Tag: Fiction

READ LIKE A WRITER w/ Rasheed Newson

Join Permission To Write at Rep Club for a book-club-meets-writers-group with There’s Only One Sin In Hollywood author Rasheed Newson

WHO & WHAT: Join Permission To Write at Rep Club for a book-club-meets-writers-group with ‘There’s Only One Sin In Hollywood’ author Rasheed Newson.

Read Like a Writer invites participants to slow down and study how Black authors build their books — examining structure, voice, point of view, and form, not just theme and feeling.

WHEN: Sunday, August 30th from 10:00-11:30am (doors open at 9:45)

WHERE: In-Person at Reparations Club (3054 S. Victoria Ave. LA, CA 90016)

HOW: FREE ticket with book purchase through Rep Club – (duh) for 10% off with code: BOOKCLUB10

$10 GA ticket (book purchased elsewhere)

ABOUT THE BOOK

A CINEMATIC, RAZOR-SHARP NOVEL FOLLOWING A BACKLOT FIXER’S DARING INVESTIGATION INTO THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A CLOSETED BLACK ACTOR WITHIN THE GLAMOROUS WORLD OF HOLLYWOOD, FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MY GOVERNMENT MEANS TO KILL ME

Xavier C. Barlow, one of Hollywood’s young Black stars taking the industry by storm in the late 1950s, is Skyline Studios’s ambitious attempt to rival Sidney Poitier’s burgeoning success. His arrival into the industry is calculated, his charm is magnetic, and his seductive screen presence appeals to both audiences and celebrities across generations.

But years later, after Xavier dies at the height of his fame, Aaron Touissant—Skyline’s designated backlot fixer who helps the studio’s stars stay as deep in the closet as humanly possible—is finally ready to expose the powerful culprits responsible for his untimely death.

Written as part-confessional, part-cris de coeur from Aaron’s panoramic lens, There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood is a searing portrait of the movie industry as a manicured minefield and a compelling journey into the queer history of Los Angeles.

RASHEED NEWSON is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was selected as a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. He is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. He codeveloped Bel-Air and worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series. Newson is a 2025–26 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. He currently lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.

ABOUT PERMISSION TO WRITE

ASHLEY M. COLEMAN is the author of GOOD MORNING, LOVE (Simon & Schuster, 2022) and a music industry executive with over a decade of experience. Her work has appeared in Essence, The Cut, Apartment Therapy, and GRAMMY.com. A Torch Literary Arts and Kimbilio fellow, she founded Permission to Write, a community for Black writers.

Book Soup Presents: Chloe Benjamin discussing & signing Under Story

Join Chloe Benjamin in-store for a discussion and signing of her upcoming novel, Under Story!

The New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists returns with an intimate yet epic love story–and a sweeping odyssey of scientific discovery. Under Story invites us to consider the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love, cementing Chloe Benjamin's place among our best, and most lasting, storytellers.

"We wake up to tomorrow, never yesterday."

At the edge of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she's ever known. For ten hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career and a family.

But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can't escape her past. When a strange light appears across the ice–and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo–her former husband, Eli, won't be far behind. Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them–to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?

A breathless page-turner and a love letter to our planet, Under Story grapples with the great questions of our time: human hubris, the precarity of the natural world, and the mysterious webs of consciousness that bind us. A modern epic of science and soul, of bravery and redemption, it offers a vision of the future that demands we reckon with what we owe to one another, and to the earth itself.

PUBLISHED! 2026

Women Who Submit presents PUBLISHED! 2026, a summer celebration and fundraiser honoring a full year of literary publications by women and nonbinary writers. Join ten readers for an evening of stories and poetry, followed by a dessert reception with cake and music, on Friday, July 10 at 7pm at The Democracy Center (alongside the Japanese American National Museum) in downtown Los Angeles. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and every dollar helps Women Who Submit pay writers for their work and keep its programs free. BookSwell is proud to be a community sponsor.

Take Fountain: A Night of Non-Fiction Readings presented by LARB

Join the Los Angeles Review of Books at the historic PRS Library for a night of readings as a part of the YesterdayLA series!

Take Fountain: A Night of Non-Fiction Readings in the PRS Library!

Part of PRS’s YesterdayLA 2026, our monthlong celebration of our beloved city’s rich and diverse past.

