California. Together with his brothers Gilbert and Mario, Jaime co-created the ongoing comic book series Love and Rockets in 1981, which Gilbert and Jaime continue to both write and draw to this day. Jaime’s work began as a perfect (if unlikely) synthesis of the anarchistic, do-it-yourself aesthetic of the punk scene and an elegant cartooning style that recalled masters such as Charles M. Schulz and Alex Toth. Love and Rockets has evolved into one of the great bodies of American literary fiction, spanning five decades and countless high-water marks in the medium’s history. In 2016, Hernandez won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his graphic novel, The Love Bunglers. In 2017, he (along with Gilbert) was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, and, in 2018, he released his first children’s book, the Aesop Book Prize-winning The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America. He is a lifelong Angeleno

Where:Skylight

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:7 pm

Address:1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027

Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-jaime-hernandez-presents-life-drawings

Book Release: Redd Kross &Now You Are One Of Us, with Dan Epstein and The McDonald Bros. at Skylight – In-Person Event

Now You’re One of Us is the definitive statement about Redd Kross, an in-depth and riveting tale told in the voices of the talented and tempestuous brothers at the core of this iconic outfit.

The band’s flamboyant, genre-defying, joyously tuneful blend of musical, sartorial and pop cultural elements profoundly influenced the punk rock, glam metal and grunge movements and won them a worldwide cult of fervent admirers that includes bands like Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth, L7 and The Bangles.

Dan Epstein is an award-winning journalist, pop culture historian, and avid baseball fan who has written for Rolling Stone, SPIN, Men’s Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, MOJO, Guitar World, Revolver, LA Weekly and dozens of other publications. He is the author of the acclaimed Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70s. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

Where:Stories Books & Café

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:7 pm

Address:1718 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026

California has long reigned as the land of plenty, a place where the sun always shines and opportunity beckons. Even prior to its statehood in 1850, it captured the world’s imagination. We think of bearded prospectors lured by the promise of gold; we imagine its early embrace of immigrant labor during the railroad boom as prologue to its diverse social fabric today. But what lies underneath the myth is far more complicated.

Thanks to extensive research by Michael Hiltzik, one of our longstanding voices on California, Golden State uncovers the unvarnished truth about the state we think we know well. From Spanish incursions into what became known as Alta California to the rise of Big Tech, the history of California is one of stark contradictions. In rich, previously overlooked detail, we see its earliest statesmen wreak havoc among native peoples while racing to draft their own constitution even ahead of statehood. Gold-hungry settlers venture into the Sierra foothills only to leave with little, while a handful of their suppliers turn themselves into millionaire railroad magnates. Wars erupt in the name of water as Los Angeles booms, and early efforts to tame the vast landscape create a haven for fossil fuel extraction and environmental conservation alike. Hollywood politicians stoke fear, contributing to a centuries-long tradition of anti-Asian violence, and, remarkably, legal redlining and free higher education take root together.

Golden State brings a fresh critical eye to the origins of the state against which the rest of the country measures itself. From its very start, Hiltzik shows, the story of the United States was written in California.

NOTE:See site for details.

Where:Vroman’s

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2025-02-27/michael-hiltzik-discusses-golden-state-making-california

Some Favorite Writers Series: Adam Phillips & On Giving Up at The Hammer Museum – In-Person Event

Adam Phillips, “Britain’s foremost contemporary psychoanalytic thinker” (The New Yorker), will be in conversation with UCLA English Professors David Russell and Mona Simpson on Kindness, Missing Out, Wanting to Change, Getting Better and Giving Up.

Adam Phillips, formerly a principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, is a practicing psychoanalyst and a visiting professor in the English department at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including Missing Out, Unforbidden Pleasures, In Writing, Attention Seeking, On Wanting to Change, and On Getting Better. He is the general editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Where:The Hammer Museum

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:7:30 pm

Address:10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024

Website: https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2025/some-favorite-writers-adam-phillips

Tia Chucha’s Book Club: Parable of the Sower at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore – In-Person Event

Calling all book club members!

Participants will discuss Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

No registration required. All are welcome, whether you’ve read the book or not, come join our reading community!

For questions email jackie@tiachucha.org

Save the date for our March book club for the book Martyr by Kaveh Akbar.

