The Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology is a 200+ page collection of poetry, essays, stories, and memoirs about Charles Bukowski, along with portraits of Bukowski by over seventy authors and artists from around the world. 

S.A. Griffin, co-editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, progenitor of The Poetry Bomb and the Carma Bums, lives, loves and works in Los Angeles.

Joan Jobe Smith, founding editor of Pearl Magazine and the Bukowski Review, has published 25 books, most recently the literary profile Charles Bukowski Epic Glottis: His Art & His Women (& me) (Silver Birch Press, 2012).

Fred Voss, a machinist for 35 years, has been published internationally in hundreds of literary journals and has done seven reading tours of the UK to promote his books published by Bloodaxe: Goodstone (1991, Carnegie Hall with Tin Walls(1998), and 2008's Hearts and Hammers of the Gods. He was a 2013 winner of the Nerve Cowboy chapbook competition.

Fairy Tale Comics: Classic Tales Told By Extraordinary Cartoonists (First Second Books)

Join us as Vanessa Davis ("Puss in Boots"), Gigi D.G. ("Little Red Riding Hood") and Bobby London ("Sweet Porridge") discuss their contributions to this fantastic guide to some of your favorite fairy tales.

From favorites like "Puss in Boots" and "Goldilocks" to obscure gems like "The Boy Who Drew Cats," this volume has something to offer every reader. Seventeen fairy tales are wonderfully adapted and illustrated in comics format by such noted artists as Raina Telgemeier, Brett Helquist, Cherise Harper, and others. Edited by Nursery Rhyme Comics' Chris Duffy, this jacketed hardcover is a beautiful gift and an instant classic.

Praise for Fairy Tale Comics:

"A quirky and vibrant mix of visually reinterpreted fairy tales compiled by the editor of the Eisner-nominated Nursery Rhyme Comics."-- Kirkus Reviews

"Nineteen cartoonists re-envision the world of “once upon a time” in this collection of 17 fairy tales . . .These adaptations are sure to enchant devotees of comics and those who like a fresh and distinctive approach to fairy tales." -- School Library Journal

Vanessa Davis' first book, Spaniel Rage was published by Buenaventura Press in 2005. Her newest book, Make Me A Woman, was published by Drawn & Quarterly. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Psychology Today, Dissent, The Jewish Daily Forward, Saveur, Lucky Peach, Vice, Spongebob Comics, Seven Stories Press, Chronicle Books, and First Second. She is also a contributing editor over at Tablet.

Gigi D.G. is the writer/illustrator of Cucumber Quest. She lives in California and her passions are colors, sweets and cute video games.

No Regrets, Coyote, the latest offering from acclaimed novelist John Dufresne, is a crime story, but Wylie “Coyote” Melville is no detective. A therapist by trade, the highly observant and analytical Wylie becomes a volunteer forensic consultant late one Christmas Eve when he receives a phone call from his friend Detective Sergeant Carlos O’Brien of the Eden Police Department, requesting his immediate assistance on a fresh homicide case. Wylie has an innate ability to take in a scene and provide it with narrative structure—Carlos calls him a mind reader, but that’s not exactly right. “I read faces and furniture,” Wylie explains. “I can look at a person, at his expressions, his gestures, his clothing, his home, and his possessions, and tell you what he thinks, if not always what he’s thinking.”

In this smart and utterly absorbing thriller, Dufresne masterfully introduces a host of quirky, realistic, three-dimensional characters. The effect is a carefully crafted character study of Wylie himself, as we get to know his motivations, his thought processes, and his limitations. No Regrets, Coyote is a dazzlingly intricate mystery that elevates the genre with its pointed insights into the workings of the human mind.