LARB presents a night of readings that celebrate the hidden gems and oddities that make L.A. endlessly fascinating. Much like the writing it produces, L.A. is a city unlike any other—its peculiar geography, its infamous highways, the shared and fragmented realities sprawl begets.

Here, throngs of eastbound traffic spill into vast mountainous expanses; going westward, thick smog disappears into misty ocean vapor. This is a city that bears witness to the glamorous and the mundane, and which sits atop a fault line. How strange, how remarkable!

The evening will have readings of non-fiction works from L.A. writers Nikki Darling, Jordan Guevara, Molly Lambert, Tejal Rao, Greg Ruben, and Oliver Wang.

Tickets: $15 (in person only event)

Please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

L.A. Book Launch: Todos Somos Sagrados by Rey M. Rodriguez

Rey M. Rodriguez, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Jose Hernandez Diaz, and William Archila in The Wanda Coleman Theater

Join us for the L.A. Book Launch of Rey M. Rodríguez’s poetry collection, Todos Somos Sagrados (El Martillo Press, 2026). A meditation on the daily community work of neighborhood projects like Proyecto Pastoral in East Los Angeles aiding the unhoused, immigrant, and violence-plagued communities, this body of work collects the many voices that share their pain, joy, and experiences navigating the many battles in life.

The author will be joined by Lorna Dee Cervantes, William Archila, and Jose Hernandez Diaz in The Wanda Coleman Theater.

“A treatise in poetry about one of the most important stories of our time—the formation and work of Proyecto Pastoral in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. Violence, drugs, and death plagued these streets, which in the 1990s and into the 2000s were the most gang-inflicted in the country. But mothers stood up for healing, peace, for saving the children. Projects arose to help youth but also the unhoused and migrants. People in need. God’s work. Powerful figures like Father Greg Boyle met the call. Here, Rey M. Rodríguez uses poems to carry their voices, stories, pains, and joys. In Spanish and English, in any language, it’s a work of art, a work of action.”

—Luis J. Rodríguez, former Los Angeles Poet Laureate, author of Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.” and It Calls You Back: An Odyssey through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing

Doors Open: 6:30 PM Readings: 7:00 PM

Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City. His poetry collection, Todos Somos Sagrados/All Are Sacred (El Martillo Press), released May 2026. He has attended the Yale Writers’ Workshop and Palabras de Pueblo workshop. He participated in Story Studio’s Novel in a Year Program. He graduated with an MFA in fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His poetry is published in Huizache, Anger is a Gift, and Altadena Poetry Review. His many interviews and book reviews can be found at La Bloga, Chapter House’s Storyteller’s Corner, Full Stop, Pleiades Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review. He is a graduate of Cornell, Princeton, and U.C. Berkeley Law School

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of Emplumada, From the Cables of Genocide, Ciento, DRIVE, and April on Olympia. Awarded NEA Fellowships, Pushcart Prizes, a Lila Wallace, state arts grants and best book awards, the founder of Mango Publications (first to publish Sandra Cisneros), Cervantes presented at the Library of Congress, Dodge Poetry Festival, Walker Art Center, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and others. Former Prof. of English and Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder for 20 years, she writes in Seattle.

William Archila is the winner of the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for his collection S is For, a finalist for the California Book Award. He is the author of The Art of Exile and The Gravedigger’s Archeology. His new collection, Canícula/Dog Days, is a bilingual selection of his first two books of poetry. He was awarded the 2023 Jack Hazard fellowship. His work has appeared in AGNl, APR, Copper Nickle, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, TriQuarterly and the anthology Latino Poetry: The Library of American Anthology. He is an associate editor at Tía Chucha Press.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024) The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025) Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025) and the forthcoming, The Lighthouse Tattoo (Acre Books, 2026). He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California at Riverside, and Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee.

About Beyond Baroque

Beyond Baroque is one of the United States’ leading independent Literary | Arts Centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding the public’s knowledge of poetry, literature and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine, Beyond Baroque is based out of the original City Hall building in Venice, California. The Center offers a diverse variety of literary and arts programming including readings and workshops. The building also houses a bookstore with a large collection of new poetry books for sale.

Livestream: If you can’t join us in person the event will be livestreamed on Beyond Baroque’s YouTube channel at the scheduled time of the event. If you are tuning in this way, no ticket purchase is necessary.

If you are attending in person, ticket purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the Beyond Baroque bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. Please arrive early.

Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, staff, fellow attendees, or performers.