Where:Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore

Date:Thursday the 27^th

Time:7:30 pm

Address:12677 Glenoaks Blvd., Sylmar, CA 91342

Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFOHgrOT5JE/?hl=en&img_index=1

How a Book Changed My Life Student Essay Contest: Letter to an Authorat Diamond Bar Library, LACL –In-Person Teen Event

If you’re a book lover, you’ve likely read something, fiction or non-fiction, classic or contemporary, that has left its mark on you. Now’s your chance to express your appreciation to the author with an essay in the form of a letter.

In this letter, you’ll describe how the author’s work has altered your worldview or personal life. Who knows—the author may even read it!

Don’t miss out on the opportunity.

Three (3) winners will be chosen and will each be awarded $300.

Pick up an entry form at Diamond Bar Library or download a form here. You can submit the completed entry form and essay by dropping it off or mailing it to Diamond Bar Library.

The deadline for submission isApril 15, 2025. Winners will be announced on April 26, 2025.

Prizes: $300 (3)

Contest Rules:

* Open to students ages 13-18

* Entries must be 1,000 words or less

* Must be mailed or dropped off at Diamond Bar Library

* All entries become the property of LA County Library

* A completed entry form must accompany all essay submissions

Sponsored by the Diamond Bar Friends of the Library

NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.

Where:Diamond Bar Library, LACL

Date:Friday the 28th

Time:All Day (see site)

Address:21800 Copley Dr., Diamond Bar, CA 91765

Website:https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event

Pajama Storytimeat Once Upon a Time, Montrose –In-Person Kids & Family Event

Our most popular story time is ready to delight and dazzle! This is also the prime time to see Pippi Longstocking, our bookstore cat in action.

Open to all ages. Free to attend.

There is a large FREE parking lot off Florencita Dr. as well as metered parking along Honolulu Ave. and Montrose Ave.

NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.

Where:Once Upon a Time, Montrose

Date:Friday, the 28^th

Time:9:30 am

Address:2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020

Website:https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/pajama-story-time-3

Special Author Luncheon with Christina Clancy& The Snowbirds at pages: a bookstore Off-site at Hook & Plow – In-Person Event

Join us to welcome Christina Clancy to a luncheon celebrating the publication of her new novel, The Snowbirds, on Friday, February 28th at Hook & Plow in Manhattan Beach. Christina will be in conversation with her good friend and ours, Mr. Steven Rowley author of the The Guncle. Tickets are $100 and include a signed copy of The Snowbirds.

This is a page-turning story of a couple who flee winter in the Midwest for Palm Springs, where they find their relationship at a crossroads.

Kim and Grant are at a turning point. A couple for thirty years, their “separate but together” partnership is running up against the realities of late middle age: Grant’s mother has died, the college where he taught philosophy was shuttered, and their twin girls are grown and gone. Escaping the bitter cold of a Midwestern winter for the hot desert sun of Palm Springs seems as good a solution as any to the more intractable problems they face.

When they arrive at Le Desert, a quirky condo community where everyone knows everyone’s business, Kim immediately embraces the opportunity to make new friends and explore a more adventurous side of her personality. Meanwhile, Grant struggles to find his footing in this unfamiliar landscape, leaving Kim to wonder if their relationship can survive the snowbird season. But when Grant goes missing on a hike in the Palm Springs mountains, Kim is forced to consider two terrifying outcomes: either Grant is truly lost, or this time, he’s really left her.

Is it ever too late to become the person we wanted to be—and is there still time to change into someone better? The exhilarating, but often confusing transitions of midlife are pitched against the promise and glamour of Palm Springs in this tender, honest story of what it takes to commit to someone for a lifetime. With compassion and humor, Clancy explores the redemptive power of finding ourselves, and of being found.

Christina Clancy is the author of The Second Home and Shoulder Season. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, The Sun magazine, and in various literary journals. She splits her time between Madison and Palm Springs.

Steven Rowley is the New York Times bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book; The Editor, an NPR Best Book of the Year; The Guncle, winner of the twenty-second Thurber Prize for American Humor and Goodreads Choice Awards finalist for Novel of the Year; and The Celebrants, a Today Show Read with Jenna book club pick. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages. He resides in Palm Springs, California.

NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, and details.

Where:pages: a bookstore Off-site at Hook & Plow

Date:Friday the 28^th

Time:11:30 am – 1 pm

Address:1112 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/2025-02-28/special-author-luncheon-christina-clancy

Writing Group for Seniors by Saved By A Story at Venice – Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL –In-Person Event

We write prompts to spark creativity, share stories and build community. We write to surprise ourselves and discover the bounty of stories that lie within.

