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FEBRUARY AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS

Los Angeles               www.skylightbooks.com                      February 2008
In This Issue
USC Professional Writing Program
Stephen Elliott with Eric Orner, Keith Knight, Jerry Stahl
Ray Zone
Gregory Paul Williams
Dagoberto Gilb
Nina Hachigian
John Rechy
Susie Bright
Gayle Brandeis
Charles Burns
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Kerry's View from the Skylight
kerryandlucy
     I just had to put Lucy's photo here  one more time.  We miss her so much...
      Calendars are finally going on sale Feb 1. 
      Thank you so much for coming in during the holidays -- because of you, our December sales were almost 11% over the previous December... not the 'doom and gloom' we were reading about with many big box retail operations!  We clearly have very unique neighbors who make a point of shopping local.  We really appreciate it! 
      Also, our customers have donated more than 60 new books which will go to the libraries of two youth probation camps in Los Angeles, and they're still coming in.  Amazing...
     Have a wonderful February.
 
Kerry Slattery, General Manager
(email me at [email protected])
 
 
For current Skylight bookgroup info, email [email protected]
or check out our website.
 
 
For French and Spanish orders: email [email protected]
USC PROFESSIONAL WRITING PROGRAM

Friday, February 1 at 7:30 p.m
 

Graduate students in the Professional Writing Program at USC read from their work. With readings by Joshua Lough, Wesley Roj, Stephen Silke, Lindsey Johnson, Janalynn Bliss, and Sanora Bartels

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE Panel
 
Tuesday, February 5 at 7:30 p.m.
 
AMY GERSTLER, VERONIQUE DE TURENNE, KATHERINE TAYLOR, DARCY COSPER AND MARK SARVAS

The NBCC GoodReads: Winter Listnbcc logo

In December, the National Book Critics Circle asked its members to recommend books that they'd recently read and truly loved - new or old, trendy or obscure.

On February 5, the NBCC will announce its second round of recommendations and this panel will look both at the recommendations themselves, as well as the art of recommending: Who are your best recommenders (we all have them, right?), the worst recommenders (someone who consistently doesn't get your taste)? What constitutes a meaningful recommendation and what do you look for when you hear one? What about the business of recommending itself: who has the authority to do it, where do good ones come from and how does it sell books, if at all?

Please join the NBCC award winning poet Amy Gerstler, the NPR book critic Veronique de Turenne, the novelist Katherine Taylor, novelist and book critic Darcy Cosper and the blogger and novelist Mark Sarvas for this entertaining and lively discussion, and bring along some of your own recommendations.

STEPHEN ELLIOTT with ERIC ORNER, KEITH KNIGHT & JERRY STAHL
sex for america

Friday, February 8 at 7:30 p.m.
 
Sex For America: Politically Inspired Erotica (Harper Perennial)
 
 
Whether you're having intense primary urges or feeling like you have no control over upcoming elections, this event is for you. 
 
Sex for America takes us to the intersection of our desires and our political beliefs. These provocative stories by some of today's best writers, including Anthony Swofford, Jerry Stahl, Rick Moody, and Jonathan Ames, will inspire new discussions of sexual freedom and fascination.
RAY ZONE
  
Saturday, February 9 at 5:00 p.m.
  ray zone
 
Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952
(Univ. of Kentucky Press)
 
Zone, one of the leading champions of 3-D in the world, has been called the King of 3-D Comics.  He discusses the fascinating history of stereoscopic cinema - a technology with roots well before the advent of Hollywood films. Bring your own red and blue glasses.
GREGORY PAUL WILLIAMS
 
Sunday, February 10 at 5:00 p.m.
 
The Story of Hollywood  (BL Press)
 
gregorypaulwilliamsstory of hollywood

Williams' beautifully researched labor of love about Hollywood history -- lushly illustrated with many previously unseen photos from the author's personal collection, has been one of the best-selling books in our Los Angeles section. 
 
Don't miss his slide show trip into this fascinating history.
 