Praise for No Regrets, Coyote:

“No Regrets, Coyote is a very cool ride. If Raymond Chandler was reincarnated as a novelist in South Florida, he couldn’t nail it any better than John Dufresne.” —Carl Hiaasen

“If anyone has a vision of the world as compellingly particular and compassionate as John Dufresne’s, I don't know who. No Regrets, Coyote takes noir fiction and slivers it with shards of humor, ironic insight, and an almost hallucinogenic specificity. This is lean and honest storytelling that is as moving as it is engaging. Read this book. Believe me, you’ll have no regrets!” —Andre Dubus III

“Get ready to read this one twice, people—once to see what happens, and again to savor the sentences. Here, American treasure John Dufresne has written a noir, but instead of playing by the rules of noir, he makes noir play by the Rules of Dufresne. And we are the beneficiaries. So sit back, put a cooler of beer by your chair, and settle in, you’ll be here awhile:No Regrets, Coyote is impossible to close.” —Tom Franklin

“The ordinary crime novel narrows as it goes, the possibilities limited by deductive reasoning. But John Dufresne’s No Regrets, Coyote is an extraordinary novel, expanding until anything seems possible and everyone connects. Steeped in place, wholly original, it is, line by line, one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.” —Laura Lippman

John Dufresne is the author of seven books, including New York Times Notable Books Love Warps the Mind a Little andLouisiana Power & Light. He lives in Dania Beach and teaches creative writing at Florida International University.

Saving the Season (Knopf Publishing Group) 

A stylish, richly illustrated, practical guide for home cooks and preserving enthusiasts, the first cookbook from journalist Kevin West, author of the popular blog Savingtheseason.com. 

Incorporating classic favorites and new flavors, West gives us more than one hundred recipes, organized by season, for sweet preserves and savory pickles; easy-to-can vegetables and fruits; condiments such as relishes, chutneys, and salsas; and cordials, candies, and cocktails. Interspersed with the recipes are chronicles of West's travels and the history of American preserving traditions from California to New Mexico to Long Island. A witty and erudite culinary companion, West makes a rich and entertaining story of the introductions to the recipes. Also included is a primer on preserving techniques that addresses issues of food safety and nutrition. 

KEVIN WEST is from rural Blount County in eastern Tennessee. He attended Deep Springs, an experimental college in the White Mountains of California, and Sewanee: The University of the South. For 13 years he was on staff at W magazine, with postings in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, where he was West Coast editor and where he still lives. He runs the blog SavingtheSeason.com; writes about food, culture, and travel; and produces a retail collection of jams and marmalades. He is certified as a Master Food Preserver by the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Join us tonight for a reading from the latest issue of Santa Monica Review, one of Southern California's most revered literary journals. SMR editor Andrew Tonkovich will be introducing three of the contributors to the 2013 fall issue. 

Andrew Nicholls began writing for radio, stage, syndicated cartoonists and TV in high school in Ontario, Canada. In his twenties he staffed The Tonight Show for six years, four of them as Johnny Carson's head writer and, with his writing partner Darrell Vickers, has created or staffed over 100 sitcoms, children's and animated series, thanks to which he has a 2005 memoir, Valuable Lessons, about failed television. He has recent humor in McSweeney's Internet Tendency and Los Angeles Review of Books and short fiction upcoming in Black Clock, Kugelmass and the teacher's resource site Literature For Life.

g. c. cunningham, a UCLA graduate, lives in Los Angeles, sometimes working in film post-production, other times in Birmingham, Alabama, state of origin. His fiction is printed in Bat City Review, Cutbank, Denver Quarterly, Fiction International, Portland Review, Texas Review and  Western Humanities Review. Google him for selections online at Eclectica, Fringe, Potomac Review and McSweeney's. "My First Marine Corps Essay" won 2nd place in Fringe's 2012 flash fiction contest judged by Steve Almond.

Ryan Ridgeis the author of the story collection Hunters & Gamblers, the poetry collection Ox, as well as the chapbooks Hey, it's American and 22nd Century Man. His work has appeared in Tin House, McSweeney's Small Chair, The Southern California Review, The Mississippi Review, The Los Angeles Review, Hobart, Consequence, and elsewhere. Managing editor at Juked Magazine, he writes and teaches in Southern California.

Join us as Patricia Engel reads from her debut novel It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, a vibrant, wistful narrative about an American girl in Paris, who navigates the intoxicating and treacherous complexities of independence, friendship, and romance.

Lita del Cielo, the daughter of two Colombian orphans who arrived in America with nothing and made a fortune with their Latin food empire, has been granted one year to pursue her studies in Paris before she must return to work in the family business. She moves into a gently crumbling Left Bank mansion known as “The House of Stars,” where a spirited but bedridden Countess Séraphine rents out rooms to young women visiting Paris to work, study, and, unofficially, to find love.