Seniors come together and write, choose to share (or not, you decide), listen and write some more.

In later groups, we will draft stories and workshop them. Creativity and community in a non-judgmental environment. For welcome materials contact: kathleenkatims@gmail.com from Saved By A Story.

Where:Venice – Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Friday, the 28^th

Time:1 pm – 2:30 pm

Address:601 S. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/writing-group-seniors-saved-story

Horror Book Club: The Spite Houseat Compton Library, LACL –In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Johnny Compton’s The Spite House. To borrow a print copy of the book, please contact the Compton Library directly. For Ages 18+

NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.

Where:Compton Library, LACL

Date:Friday the 28th

Time:4 pm – 5 pm

Participants will discuss Family Meal: a Novel by Bryan Washington.

The ghost of Kai, the love of Cam’s life, won’t leave Cam alone. He follows Cam from LA back home to Houston, his visits wild, tender, and unpredictable. But Cam has changed, and when he reenters the orbit of his childhood best friend TJ and his family’s bakery, neither Cam nor TJ is sure how to navigate their charged estrangement. Searching for a way past all the wounds and secrets—a way to be okay together, maybe for the first time— the pair find hope and sustenance from the most unlikely source.

From the bestselling, award-winning author Memorial and stop, an irresistible, intimate novel about how those know us longest—even when they hurt us most—can also set the benchmark for love.

Bryan Washington is the author of the story collection Lot and the bestselling novel Memorial. He is also the winner of a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, a New York Public Library Young Lions Award, an Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, an International Dylan Thomas Prize, two Lambda Literary Awards, and an O. Henry Prize, and was a finalist for the James Tait Black Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a PEN/Robert W. Bingham prize finalist, and a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. He is a columnist for The New York Times Magazine and his fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and The Best American Short Stories. He divides his time between Houston and Osaka.

Where:Cellar Door Bookstore

Date:Friday the 28^th

Time:6:15 pm

Address:473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508

Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/black-lit-book-club-family-meal

Book Release Celebration: David A. Romero, with Rich Ferguson, Susan Hayden and Brian Sonia-Wallace &Diamond Bars 2at Book Soup – In-Person Event

David A. Romero will present his book,Diamond Bars 2

Live jazz accompaniment by bassist John Urban and keyboardist Ryan Pryor!

Published by Moon Tide Press, Diamond Bars 2 is a novel in verse, and a semi-autobiographical year-in-the-life of a poet protagonist working through grief, dealing with alcoholism, and coping with the fact that being a professional poet might not be all it’s cracked up to be. Poems blend fact with fiction, serving up picaresque tales with recurring characters living out their own kind of limbo in Diamond Bar, CA and its neighboring cities. A love letter to his hometown, Diamond Bars 2 paints vibrant portraits and landscapes of people and places known by the author; some long gone.

David A. Romero is a Mexican American spoken word artist from Diamond Bar, CA. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of El Martillo Press. Romero has received honorariums from nearly a hundred colleges and universities in the USA and has performed live in Mexico, Italy, and France.

Former US Beat Poet Laureate Rich Ferguson has shared the stage with Patti Smith, Wanda Coleman, Moby, and other esteemed poets and musicians. He is the author of Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates (Moon Tide Press, 2020) and is the co-editor of Beat Not Beat (Moon Tide Press, 2022).

Susan Hayden is the author of Now You Are a Missing Person, a lyrical memoir in poems, stories and fragments. Published by Moon Tide Press in 2023, the book received a starred review from Kirkus. She is the creator, curator and producer of Library Girl, a monthly literary series.

Brian Sonia-Wallace has been described as a “creative genius” by the LA’s Department of Cultural Affairs and “disappointingly normal” by the New York Times. Sonia-Wallace is the fourth poet laureate of the city of West Hollywood. He is the author of Maze Mouth (Moon Tide Press, 2023).

Where:Book Soup

Date:Friday the 28^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

About Lit Angels Writing Studio:

There are so many fitness classes available for the body, but what are you doing to exercise your creative mind?

Lit Angels offers classes that provide just that—a fun and freeing way to work out the creative muscles and eliminate the stumbling blocks that might be holding you back, not only in your writing, art, or performance projects, but in all areas of your life—uplifting and refreshing your mind and soul, improving relationships, work, and your outlook on the future. Taught by top-level working professionals, Lit Angels classes cultivate community and connection, something we all desperately need in these challenging times.

Come make some magic at the Village Well! All genres and levels are welcome!

