Tag: Memoir

THIS IS A (REP CLUB) BOOK CLUB

This is a Rep Club Book Club. We read Black books and talk about them.

Wanna read more in 2026 and need some accountability partners at your favorite bookstore? We got you. We also got a community of readers who would love to meet you. Join us! Let’s read more!

WHO & WHAT: Rep Club and YOU! Join us monthly or pop in once. Our reads will span genres and themes, and we’ll be led by Rep Club bookseller extraordinaires Bri & Hannah!

October read: Mazywood by Tananarive Due

Get it at Rep Club (duh) for 10% off with code: BOOKCLUB10

WHEN: Sunday, Oct 25th from 10:00-11:30am (doors open at 9:30)

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

HOW: Suggested $5 ticket (this is non-refundable and goes toward snacks)

ABOUT THE BOOK

S. A. COSBY’S ALL THE SINNERS BLEED MEETS PERCIVAL EVERETT’S ERASURE IN THIS LITERARY THRILLER FOLLOWING THE GRANDSON OF A FAMOUS BLACK ACTRESS FROM THE 1920S TO THE 1940S, NOW A FILMMAKER HIMSELF, WHO RETURNS TO HIS GRANDMOTHER’S CABIN RETREAT IN THE CALIFORNIA MOUNTAINS ONLY TO ENCOUNTER THE LEGACY OF HER RAGE BORN IN OLD HOLLYWOOD.

Award-winning author Tananarive Due returns with the follow-up to the multi-award-winning The Reformatory in this generational novel of rage. With flashbacks to Johnny’s grandmother—who brushed shoulders with giants like Lena Horne, Clark Gable, and Hattie McDaniel—this novel explores three generations, beginning with Mazelle Washington’s life as a young actress. Fifty years after Mazelle’s death, Johnny will discover the secret she kept and nurtured since she was a child, when she had a dark wish come true.

A monster lurks outside Mazywood, hidden for generations, and Johnny brought his family to its hunting grounds.

TANANARIVE DUE is an American Book Award and NAACP Image Award­–winning author, who was an executive producer on Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror for Shudder and teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA. She and her husband, science fiction author Steven Barnes, cowrote the graphic novel The Keeper and an episode for Season 2 of The Twilight Zone for Paramount Plus and Monkeypaw Productions. Due is the author of several novels and two short story collections, Ghost Summer: Stories and The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. She is also coauthor of a civil rights memoir, Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights (with her late mother, Patricia Stephens Due). Learn more at TananariveDue.com.

Fiction & Memoir Generative Surge

A generative prose workshop with Dylan Landis

For writers at all levels who wish to advance work in progress or launch something new. This workshop is structured around a timing and intention-setting method that helps writers work in highly productive bursts with enhanced focus. Prompts will be provided to those who find them useful. During a break, we’ll also engage a deep relaxation method that segues, for each writer, into a silent interview with a chosen character (fictional or real), deepening access to our own subconscious material.

About the Facilitator

Dylan Landis is the author of List of All Possible Desires and Normal People Don’t Live Like This, both novels in stories, and Rainey Royal, a novel and New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her fiction has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and her essays in Harper’s Magazine and Modern Love. She lives in Los Angeles.

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.

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

Workshop 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 workshops, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, staff, fellow attendees, or performers.

Dustin Hoffman with Ariel Levy

Dustin Hoffman in conversation with Ariel Levy discussing his memoir, “Look at Me”

Please note:

— Tickets cannot be re-sold on re-seller platforms. Re-sold ticket will not be honored.

— Tickets are non refundable and are not transferable.

— All ticket holders should be ready to show ID at the event.

— The name(s) you provide during registration will be on a will-call list at the event, where you will check-in and get your ticket to enter the theatre.

