It has been a month since my visit to the UCLA/Los Angeles Times Festival of books, and it has taken me that amount of time to go through some of my goodies from the festival. One of the wonderful aspects to literary festivals is meeting new people and branching out of my own literary box to read stuff I normally wouldn’t read, and to learn about programs and organizations that I hadn’t heard of before. Below is a summary:
I am a longtime supporter of Write Girl, “a nonprofit organization for high school girls centered on the craft of creative writing and empowerment through self-expression.” I picked up the organization’s latest anthology, Lines of Velocity, with poems from volunteers and high school-aged writers. The organization began 6 years ago and I remember visiting the booth at my first visit to the LA Festival of books. A long-time supporter of and volunteer for California Poets in the Schools, I admired Write Girl for its feminist mission: empowering the lives of women, of all ages, through mentoring relationships and writing workshops. If you missed them at the festival, there’s plenty reason to visit them on the web.
That’s Marilyn Friedman, there, classmate from my Robert Pinsky writing workshop. Imagine my surprise when I passed her Writing Pad booth, which combines my two favorite things: literature and food! Marilyn gets fabulous writers and fabulous cooks together for classes that she holds in her Los Angeles home. For example, her writing pad “boot camp” class includes “gourmet tasting plates” to yum your way through while practicing writing exercises geared to get your writing muscles working. Playwright Aaron Henne is on board for a mid-July class on the 10-minute play, including a gourmet dinner and beer tasting! I assume the play content will benefit from the alcohol, carbs, and protein. I’ll be in fair Gambier over the summer tasting the delectables at the Kenyon College cafeteria, but plan on checking out Writing Pad in the fall!
Comic book nerds need not feel left out at the LA Book fest. Despite the dismal display at the new “Comix Strip” area of the LA Festival of Books, longtime participant Hi De Ho Comics and Books with Pictures showed off their usual fantastic array of comic books, along with featuring several writers and artists in the comic book world. The year before last I met and chatted with Michael Chabon about how comic books influenced his storytelling and writerly future. This year I hung out with Mark Evanier (pictured above with cartoonist and comic nerd Mathew Digges), and chatted about his new book Kirby: King of Comics, which I haven’t been able to put down since.
I was a bit disappointed in the lack of independent, Poetry booksellers, but did run into a few new friends at the Poetic Matrix booth (curiously set up in the Comix Strip area of the book festival). I chatted with Sandra Lee Stillwell (pictured above with fellow poet Joseph Milosch on her right), who read me a beautiful poem from her new book. Standing in the sun on a beautiful day listening to someone read a poem just for you? Nothing like it.
In addition to all of these good times, I picked up some great books, cheap:
The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson
Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon
From a Native Daughter by Haunani-Kay Trask
. . . and oodles of comic books, chapbooks, posters, journals, free copies of literary journals and more books, of course. Maybe I’ll see you there next year?