Reserve your tickets on EVENTBRITE!

Where:Village Well Books & Coffee

Date:Friday the 28^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Where:Wrigley Coffee

Date:Friday the 28^th

Time:7 pm – 8 pm

Address:437 W. Willow St, Long Beach, CA 90806

Website: https://www.lbpoetry.com/

L.A. Book Launch: Kim Dower & What She Wants, with Kate Gale at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person &OnlineHybridEvent

Join us for the Los Angeles Book Launch of Kim Dower’s book What She Wants.

The author will be joined in a reading and conversation with Publisher, Co-founder, and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press, Kate Gale. Following the performances, enjoy a reception with light refreshments and book signings.

Following the commercial and literary success of her bestselling poetry collection, I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom: Poems on Motherhood, Kim Dower delivers What She Wants: Poems on Obsession, Desire, Despair, Euphoria—turning her keen eye, vibrant imagination, trademark insight, and humor to the intensity of obsessive love. These steamy and provocative poems, combining humor and heartache, run through the four phases of Limerence, the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person: Infatuation, Crystallization, Deterioration, and Ecstatic Release. From the opening poem, “She’ll do anything for food,” to the sexy title poem, “What She Wants,” the painfully funny, “His Other Girlfriend,” to the longing in “Visiting Baudelaire,” and the sad, sweet final poem, “Fish’s Lament,” Kim Dower captures the essence of what it means to be stuck on someone—even on a squirrel! Her eclectic, growing readership will savor these poems that can be read in one sitting, like a story with an arc, or separately, each one recalling the moment of falling in or out of love, the moment our hearts skipped a beat.

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.

Where:Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date:Friday, the 28^th

Time:8 pm – 10 pm (Doors at 7:30 pm)

Address:681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Please email eaglrk@lapl.org for the writing prompt.

Where:Eagle Rock Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:10 am

Address:5027 Caspar Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90041

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/western-edge-writers-1

L.A. Zine Fest (Day 1 of 2) at The Broad Museum Outdoor Plaza –In-Person Event

Cal zinesters converge on the outdoor plaza at The Broad for L.A. Zine Fest, celebrating D.I.Y. ethos and the many facets of independent publishing. Meet the exhibitors as you peruse and purchase their works, which promise to be brimming with everything from politics, personal stories, and photography to fine art, graphic design, and more. Over the course of the two-day festival, attendees may participate in hands-on workshops, sit in on a panel discussion, and visit the museum’s art-filled galleries.

L.A. Zine Fest is presented in conjunction with The Broad’s collection exhibition, Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature, and posits zines as a contemporary evolution of Beuys’s “multiples”—artworks he produced in editions often made of unprecious materials and distributed inexpensively from 1965 to 1986. Today, activists, punks, LGBTQ+ folks, poets, and anyone with access to a photocopier, Risograph machine, or home office printer can engage in the democratization and circulation of art with the same spirit.

Stay tuned for a full list of exhibitors closer to the date.

Get your free tickets!

Where:The Broad Museum

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:11 am – 5 pm

Address:221 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Website: https://www.lazinefest.com/

Book Club: Master Slave Husband Wife at Los Feliz Branch Library, LAPL –In-Person Event

Join our discussion of Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom, by Ilyon Woo.

Where:Los Feliz Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:11 am

Address:1874 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-28

Saturday Morning Book Discussion: John Lewis: A Life at Palms – Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL –In-Person Event

We continue to choose books from the annual The New York Times Notables list. Drop by for great conversation, good company, & coffee!

Join our discussion of John Lewis: A Life, by David Greenberg.

Where:Palms – Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:11 am

Address:2920 Overland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90064

It’s 1942. German Nazis occupy much of France. And twelve-year-old Miriam, who is Jewish, is not safe. With help and quick thinking, Miri is saved from the roundup that takes her entire Jewish neighborhood. She escapes Paris, landing in a small French village. Her parents are gone—maybe alive, maybe not. Taken in at the boarding school near the chateau, pretending to be Catholic to escape Nazi capture, Miri is called upon one night to undertake a deadly task, one that spans the castle grounds, its bridge, and the very border to freedom. Here is her chance to escape—hopefully to find her parents. But will she take it? One thing is certain: The person Miri meets that night will save her life. And the person Miri becomes that night could save the lives of many more.

NOTE:See site for details.

