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INFO:
Check out our staff's
- We Accept AmEx, MasterCard, Visa and Discover
- Special Orders Welcome!
10% off all book purchases on your birthday
Senior Discount Tues before 4
Frequent Buyer Program - ask us for details
Free Gift Wrapping
National Gift Cards
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READER'S SURVEY |
The Future of Publishing Think Tank (an ad hoc group of few small presses, writers, our bookstore, the Library's ALOUD series, etc) invite you to participate in an on line survey, in the interest of imagining and developing new models to make it easier for writers to get their books to readers. If you can take 10-15 minutes, it will be helpful to all. Go to www.writersatwork.com and click on "Readers' Survey". | |
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| Kerry's View from the Skylight |
I spent a fascinating 8 days in April as a guest of the London Book Fair, along with a group of 15 or so amazing U.S. booksellers from around the country. In addition to 3 days at the BookFair, we were hosted at the Tate Museums by Phaidon Press, had dinners with UK booksellers hosted by Simon & Schuster and others... and visited a number of London bookshops -- like Foyle's, Daunts, Blackwell's, Gay's the Word, London Review Books, and more. Got lots of new ideas to try out here...
Our new space needs a name!!
This summer we will open a lovely new storefront next door, where we will move our books on art, design, music, photography, film, theatre, fashion, architecture, graphic novels and magazines, which will also allow us to reorganize and expand some existing sections. Since we want to stop referring to it as 'the annex,' or Skylight Junior, we need your help. It will still be Skylight Books - followed by [something]. It has the same kind of high ceiling and skylight. I kind of think of it as an upstairs/ downstairs kind of thing (if we had an upstairs, anyway). So send your ideas for a name to info@skylightbooks.com and our favorite 3 names will get a $50 gift certificate!!
Next door at the Skylight Theatre
A legendary gay play returns to the theatre where it premiered 22 years ago: James Carroll Pickett's Dream Man, directed by Michael Kearns and starring Jimmy Shaw. www.camelotartists.com
L.A. playwright, teacher and activist Pickett was a great friend to me and to many many others -- and his death from AIDS in 1994 at age 45 was a loss to all of us, not least because of the fine writing yet to come we will never see on a stage. But this poetic play about a troubled phone sex operator who creates fantasies for his callers is a beautiful legacy... and well worth seeing.
Kerry Slattery, General Manager
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MARK SARVAS |
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Saturday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m.
Harry, Revised (Bloomsbury) 
The very first book event for the sophisticated, sterling debut by a wonderful emerging talent--the founder of the popular literary blog "The Elegant Variation."
"Harry, Revised" is the hilarious and tender story of Harry Rent, a down-on-his-luck widower, who tries to reinvent himself following his wife's untimely death. Harry's emotional journey takes him from his own solipsistic and outrageously misdirected fantasies about an obsidian-haired, twenty-two-year-old waitress at his local greasy spoon to the tenuous beginnings of an actual personal transformation. At once deeply moving and darkly comedic, "Harry, Revised" is an extraordinary novel about the measure of a man's worth.
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| JIM KRUSOE |
Saturday, May 10 at 5:00 p.m.
Girl Factory
(Tin House Books) 
"A work of great originality, humour, cunning, and charm."
-Martin Amis on Krusoe's previous novel, Iceland.
Jim Krusoe has written five books of poems, a book of stories, Blood Lake, and a novel, Iceland, published by Dalkey Archive Press. His stories and poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, Bomb, Denver Quarterly, the Iowa Review, Field, North American Review, American Poetry Review, and the Santa Monica Review, which he began in 1988. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Washington Post, and Manoa. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest fund. He teaches at Santa Monica College and in the graduate writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles.
 There's a disturbing secret in the basement of a strip mall yogurt parlor. Jonathan, the mostly clueless clerk who works there, just wants to fix things once and for all, but beginning with an encounter at an animal shelter that leaves three dead, things don't work out quite the way Jonathan intends . . . or do they? Beneath its picaresque surface, "Girl Factory" raises unsettling questions about storytelling, the nature of freedom, and the ubiquitous objectification of women.
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ANDREW FOSTER ALTSCHUL |
Thursday, May 15 at 7:30 p.m.
 "In this gleeful debut, Altschul lays into an easy target - cynical celebrity culture - and meticulously crafts an over-the-top pop mirror world for his young heroine." Publishers Weekly
**DEBUT FICTION AT SKYLIGHT!** This spectacular, sprawling debut novel tells the story of Calliope Bird Morath, daughter of legendary punk-rock star Brandt Morath--whose horrific suicide devastated the world--and his notorious wife, Penelope.
The novel is narrated by both Calliope and her obsessive biographer, who follows her from her silent childhood to her first tortured, manic public statements about her father; from her highly publicized publication of a book of poetry to her mysterious disappearance; from her reappearance as the mute leader of a cultlike brigade known as The Muse to her spectacular showdown with the biographer.
A disturbing and razor-sharp meditation on twenty-first-century celebrity culture, "Lady Lazarus" is also a funny and moving story about the age-old question of the nature of the self.
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SKYLIGHT LITERARY SALON |
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Saturday, May 24 at 4:00 p.m.
Independent Presses Meet Independent Minds at the Skylight Salon
Yearning for witty repartée and intellectual stimulation? How about wine and hors d'œuvres? Come join us for our new monthly series, Skylight Salon, where our staff shares their faves from small presses and independent publishers. A modern-day mixer for the literary minded.
This month we feature:
 Monica highlights the David R. Godine, Inc., a sweet little publishing house out of Boston, MA that puts only the best fiction and nonfiction that wouldn't get publsihed otherwise. Home of the Black Sparrow books as well as Verba Mundi, this a diverse publisher with a superb list of beautifully bound books with intellectual weight. .  Justin gives much love to the Cambridge, MA publishing house, Da Capo Books. Da Capo is a full service purveyor of books with a strong presence in history, music and biography. Newly venturing into pop culture with titles like, "Reading Comics", and putting out edgy works like, "The Hedonsim Handbook, Da Capo Books is a stalwart of indie publishing.
 Emily celebrates the socially conscience literary nonprofit publisher, Counterpath Press. Located in Denver, CO, Counterpath supports artists and readers as communities. Pushing the mainstream boundaries of publsihing with its focus on minorities and women as artists, writers and poets, they combine the traditional and nontraditional in genres and discipline as well as format from print to internet-based material.
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| GARY PANTER with MATT GROENING |
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Tuesday, May 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Gary Panter (Picturebox, Inc. / D.A.P.)
 This legendary artist will be joined by the remarkable creator of Life in Hell and The Simpsons to talk about Panter's art and new book. Panter has been one of the most influential figures in visual culture since the mid-1970s. From his era-defining punk graphics to his cartoon icon Jimbo to his visionary design for "Pee-wee's Playhouse," he has left his mark on every medium he's touched.
This monumental, 2-volume slipcased set features his paintings, drawings, sculptures, posters and comics, as well as unpublished selections from his sketchbooks.
A three-time Emmy Award-winner for his production design on "Pee-wee's Playhouse" and the recipient of the 2000 Chrysler Award for Design Excellence, graphic artist Gary Panter has drawn inspiration from diverse vernacular and traditional art arenas over the course of the past four decades. Closely associated with the underground comics and music scenes on both coasts, he is responsible for designing the Screamers iconic 1970s poster, many record covers for Frank Zappa, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Residents and the ongoing comic character Jimbo. Most recently Panter has performed psychedelic light shows at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. and at New York's Anthology Film Archives. He was a featured artist in the major 2006-2007 touring exhibition, "Masters of American Comics".
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