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Fiction/Literature

LAPL ID: 
1

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Solider

In conversation with Louise Steinman
Co-presented with Human Rights Watch Young Advocates
Thursday, April 5, 2007
01:08:23
ALOUD
Listen:
Episode Summary
At age twelve, Beah (now twenty-five), fled attacking rebels in his native Sierra Leone and was picked up by the government army. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop?
Participant(s) Bio
Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. He moved to the United States in 1998 and finished his last two years of high school at the United Nations International School in New York. In 2004 he graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in political science. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Division Advisory Committee and has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities 9CETO) at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels on children affected by the war. His work has appeared in Vespertine Press and LIT magazine.

Louise Steinman is curator of the award-winning ALOUD series for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and Co-Director of the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities at USC. She is the author of two books, most recently, The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War, awarded the Gold Medal in Autobiography from ForeWord Magazine and the selection of several all-city and all-freshman reads programs.

Ziggurat

In conversation with Hovig Tchalian
Monday, November 22, 2010
01:20:13
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
Balakian's new collection of poems explore the aftermath of 9/11 through layered perspectives of myth, history, and personal memory; a panoramic work of contemporary witness in a new age of American uncertainty.
Participant(s) Bio
Peter Balakian is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor in Humanities and professor of English at Colgate University. He is the author of five books of poems and three prose works, including The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, a New York Times best seller, and Black Dog of Fate, a memoir.

Hovig Tchalian is the co-founder of Critics' Forum-a group of writers, critics and academics with an interest in English-language Armenian art and culture in the diaspora. He teaches writing and professional communication at the University of Southern California, in the business and engineering schools.

Cleopatra: A Life

In conversation with Robin Swicord
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
01:03:39
ALOUD
Listen:
Episode Summary
A Pulitzer-Prize willing biographer boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the queen from her own hazy legend, subtly and originally probing classical sources to yield a fresh, thrilling account of a remarkable woman.
Participant(s) Bio
Stacy Schiff is the author of Saint Exupery, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), for which she received a Pulitzer in 2000; and most recently, A Great Improvisation, winner of the George Washington Book Prize. A Guggenheim Fellow, Schiff has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is a contributor to The New Yorker, New York Times, and other publications.

Robin Swicord is known for her work as a screenwriter for "Memoirs Of A Geisha", "Little Women" (co-producer), "Matilda" (co-written and co-produced with Nicholas Kazan) and "Shag" (shared). In 2009 she received an Oscar nomination for her contribution to "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." She recently presented a talk at USC's Institute for the Humanities on "Reviving Cleopatra", in which she contrasted the historical Cleopatra with portrayals handed down over the next 2,000 years through images, plays and other entertainments.

Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Middle East

Tuesday, November 9, 2010
01:14:21
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
This long-awaited work, assembled by Reza Aslan, features literature from countries as diverse as Morocco and Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, many presented in English for the first time. Celebrate this landmark publication with a stellar cast who will read from a diverse selection of authors- from Khalil Gibran to Naguib Mahfouz, from Orhan Pamuk to the grand dame of Urdu fiction, Ismat Chughtai.
Participant(s) Bio
Reza Aslan, associate professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside and author of the best-selling No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues; Abraham's Vision, an interfaith peace organization; and PEN USA, which champions the rights of writers under siege around the world.

Must you Go? My Life with Harold Pinter

In conversation with Howard Rodman
Monday, November 8, 2010
01:09:47
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
The acclaimed historian offers a love story, an intimate account of the life of a major artist, and an exercise in self-revelation, based on thirty-three years of marriage.
Participant(s) Bio
Antonia Fraser is the author of many internationally bestselling historical works, including Love and Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, which was made into a film by Sofia Coppola, The Wives of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, and Faith and Treason: the Gunpowder Plot. She has received the Wolfson Prize for History, the 2000 Norton Medlicott Medal of Britain's Historical Association, and the Franco-British Society's Enid McLeod Literary prize.

Howard A. Rodman wrote Savage Grace, nominated for best screenplay at the 2009 Spirit Awards, and August, starring Josh Hartnett and David Bowie. He also wrote Joe Gould's Secret, the opening night film of Sundance 2000. He is a professor of screenwriting at USC's School of Cinematic Arts; serves on the Board of the Writers Guild of America, West; and has been Artistic Director of the Sundance Screenwriting Labs. Rodman is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and of the Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities.

Great House: A Novel

In conversation with Michael Silverblatt
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
00:59:21
ALOUD
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Episode Summary
The author of the bestseller The History of Love offers a soaring novel about a stolen desk that contains the secrets, and becomes the obsession of the lives it passes through.
Participant(s) Bio
Nicole Krauss is the author of the international bestseller The History of Love, awarded the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and Amazon.com Editors' #1 Choice in Literature and Fiction. Her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction and was selected as a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2002. In 2007, she was selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. Nicole's books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. She just completed a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library.