Where:Agoura Hills Library, LACL

Date:Saturday the 1^st

Time:11 am – 12 pm

Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct., Agoura Hills, CA 91301

Where:Westwood Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:11:30 am

Address:2820 W. 6th St., Los Angeles, CA 90057

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/big-read-book-discussion-house-mango-street-1

Big Read Bilingual Book Discussion: The House on Mango Street at Washington Irving Branch Library, LAPL –In-Person Event

Join us for a bilingual English/Spanish discussion of The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, this year’s Big Read selection for 2025.

The House on Mango Street is a collection of short pieces narrated from the perspective of Esperanza, a young Latina girl. As she grows up, Esperanza describes the people who come in and out of her life on Mango Street. Copies will be available in the branch while supplies last.

Acompáñenos al club de lectura bilingüe en inglés y español sobre el libro La casa en Mango Street, de Sandra Cisneros, seleccionado para la Gran Lectura de este año.

The House on Mango Street es una colección de breves relatos narrados desde la perspectiva de Esperanza, una joven latina que, a medida que crece, describe a las personas que entran y salen de su vida en la calle Mango Street. Tenemos copias del libro disponibles en la sucursal hasta agotar existencias.

Where:Washington Irving Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:12 pm

Address:4117 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90018

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/big-read-bilingual-book-discussion-house-mango-street

Outdoor Adventures Panel with Elizabeth Su & Naomi Grevemberg at Bel Canto Books, Retro Row, Long Beach – In-PersonEvent

Join us for an Outdoor Adventure Panel with Elizabeth Su and Noami Grevemberg.

More information coming soon!

Where:Ambitious Ales with Bel Canto Books

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:12 pm – 2 pm

Address:4019 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807

5 Worlds meets Spirited Away in this tale of a girl fighting her way back home after getting trapped in the spirit world.

Anzu has just moved to a new town during Obon, a time for families to remember and celebrate their ancestors. Ever since her obaachan died, though, Obon has lost its magic. She doesn’t feel much like celebrating anymore.

While avoiding holiday festivities, Anzu spots a stray dog down the street. A dog that seems to be staring right at her. But when she chases after it, she slips and falls down a ridge, losing consciousness. When she awakes, she’s in the Shinto underworld known as Yomi, a place she’s only heard about in Obaachan’s stories. The stray dog, she finds out, is actually the Gatekeeper of Yomi, and he warns her to return to the human realm before it’s too late.

Only, getting home is not as simple as she’d thought. Faced with the nefarious Queen Izanami of Yomi and a world full of creatures she’d once thought weren’t real, the race against the clock is on. She must break a curse, free the spirits of other lost children, and reach the gate home before sunrise…or be stuck in Yomi forever.

Mai K. Nguyen is a Vietnamese and Japanese American comic creator and UX designer living in the California Bay Area. Her debut graphic novel, Pilu of the Woods, came out with Oni Press in 2019.

Where:Cellar Door Bookstore

Date:Saturday the 1^st

Time:1 pm

Address:473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508

Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/kids-graphic-novel-book-club-anzu-and-realm-darkness

Expressions L.A. Poetry Reading Series and Open Mic at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL –In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Join us in-person or via Zoom for Expressions L.A. Poetry Reading Series, featuring poetry readings and open poetry mic.

RSVP:

Please email studio@lapl.org for participation details.

Where:Studio City Branch Library, LAPL

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:3 pm – 5 pm

Address:12511 Moorpark St., Los Angeles, CA 91604

Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/expressions-la-poetry-reading-series-and-open-mic

Creative Writing Group at Central Library, LAPL –In-Person Event

Calling all writers of fiction, screenplays, poetry, etc. Get feedback on your writing in a fun, supportive environment! The Central Library Creative Writing Group meets every other Saturday for fellowship, feedback, and snacks. Meetings start out with a short writing prompt exercise, then writers are invited to share up to five pages of their work for feedback from the group. Whether you are just starting out or well on your way to glory, join us and banish (at least temporarily) those Lonely Writer Blues!

Where:Central Library, LAPL, Meeting Room B

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:3 pm – 5 pm

Address:630 W. 5^th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071

Submit up to 3 poems totaling no more than 150 lines including the subject of or at least mentioning sky or key for Four Feathers Press online edition: Sky Key by emailing donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59 pm, March 14th.

Don Kingfisher Campbellhosts and curates these events.

Where:Saturday Afternoon Poetry

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:3 pm – 5 pm

Address:Online Zoom Event

Website:https://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/

We’re a community in various stages of our writing & performing experience. We aspire t

Closing Reception: Always Running with Luis J Rodriguez & Noe Montes at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore – In-PersonEvent

Join us for the closing reception of “Always Running” Photography by Luis J. Rodriguez.

