The stories and dreams we share with each other are ever-evolving. The ground shifts beneath our feet. We return to familiar corners and find ourselves out of place and time. Made in L.A. Vol. 3: Art of Transformation explores interior states of emotional drift and the evolving place we call home.
This anthology series showcases a diverse range of voices and genres. Like the City of Angels where these stories were born, nothing is off-limits. Literary or contemporary, fantasy or science fiction, each story in this volume invites you to view this urban landscape through a different lens.
Vol. 3 contributors include: Noriko Nakada, Andrea Auten, Erik Gonzales-Kramer, DC Diamondopolous, AP Thayer, Karter Mycroft, Lenore Robinson, Roselyn Teukolsky, AS Youngless, Barry Bergmann, Nolan Knight.
At this Read & Relate, we’ll be discussing the LA settings we miss visiting right now and how LA inspires our fiction.
Local bookstores are essential for a thriving local literary arts scene. Please consider purchasing your books directly from one of these loca, indie bookstores. You can place orders by phone or online and opt for delivery or pickup.
We’ve been paying close attention
to how writers, publishers, bookstores, literary organization, and public
health officials sare adapting to the coronavirus pandemic.
Here’s what we know about the
current situation:
Federal, state, and county health officials are canceling large gatherings and closing public spaces. They’re also recommending social distancing to prevent the spread of illness.
Many local book event venues have canceled or postponed their upcoming author events through the end of March and beyond.
The writers and readers we support come from marginalized communities and may be particularly vulnerable.
Actions we’re taking to support the
local literary sector:
Re-orienting our daily email newsletter and social media posts to share information and chronicle how the literary scene is adapting to challenging circumstances.
Revising our weekly email newsletter and social media posts to highlight books and authors with canceled events and directing readers to local bookstores.
Moving our podcast recording sessions online rather than in person.
Offering discounted rates for recording and hosting online literary readings and panels.
“She makes it look so effortless,” said contributing essayist Monica Corcoran Harel during the February 2020 publication party at Chevalier’s Books for Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light. Harel was speaking of Didion’s writing and of her style. Didion’s choices about clothing and accessories big and small (bright yellow muscle cars and dark sunglasses) are celebrated, as is her ability to frame herself within her surroundings, especially while posing for photographs. The word “icon” came up more than a few times during the event that featured a rich conversation about the new anthology of Los Angeles writers examining her legacy.
Monica Corcoran Harel at Chevaliers Books
At the event, anthology editor Steffie Nelson presided at the podium introducing the contributors, four of who were female, a testament to the ground Didion broke while writing for The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and The Saturday Evening Post during the 1960s. Her career skyrocketed from there.
Steffie Nelson at Chevalier’s Books
I listening to the discussion among contributors from the second row, feeling embarrassed and discomforted by the white wine seeping into the crotch of my pants. In trying to get a selfie showing the standing room only crowd, I’d spilled a very modest pour into my lap. It felt like a gallon. The selfie came out slightly blurry; a combination of genuine excitement and disappointed exasperation appears in my expression. Effortless? Definitely not.
Cody Sisco and Jay Fennelly at Chevalier’s Books
That is the point, however, to much of Didion’s writing. Her
work may look effortless, but periods of writing droughts and doubts
accompanied her productivity and success. As evidenced by the scope of
contributors to Slouching Towards Los
Angeles, Didion inspired generations of writers to pursue careers in journalism
and creative writing; she never promised it would be easy. Her writing attests
to the very opposite.
Among other topics, Didion’s essays explore both the siren song that attracts many writers to New York, the inevitable souring when New York no longer entrances, and the refuge that LA provides. Contributors Ann Friedman and Christine Lennon each trace their journeys following this well-trodden path, both ending up, as Didion did, in Los Angeles. Friedman writes, “New York was someone else’s story that I halfheartedly inhabited because I was painfully aware that I hadn’t yet written my own.” When asked during the event if any of Didion’s lines stuck in her head, she said, “Of course,” and echoed the classic line, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Lennon described her journey driving cross-country, and said the inspiration for her essay came from a photograph of the writer-icon that hangs “in her powder room.”
Ann Friedman at Chevalier’s Books
Christine Lennon at Chevalier’s Books
All this talk of Didion’s migration reminded me of my own fraught,
brief relationship with New York. Like Didion, I was born and raised in
Northern California and moved to New York as an ambitious young adult. But I
was not yet committed to what I perceived as a financially nonviable writing
career, and I knew internships at literary magazines couldn’t cover my
expenses. While my stint lasted only a single year, that one New York winter provided
vast portions of discontent and misery for this California native. Whereas
Didion regretted staying at the party too long, perhaps I arrived too late.
