Tag: read-local-socal

Read Local SoCal — July 2026: Amarisa’s Cooking Pot by Désirée Zamorano

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Read Local SoCal July 2026: Amarisa's Cooking Pot by Désirée Zamorano

This Month’s Read Local SoCal Pick

This July, Read Local SoCal is reading Amarisa’s Cooking Pot: Tales of Life in All Its Wonders, the debut story collection from Los Angeles native Désirée Zamorano. Across fairy-tale retellings and quietly desperate kitchens, Zamorano renders Latine lives in all their messy glory — sliding between the fantastic and the ordinary, and never far from a shared meal. Written in Altadena, it’s SoCal storytelling down to its bones. Read along with us all month.

“How deft, vibrant, and heartfelt these stories are.” — Holly Goddard Jones, author of Antipodes and Girl Trouble

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Read Local SoCal is BookSwell’s monthly feature spotlighting Southern California authors. New book every month. See all features →

Read Local SoCal — June 2026: Before You Can Fly by Jase Peeples

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Read Local SoCal June 2026: Before You Can Fly by Jase Peeples

This Month’s Read Local SoCal Pick

This June, Read Local SoCal flies into 1980s California with Jase Peeples’ Before You Can Fly. It’s a tender, sharply observed coming-of-age story about a queer kid finding his footing in a world not yet ready for him — small-town summers, first crushes, hard-won friendships, and the kind of growing up that takes courage before it takes wings. A Southern California author writing the queer California adolescence so many of us lived (or wished we had).

“A coming-of-age LGBTQ+ novel rich in both emotion and insight.”  —Kirkus Reviews

Get the free discussion guide →
Buy the book on Bookshop.org →

Read Local SoCal is BookSwell’s monthly feature spotlighting Southern California authors. New book every month. See all features →