Inspired by the stories told in the book Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A., is a collection of never-before-seen images taken by Luis. The photo exhibit features photography of the people and places that touched and influenced Rodriguez’s life during the 1960s-1980s. Curated by photographer and artist Noe Montes. There will be a special Q&A with Luis and Noe followed by a book signing of the 30th edition of Always Running. Luis will have a limited number of photography prints for purchase. More info coming soon. This is a free event. No registration required.

Where:Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:3 pm – 5 pm

Address: 12677 Glenoaks, Blvd., Sylmar, CA 91342

Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFwDv9sS19H/?hl=en

Quarterly Open Mic with Local Poets at LibroMobile, Santa Ana – In-PersonEvent

Join us for our open mic series hosted by Local Poet Kunthon “Katon” Meas, he’ll be featuring local writers & hold the mic for all of you!

We hope to keep up with our tradition of prioritizing BIPOC voices as well as honoring a safe space for all.

We’re a community in various stages of our writing & performing experience. We aspire to cultivate a space of empowerment, not a critical feedback or workshop circle.

Keep an eye out for our featured poets.

Where:LibroMobile, Santa Ana

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:6 pm – 8 pm

Address: 1150 S. Bristol St. A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704

Website: https://www.libromobile.com/event-details/libromobiles-quarterly-open-mic-2025-03-01-18-00

L.A. Book Launch: A Shared Condition: An Anthology of Poetry from the Venice Collective at Beyond Baroque – In-Person &OnlineHybridEvent

Join us for the Los Angeles Book Launch of the Venice Collective’s latest anthology of poetry!

A Shared Condition (Moontide Press) gathers 10 poets of The Venice Collective, who created a literary ensemble and have inspired one another for twenty-five years. They share the common goal of expanding the boundaries of language, image, and form. Join the book launch celebration with contributors sharing their poetry in The Wanda Coleman Theater! Featuring Mariano Zaro, Holaday Mason, Jan Wesley, Jim Natal, Jeanette Clough, Paul Lieber, Marjorie Becker, Dani Hardy, & Sarah Maclay.

After the readings, join us for a reception and book signings.

Mariano Zaro is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Decoding Sparrows (What Books Press, Los Angeles) and Padre Tierra (Olifante, Zaragoza, Spain). His poems and short stories have been published in anthologies and literary journals in Spain, Mexico and the United States. His translations include Buda en llamas by Tony Barnstone and Cómo escribir una canción de amor by Sholeh Wolpé. He is a professor of Spanish at Rio Hondo Community College (Whittier, California).

Jim Natal is the author of the forthcoming collection Everything Changes Everything, the new chapbook Étude in the Form of a Crow, and five previous full-length poetry books including Spare Room: Haibun Variations and Memory and Rain. A multi-year Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies.

Jeanette Clough holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago and worked as an art librarian at the Getty Research Institute. She edited for Solo, A Journal of Poetry, reviewed for Poetry International, and was Artist in Residence at Joshua Tree National Park. Her fourth poetry collection, Fire Roulette, features lyrical and narrative poems of personal risk.

Paul Lieber’s third collection, Slow Return, was just published by What Books Press. Three times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Paul produced and hosted “Why Poetry” on Pacifica radio. He taught Poetry at LMU and facilitated the poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque. He currently teaches acting at AMDA.

Nightfall Marginalia (What Books Press), a 2023 Foreword INDIES Finalist for Poetry, is Sarah Maclay’s fifth collection. Her fourth chapbook, The H.D. Sequence—A Concordance (Walton Well Press), was released in 2024. She offers periodic workshops at Beyond Baroque and is the producer/host of Poetry.LA’s “The Poetry of Night.”

Dina Hardy has received an Iowa Writers Workshop MFA; Stegner Fellowship; Pushcart nominations; fellowships to residencies in the countries of Georgia, Spain, and Wales; and has publications in such places as AQR, Bennington Review, Prelude, Gulf Coast, and Third Coast.