Upon my graceless return home to the San Francisco suburbs,
I began to climb out of a slump of depression, failure, and self-doubt. I
should have read more Didion in that moment instead of returning to my formative
narrative refuges of science fiction and fantasy, which I re-read between
moments of staring at the cracks in the ceiling of my old room in my parents’
house, wondering how to reboot my life.
Some things I learned from that period of recovery: a good
diet, physical exercise, and a benign climate can do wonders for lifting one’s
mood. So can fully embracing the literary impulse as I learned while taking
creative writing classes at San Francisco State University. What is it about
the act of writing that we find comforting?
In Heather John Fogarty’s essay, “On Keeping a Cookbook,” she investigates Didion’s notes about food prepared and served to a bevy of guests in her Malibu, Hollywood, and Brentwood homes. Fogarty ascribes the habit of note taking to a desire “to create a sense of order and connection to time and place… There is safety to be found in nostalgia, even if that safety is imagined and memory parts ways with the reality of the moment.” My own experience with note taking suggests that its potency lies in helping making sense of chaos at the time of writing, rather than to fuel nostalgia sometime in the future.
Heather John Fogarty at Chevalier’s Books
During the period of my recuperation, I threw away all my
high school journals, a decision I knew would be consequential. The journals
were full of painful memories, vividly rendered and perhaps not distant enough
in time to be safe, yet they also captured details I can never recover. I
suspected one day I might want to read my notes but decided instead that I needed
to move forward, to create the life I wanted to live without being trapped by
the records I kept. Not everything worth remembering fits well within the
confines of a page or a photograph.
The question of how we reconcile our past now that we’re grown was raised explicitly by the lone male contributor present, Joe Donnelly, in his exploration of his evolving feelings toward two versions of The White Album: Didion’s essay collection and the Beatle’s album. During the event Donnelly sat apart, or more accurately, stood mostly to one side and apart. A small detail that alone signifies little. But—if I’m able to analyze the situation with a fraction of Didion’s meticulous insight—throughout the evening he commanded more than his share of attention.
It never occurred to me in the moment to stand up and point
to my wine-dampened crotch, grab some attention, and connect myself to the
proceedings. If only I had the gumption to not care what anyone thought about
me, my writing, or the spectacle-of-me, I might be writing memoir. I could fill
a book with dozens of stories covering decades of adventures, but I’ve never
wanted to create a spectacle of myself. But there was Didion, lurking in the
frame, or just outside of it, as she spun stories about California and Los
Angeles that were much bigger than they first appeared.
Reading Didion now, in light of how she impacted other
writers as talented as those featured in Slouching
Towards Los Angeles, puts me in a mind to expand the trajectory of my
writing career and to excavate some of the stories buried in my memory. Studying
the approach of the contributors to this anthology has opened some doors of
possibility as surely as psychedelics open the doors of perception. I’m
grateful to Nelson for exploring the byways and deep reservoirs of inspiration
that Joan Didion has bestowed on us. I’m looking towards the horizon and
imagining what might be coming our way to be born.
Happy New Year to all of our listeners! This week, we’re here to help you get a jump start on your 2020 TBR list, with recommendations from our panel. Managing Editor Cody Sisco, along with Co-Hosts Rachelle Yousuf and Irene Yoon recap their year in reading and discuss what they’d like to see in the literary landscape next year.
Cody sits down with local LA author Carla Sameth to talk about her recent release, One Day on the Gold Line. They delve into religion, addiction, and the writing process, as well as their shared appreciation for the LA writing scene.
If your New Year’s Resolution is to attend more literary events, Shannon Eagen has you covered with events for the whole family in early January.
About Carla Sameth
Writer. Teacher. Mother. As a writer, Carla hopes to help readers feel less alone and more resilient. As a teacher, she strives to help others tell their stories and hone their craft while experimenting with new forms. The journey of motherhood informs much of her writing.
Through meditations on race, culture, and family, One Day on the Gold Line tells the story of a lesbian Jewish single mother raising a black son in Los Angeles. A memoir-in-essays, it examines life’s surprising changes that come through choice or circumstance, often seemingly out of nowhere, and sometimes darkly humorous—even as the situations are dire.
While escaping from a burning boat, Carla realizes that if she died, her one regret would be not having children. She overcomes miscarriages to finally give birth to a son. Motherhood’s usual struggles are then complicated by identity, community, and the challenges of creating a blended family. The overarching theme of these loosely woven reflective tales is the storyteller’s dream of the “perfect” family, the pursuit of which hurls her from one crisis to the next, ultimately meeting its greatest challenge in the form of her teenage son’s struggle with drug addiction.