A puppeteer and a puppet designer in the entertainment industry for 25 years, Greg has also devoted many hours to the preservation of Hollywood's Historic District.
DAGOBERTO GILB
  Dagoberto Gilb
 
Tuesday, February 12 at 7:30 p.m.
 
The Flowers (Grove/Atlantic Press)
 

 PEN/Hemingway Award winner Gilb's coming-of-age novel is being compared to recent works by Junot Diaz and Sherman Alexie.

"Dagoberto Gilb is one of the most powerful writers of his generation, and The Flowers is perhaps his best book. It's not to be missed." - Larry McMurtry

(author photo by Nancy Crampton)

NINA HACHIGIAN
nina hachigian
 
Friday, February 15 at 7:30 p.m.
 
The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise
(Simon & Schuster)

Is the U.S.'s role as the world's lone superpower at an end? Is there hope for a post-unilateral America? This book may have the answers to those questions and more.  Hachigian is co-author (with Mona Sutphen)
 
She previously worked as an assistant to the National Security Advisor in the Clinton Administration. From 2001 to 2006 she was the director for the Center for Asia Pacific Policy and a senior political scientist at RAND.

Preview The Next American Century on YouTube!

(Photo by Ralph Alswang)
JOHN RECHY
john rechy 
Thursday, February 21 at 7:30 p.m.

About My Life and the Kept Woman (Grove Press)

We're proud to host local luminary and national treasure Rechy as he reads from his first memoir.

Growing up Mexican-American in El Paso, Rechy became fascinated with a local kept woman, and here ruminates on how difference, discrimination, sexuality, and those childhood obsessions have shaped his own life
 
Publishers Weekly
says "About My Life and the Kept Woman is a marvelous autobiography by a writer whose life is as interesting as his fiction."   Gore Vidal has hailed him as "one of the few original American writers of the last century," and his first novel, City of Night, is a modern classic.
 
Rechy is the first novelist to receive PEN-USA-West's Lifetime Achievement Award; he is the recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle and a NEA fellow; he is a faculty member at theMaster of Professional Writing Program at USC and is the first recipient of One Magazine Culture Hero Award.
SUSIE BRIGHT

susie brightFriday, February 22 at 7:30 p.m.

The Best of Best American Erotica 2008: 15th Anniversary (Touchstone Books)
 
Need a post-Valentine's Day libido recharge? Join Susie Bright--often called the first and reigning queen of contemporary erotica-- as she presents the best erotic writing of the past 15 years, along with new pieces so hot we're worried about steam damage throughout the store.
 
The Best of "The Best".  The Hottest of The Hot
GAYLE BRANDEIS
 
gayle brandeis 
Saturday, February 23 at 7:30 p.m.
 
Self Storage
(Ballantine)

Brandeis is the award-winning the author of The Book of Dead Birds, which won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change, and Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write. Both books were BookSense independent bookstore selections.
"A novel of passion and consequence, identity and accountability. I love the narrator, her children, her wild ride, and this truly American story of getting mad and getting wise."
-Barbara Kingsolver
CHARLES BURNS
 
Friday, February 29 at 7:30 p.m.charles burns
 
Black Hole (Pantheon)
 
"Visually," Time wrote of Black Hole when it first came out, "it's one of the most stunning graphic novels yet published."
Join the author and illustrator, who also draws the covers for The Believer, for a discussion of his art and this dark, contemporary classic.

"Semiotics students will pore over it for years to come, but casual readers will simply enjoy it for its dark beauty."
 
"Smoldering brilliant... What Burns does so memorably here is blend the erotic and the frightening to create a black hole the reader will want to visit again and again."
--
The Boston Globe

"Black Hole is Burns's masterwork."
--
The New York Times Book Review
In the Neighborhood...
Thursday, Feb 28 at 6:45 at the Los Feliz Branch Library
The Architecture and Beyond series presents architect and preservationist Cory Buckner, discussing L.A. modernist architect A. Quincy Jones.  We'll be there with books.  1874 Hillhurst Ave; (323) 913-471
Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Ave (between Hollywood Blvd & Franklin; next to the Los Feliz Cinema)
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 660-1175
 
ORDER ONLINE 24/7:  www.skylightbooks.com