Marjorie Becker is a Macon, Georgia native who learned Spanish as a child, served in the Peace Corps in rural Paraguay where she wrote her first novel. She holds a Yale doctorate and is professor of History and English at USC. The author of six books, an array of articles, and one of the creators of Latin American historical studies at USC, her recent multi-genre work, Dancing on the Sun Stone: Mexican Women and the Gendered Politics of Octavio Paz, has already gone into multiple versions. She is the author of three poetry collections and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry. She has received multiple awards including a Faculty Fulbright Research Fellowship for Mexico, a Mellon Mentoring Award, awards on her multi-genre work from the NEH, the AAUW, and the ACLU. She has been a member of the Venice Collective for decades and remains grateful for the opportunities to be part of this group.

Holaday Mason is the author of six full-length collections & two chapbooks. Currently the poetry editor of the online fine art zine Furious Pure. Multiple Pushcart nominee, publications include Hotel Amerkia, Poetry International, Spillway, Solo, The River Styx among others. Holaday is also a fine art photographer. http://www.holadaymason.com.

Jan Wesley is the author of Only So Much [What Books Press], Living in Freefall, and a couple of published chapbooks. Her poems have been in Askew, Blue Mountain Review, The Iowa Review, Rattle, Spillway, Beyond Words, and two anthologies, titled Angle of Reflection, and newly published, Shared Condition. She worked in post-production in the film business for many years, and after receiving an MFA at Vermont College, she taught writing at The University of Redlands and The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandizing.

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.

Where:Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date:Saturday, the 1^st

Time:7 pm – 10 pm (Doors at 6:30 pm)

Address:681 Venice Blvd Venice Beach Los Angeles, CA 90291

Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/la-book-launch-a-shared-condition-by-the-venice-collective-tickets-1250311016909?aff=oddtdtcreator

Chevalier’s 85^th Birthday at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event

This March, we invite our customers to join us for an exclusive opportunity to celebrate the anniversary of LA’s oldest independent bookstore! Chevalier’s is opening up the store after dark and turning back the clock as we turn 85 so join us in this once in a life-time blast to the past!

There will be, old-timey drinks, old-timey costumes (not required but encouraged), and a Children’s Wildfire Relief Raffle with new-timey prizes donated from some of Larchmont’s more notable shops!

So turn back the clock and come dressed as your favorite 40s author or character, get ready to do some good and party the night away, like the olden days.

RSVP

Where: Chevalier’s Books

Date:Saturday the 1^st

Time:7 pm – 1 am (on the 2^nd)

Address:133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004

Website: https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/event/2025-03-01/chevaliers-85th-birthday

Griot Café Open Mic & Poetry at Shades of Afrika, Long Beach – In-Person Event

Griot Cafe Open Mic and Poetry. All ages. Hosted by Tommy Domino.

Featuring Eric Devaughnn.

Eric Devaughnn is a father, poet, author, educator, and cofounder of innateDIVINITYbooks, with three self-published poetry collections. All his poems are cracked teeth, dusky yellow and receding gum line lying limp on waxy, bright white paper, speckled red. @truethepoetic.

$10 Cover

Where: Griot Café

Date:Saturday the 1^st

Time:7:30 pm – 10 pm

Address:1001 E. 4^th St., Long Beach, CA 90802

MTP was founded in 1997 with a mission to champion small businesses, art and community.The market funds Greenway Arts Alliance’s arts education programming and provides employment and leadership development opportunities for students at Fairfax High School.

JOIN us in space R18 each Sunday, from 11 am – 5 pm.

All poems are donation based, so you name your price.

NOTE:Check every Sunday for story time and reading events

Where:Melrose Trading Post, Greenway Main Stage at Fairfax HS

Date:Sunday, the2^nd (Every Sunday)

Time:10 am–5 pm (market); 11 am – 5 pm (poets on demand)

Address:7850 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046

Website:https://www.instagram.com

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss at Flintridge Bookstore –In-Person Event

Celebrate Dr. Seuss and Read Across America Day

Read Across America Day was established by the National Education Association (NEA) in 1997 with the goal of promoting reading among children. Coinciding with Dr. Seuss’s birthday, the day naturally evolved to also celebrate the legacy of this beloved children’s author.

Come see the bookstore’s Dr. Seuss display, and make sure to do some reading today!

Where:Flintridge Bookstore

Date:Sunday, the2^nd

Time:10 am–6 pm

Address:858 Foothill Blvd., La Cañada Flintridge, CA 91011

Website: https://www.flintridgebooks.com/instore-events/2025/3/2/happy-birthday-dr-seuss

Lit Angels: Mindful Mornings: Journaling Workshop at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Designed for those who seek to slow down and find clarity in the chaos of everyday life. We’ll guide you through prompts that inspire deep introspection and personal growth. Whether you’re a seasoned journaler or new to the practice, this event is a safe haven to express your thoughts, set intentions and uncover the wisdom within.