Michael Silverblatt is the host of KCRW's half-hour radio show "Bookworm," where he introduces listeners to new and emerging authors along with writers of renown. He created "Bookworm" for KCRW-FM in 1989. The complete Bookworm archive can be heard at kcrw.com/bookworm

Los Angeles in Maps: A Multi-media Conversation

Thursday, October 28, 2010
01:15:49
ALOUD
Listen:
Episode Summary
A land of palm trees and movie stars, sunshine and glamour, Los Angeles inhabits a place of the mind as much as it does a physical geographic space. Often imagined of as a kind of paradise, the actual reality of the city is far more complex. Join us for cartographic history of the City of Angels from the colonial era to the present, with Creason, author and LAPL map librarian and Waldie, cultural critic and author of Holy Land.
Participant(s) Bio
Glen Creason has been the map librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library for the past twenty-one years and a reference librarian in the History department since Jimmy Carter was president. He was a co-curator of the landmark map exhibit "Los Angeles Unfolded" and has written about local history, maps and popular culture for local publications including the Downtown News, Mercators World, the Public Historian, the Communicator the Los Angeles Times and Edible Ojai. He is the author of the book "Los Angeles in Maps" and has been a speaker at local events such as the Society for Professional Journalists, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and the California Map Society.

D. J. Waldie is the author of books, essays and blogs about Los Angeles and Southern California. He is a contributing writer at Los Angeles magazine and a contributing editor for the Los Angeles Times. His book reviews and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He has lectured on the social history of Los Angeles locally and internationally. He blogs at KCET/Voices. His most recent book is California Romantica, in collaboration with Diane Keaton.

Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work

In conversation with Amy Wilentz
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
01:11:33
ALOUD
Listen:
Episode Summary
Danticat, the acclaimed Haitian-American novelist, tells the stories of artists who create despite, or because of, the horrors that drove them from their homelands and that continue to haunt them.
Participant(s) Bio
Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti in 1969 and moved to the United States when she was twelve. She is the author of six books and two collections of stories. Her non-fiction book, Brother, I'm Dying, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Her most recent book is Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. She is a 2009 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

Amy Wilentz is the author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier; Martyrs' Crossing, and I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger. She is the winner of the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN Martha Albrand Non-Fiction Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award, and also a 1990 nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the former Jerusalem correspondent of The New Yorker and a long-time contributing editor at The Nation. She teaches in the Literary Journalism program at the University of California, Irvine.

Writing in Latino: A National Conversation/ Escribir en Latino: Una Conversacion Nacional

Moderated by Ilán Stavans
Thursday, October 21, 2010
01:12:51
ALOUD
Listen:
Episode Summary

What is Latino literature? Who writes it? Who reads it? Explore a rich literary tradition of five centuries of writing from two continents and 10 countries, from letters to the Spanish crown, to U.S. urbanites who grow up speaking Spanglish. Join this national conversation about the contribution of Latino writing to American culture.

Participant(s) Bio

Ilán Stavans, a native of Mexico City, is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. An award-winning writer and public television host, his books include Growing Up Latino, The Hispanic Condition and Spanglish. The Washington Post has described him as "Latin America's liveliest and boldest critic and most innovative cultural enthusiast." He is the recipient of numerous honors-including an Emmy nomination, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Latino Literature Prize, the Antonia Pantoja Award, and Chile's Presidential Medal. For many years he was host of the PBS show La Plaza: Conversations with Ilán Stavans.

Susana Chávez-Silverman grew up bilingually and biculturally in California, Spain and México. Her work is at home in both Spanish and English and the space(s) in-between. She has published Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories (2004) and Scenes from la Cuenca de Los Angeles y otros Natural Disasters (2010). She has published numerous essays on U.S. Latin@ authors and Spanish-language poetry, and is co-editor of Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (1997), and Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American and Spanish Culture (2000). She teaches at Pomona College in Claremont, CA

Rubén Martínez is an author, teacher and performer. He is the author of a trilogy of books on immigration and globalization: The Other Side: Notes from the New L.A., Mexico City and Beyond; Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail and The New Americans: Seven Families Journey to Another Country. He holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature & Writing at Loyola Marymount University. He has been active in the spoken word and performance scenes for over two decades, and as a musician has recorded with such acts as Los Illegals, Concrete Blonde and The Roches.

Luis Rodriguez, an accomplished Chicano poet, is also known for Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., a memoir that explores the motivation of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that claim its participants. Always Running earned a Carl Sandburg Literary Award and was designated a New York Times Notable Book; it has also been named by the American Library Association as one of the nation's 100 most censored books. Luis has also published childrens' books in both English and Spanish. He was one of 50 leaders worldwide selected as "Unsung Heroes of Compassion," presented by the Dalai Lama. Luis is currently working on a new memoir.

The Turquoise Ledge

In conversation with Judith Freeman
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
01:20:09
ALOUD
Listen:
Episode Summary
One of the most gifted and best known Native American writers today offers this highly original self-portrait, steeped in Native American storytelling traditions, that weaves together family/personal memoir with an accounting of the creatures and landscapes that inform her vision of the world.
Participant(s) Bio
Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1948 and grew up at the Pueblo of Laguna, located in west central New Mexico. She is the author of numerous books, including a book of essays-- Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit-and three novels, including Ceremony, Storyteller, and Almanac of the Dead. She has also written many short stories, poems, and essays. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship and an NEA fellowship.

Judith Freeman is a novelist and critic whose books include The Chinchilla Farm, Set For Life (winner of the Western Heritage Award), and Red Water (named one of the 100 best books of 2003 by the L.A. Times). Her non-fiction book, The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, was chosen by Newsweek as one of the top ten books published in 2007. She is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in fiction and teaches in the Master of Professional Writing program at University of Southern California.

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