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Join us for an in-person and virtual* Live Talks Los Angeles event:

Friday, November 13, 2025, 8pm

*Virtual event airs on November 20 at 6pm PT/9pm ET

Dustin Hoffman in conversation with Ariel Levy

discussing his memoir, “Look at Me”

TICKETS:

$65 General Admission ticket + signed book

$100 Reserved Section Seating + signed book

Additional books available for purchase at event

The virtual version of this event airs on November 20, 2026, at 6pm PT/9PM ET and is available on video-on-demand for five days. Tickets include a signed copy of the book.

Virtual Tickets can be purchased here.

ASL interpreter provided upon request.

Free parking at the venue

A deeply entertaining and intimate memoir by Dustin Hoffman, one of the most acclaimed actors of our time, whose work across Hollywood, film, and theater has reflected the changing zeitgeist of America.

A two-time Academy Award winner and seven-time nominee whose arrival in Hollywood helped usher in a new and revitalized approach to filmmaking, Dustin Hoffman continues to add singular performances to a career rich with characters that have obliterated the line previously dividing the archetypes of “character actor” and “leading man.” He plans to live to be at least a hundred years of age, and he does not plan to retire.Ariel Levy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2008 and received the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism in 2014. She is the host and co-creator of the podcast The Just Enough Family and the author, most recently, of The Rules Do Not Apply. Levy is also co-author of Hoffman’s memoir.For nearly six decades, Dustin Hoffman has been one of the most compelling and unpredictable figures in American culture. From his breakthrough performance in The Graduate to his unforgettable roles in Midnight Cowboy, Tootsie, Rain Man, and beyond, he has spent a lifetime inhabiting extraordinary characters and redefining what a Hollywood leading man could be.Now, in his memoir, Look at Me, Hoffman turns his remarkable powers of observation on himself. Warm, candid, hilarious, and deeply moving, he writes about art, ambition, family, friendship, love, aging, the mysteries of a creative life and what matters most as he enters his ninth decade.

Along the way, Hoffman shares stories that are by turns outrageous, poignant, and unforgettable: an unexpected clash with Steve McQueen, adventures in Greenwich Village during the turbulent 1960s, encounters with legends including Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Mike Nichols, Robert Duvall, Arthur Miller, and Gene Hackman, and the personal experiences that shaped some of his most celebrated performances.

An Evening with Andy Serkis

An Evening with Andy Serkis discussing his memoir, “My Pressures: The Bizarrely True Story of Andy Serkis”

Please note:

— Tickets cannot be re-sold on re-seller platforms. Re-sold ticket will not be honored.

— Tickets are non refundable and are not transferable.

— All ticket holders should be ready to show ID at the event.

— The name(s) you provide during registration will be on a will-call list at the event, where you will check-in and get your ticket to enter the theatre.

———————————————————-

Join us for an in-person and virtual* Live Talks Los Angeles event:

Friday, November 6, 2025, 8pm

*Virtual event airs on November 13 at 6pm PT/9pm ET

An Evening with Andy Serkis

discussing his memoir, “My Pressures: The Bizarrely True Story of Andy Serkis”

TICKETS:

$55 General Admission ticket + signed book

$65 Reserved Section seat + signed book

Additional signed books available for purchase at event

The virtual version of this event airs on November 13, 2025, at 6pm PT/9PM ET and is available on video-on-demand for five days. Tickets include a signed book.

Tickets for the virtual event can be purchased here (includes the signed book).

ASL interpreter provided upon request.

Free parking at the venue

If Gollum, Caesar and Ulysses Klaue could hear Andy Serkis tell his story, would they choose him to play them? This is the question at the heart of his long-awaited memoir.

Andy Serkis is best known for his portrayal of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a role that brought him international recognition. He went on to play King Kong in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes films, and Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars, among others. Additional credits include acclaimed performances in The Prestige, Black Panther and The Batman, as well as award-winning television programs such as Andor and Longford. Andy has also established himself as a director with films including Breathe, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. His contributions to cinema have been recognized with a BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema, multiple Empire Awards, Saturn Awards, and a Daytime Emmy, along with several nominations from BAFTA and the Golden Globes. In 2011, he co-founded The Imaginarium Studios, a leading production and performance-capture company. Andy lives in London with his family.