– Connect with like-minded individuals in a warm and supportive environment.

– Reflect on your thoughts and emotions through guided journaling.

– Grow as you discover new insights and perspectives that can help you navigate your journey.

Bring your favorite journal and a pen and be ready to dive into an enriching experience that nurtures your mind, body, and soul.

About Lit Angels Writing Studio:

There are so many fitness classes available for the body, but what are you doing to exercise your creative mind?

Lit Angels offers classes that provide just that—a fun and freeing way to work out the creative muscles and eliminate the stumbling blocks that might be holding you back, not only in your writing, art, or performance projects, but in all areas of your life—uplifting and refreshing your mind and soul, improving relationships, work, and your outlook on the future. Taught by top-level working professionals, Lit Angels classes cultivate community and connection, something we all desperately need in these challenging times.

Come make some magic at the Village Well! All genres and levels are welcome!

Reserve your tickets on EVENTBRITE!

Where:Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Sunday the 2^nd

Time:10 am – 11 am

Cal zinesters converge on the outdoor plaza at The Broad for L.A. Zine Fest, celebrating D.I.Y. ethos and the many facets of independent publishing. Meet the exhibitors as you peruse and purchase their works, which promise to be brimming with everything from politics, personal stories, and photography to fine art, graphic design, and more. Over the course of the two-day festival, attendees may participate in hands-on workshops, sit in on a panel discussion, and visit the museum’s art-filled galleries.

L.A. Zine Fest is presented in conjunction with The Broad’s collection exhibition, Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature, and posits zines as a contemporary evolution of Beuys’s “multiples”—artworks he produced in editions often made of unprecious materials and distributed inexpensively from 1965 to 1986. Today, activists, punks, LGBTQ+ folks, poets, and anyone with access to a photocopier, Risograph machine, or home office printer can engage in the democratization and circulation of art with the same spirit.

Stay tuned for a full list of exhibitors closer to the date.

Get your free tickets!

Where:The Broad Museum

Date:Saturday, the 2^nd

Time:11 am – 5 pm

Address:221 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Website: https://www.lazinefest.com/

Women Who Submit Open Micat The Pop Hop – In-Person Event

Women Who Submit back to The Pop-Hop for their 2025 open mic series. All members of Women Who Submit are welcome to share their writing, and anyone can attend!

Featuring:

Tisha Marie Reichle Aguilera is an educator, writer, and author of the novel Breaking Pattern. She is also a contributor to the anthologies Accolades and Gathering.

Jesenia Chavez is a proud Chicanita, public-school teacher, poet and storyteller. Her writing is inspired by her parents’ migration to Los Angeles. She is the author of This Poem Might Save You (me).

Where:The Pop Hop

Date:Sunday the 2^nd

Time:1 pm

Writing workshop series on first Sundays in the Wrigley district at the Wicked Wolf 5-7 pm PST. It’s $15 with a $5 drink ticket.

Led by Beach City Poetress https://www.instagram.com/beachcitypoetress/

Where:The Wicked Wolf

Date:Sunday the 2^nd

Time:5 pm – 7 pm

Address:2332 Pacific Ave., Long Beach, Los Angeles, CA 90806

Website: https://www.lbpoetry.com/

Queer Romance Book Club:Here We Go Againat The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event

March’s participants will discussHere We Go Againby authorAlison Cochrun.

Book seller Grace will lead this discussion on reading widely across the romance genre while featuring LGBTQIA authors.

The author of the “sexy, insightful, and utterly charming” (BuzzFeed) Kiss Her Once for Me returns with a new queer rom-com following once childhood best friends forced together to drive their former teacher across the country.

Everyone is welcome. RSVP required.

NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.

Where:The Ripped Bodice

Date:Sunday the 2^nd

Time:7:15 pm – 8:30 pm

Address:3806 Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323

Website:https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets

Dazed and ConfusedPoetry Club 2025 at The Glendale Room – In-Person Event

Fernando Funes presents the Dazed and Confused Poetry Club for an event of booked poets and an open mic.

NOTE: Tickets at site. $5

Where:The Glendale Room

Date:Sunday the 2^nd

Time:8:30 pm – 10 pm

Address:127 Artsakh Ave., Glendale, Los Angeles, CA 91206

Website: https://www.theglendaleroom.com/calendar