Beginning in a childhood split between Ruislip and Baghdad, Andy Serkis takes us – and his characters – on a journey through the early influences that shaped him: acting mentors, early roles at a regional repertory theatre, a passion for mountaineering, a desire for film-making and the love story with Lorraine Ashbourne that became the foundation of his life. Then, the call arrives in 1999 that changes everything. Peter Jackson is preparing to make The Lord of the Rings and Andy is asked to audition for the voice of a certain animated character.

What follows is an extraordinary behind-the-scenes journey through the fantastical worlds Andy has helped shape – The Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes, Black Panther, Star Wars and more – as he pioneered a new form of performance that would forever redefine the possibilities of cinema.

In this memoir, Andy invites us into a genre-defying conversation between actor and character, imagination and reality, and provides an answer to the question: what would Andy’s most iconic characters make of the man that brought them to life?

Tony Shalhoub & Josie Adams

Tony Shalhoub & Josie Adams discussing their book, “We Thought They’d Never Leave: Musings on Food and Family.”

Please note:

— Tickets cannot be re-sold on re-seller platforms. Re-sold ticket will not be honored.

— Tickets are non refundable and are not transferable.

— All ticket holders should be ready to show ID at the event.

— The name(s) you provide during registration will be on a will-call list at the event, where you will check-in and get your ticket to enter the theatre.

———————————————————-

Join us for an in-person and virtual* Live Talks Los Angeles event:

Thursday, November 5, 2026, 8pm

*Virtual event airs on November 12 at 6pm PT/9pm ET

Tony Shalhoub & Josie Adams

discussing her book, “We Thought They’d Never Leave: Musings on Food and Family”

TICKETS:

$50 General Admission ticket + signed book

$75 Two General Admisison tickets + ONE signed book

Additional signed books available for purchase at event

The virtual version of this event airs on November 12, 2026, at 6pm PT/9PM ET and is available on video-on-demand for five days. Tickets include a signed book.

Tickets for the virtual event can be purchased here (includes the signed book).

ASL interpreter provided upon request.

Free parking at the venue

From Emmy, Tony, and Golden Globe winner Tony Shalhoub comes a delightful, heartfelt memoir about food, family, recipes, and the stories we pass down around the table..

Tony Shalhoub is an Emmy, Tony, and Golden Globe winning actor whose career spans film, television, and theater. He is best known for his roles in Monk, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and Wings, and has appeared in dozens of acclaimed films and television projects. On Broadway, he has performed in The Band’s Visit, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, as well as Conversations with My Father, Golden Boy, and Act One. He has also received multiple Screen Actors Guild Awards, among numerous other honors recognizing his work on stage and screen. We Thought They’d Never Leave is his debut book.

Josie Adams is a writer, producer, and founder of House of Water, an independent production company focused on writing and development. She was adopted at birth from Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Los Angeles. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two children.

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We Thought They’d Never Leave marks the literary debut of TonyShalhoub, the beloved actor who, for the first time, has gathered delightful stories, memories, and recipes to create this timely, feel-good collection.

Written with his daughter, Josie Adams, the book is a humorous and heartfelt portrait of place, family, and food. At its center is the annual Shalhoub summer reunion in Door County, Wisconsin—a tradition that pulls ten siblings, their children, and their children’s children back to the same stretch of land, carrying decades of shared history with them.

Through rich vignettes drawn from his parents, his siblings, and the many summers spent crowded around long tables, Tony reflects on the meals, mishaps, and small moments that link one generation to the next—from his childhood in a lively Lebanese American household in Green Bay to the beautiful, chaotic gatherings that continue today. Along the way, he includes several family recipes that have stood the test of time.

Part memoir and part family-history—full of games, gatherings, and Shalhoub lore, plus twenty recipes—We Thought They’d Never Leave is a love letter to food, family, tradition, and the kind of loud, affectionate, ever-growing family reunion that somehow always makes room for one more at the table.