Cautious and guarded, Lita keeps a cool distance from the other girls, who seem at once boldly adult and impulsively naïve, who both intimidate and fascinate her. Then Lita meets Cato, and the contours of her world shift. Charming, enigmatic, and weak with illness, Cato is the son of a notorious right-wing politician. As Cato and Lita retreat to their own world, they soon find it difficult to keep the outside world from closing in on theirs. Ultimately Lita must decide whether to stay in France with Cato or return home to fulfill her immigrant family’s dreams for her future.

Praise for Patricia Engel:

“With unsparing psychological precision . . . Engel has fashioned . . . an arresting voice: immediate, unsentimental, and disarmingly direct.”–Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Combining scintillating prose and poetry, Legacy examines the effects of war on soliders, their families and their communities and looks at the affirmation required for the human spirit to transcend despair. It is a book about the legacy of war for those who remain. Legacy is sure to remain with you long after you've closed the final page.

Praise for Legacy:

"Fuller pretty much eschews literary rules and conventions and, rather cleverly and clandestinely, stitches into his tightly-wound nightmarish narrative all of the essential elements of the classic novel form: a plot that rushes forward ruthlessly; a deep and richly purified character study of a man inundated in a tsunami of existentialism -- ending in a bone-crushing Cri de Coeur; and a commanding, pitiless consciousness that gnaws on the broken carcass of the reader's assumptions, if not his flesh, long after the book has been read."--Warren John Deacon, writer, director, teacher

"When you read this book, be prepared to be challenged. You will be challenged with word choice and you will be challenged to pay attention to every line. You can never drop your guard. This is not a light book."--Barb Cowles, writer, editor, publisher

Michael Woodworth Fuller is a diverse writer, having written poems, dramas, historical non-fiction, film and television. He wrote for the Promo Department at CBS-TV, particularly for Mission Impossible, Hogan's Heroes, The Andy Griffith Show, andGomer Pyle. He free-lanced for television with Alan J. Levitt and scripted several independent films, prominent among themPeace for a Gunfighter. In poetry, Michael has two published poems in the Library of American Poets, "Darryl" and"Firewood." While spending most of his time on Legacy, he wrote ISOMATA: The Place and its People, a history of the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, now known as Idyllwild Arts. Forthcoming after Legacy is Five!, a volume of short stories also to be published by Event Horizon Press.

With such seminal movies as The Exorcist and The French Connection, Academy Award–winning director William Friedkin earned his place in the pantheon of great filmmakers. A maverick from the start, Friedkin joined other young directors such as Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich in ushering in Hollywood’s second Golden Age in the 1970s. His long-awaited memoir, The Friedkin Connection, provides a candid portrait of an extraordinary life and career, offers a window into the rarified world of Hollywood and reveals all of the decisions—technical, artistic, and business—he confronted in crafting his distinctive and landmark films.

The Friedkin Connection takes readers on a journey through the numerous chance encounters and unplanned occurrences that led a young man from a poor urban neighborhood to success in one of the most competitive industries and art forms in the world. With keen wit and intellect, Friedkin proves as gifted a storyteller on the page as he is on the screen, taking readers from the streets of Chicago to the executive suites of Hollywood, from star-studded movie sets to the precision of the editing room.

“Friedkin’s book does the unthinkable: It relates the behind-the-scenes stories of his triumphs like The French Connection andThe Exorcist, but also sees Friedkin take responsibility (brutally so) for his wrong calls, like Sorcerer and Cruising. In doing so, he captures the gut-wrenching shifts of a filmmaker’s life — the bizarre whipsaw from success to disaster.”

“For aspiring directors, a glimpse into the school of hard knocks, but there’s plenty of good stuff, lean and well-written, for civilian film fans, too.” —Kirkus Reviews

Rebecca Solnit is an award-winning author whose distinctive voice has earned her much praise; the San Francisco Chronicle described her as “who Susan Sontag might have become if Sontag had never forsaken California for Manhattan.” Her exquisite new book, THE FARAWAY NEARBY, is set in motion with a gift of one hundred pounds of ripening apricots, which come from a neglected tree her mother could no longer attend to. The story of the fruit serves as a gateway for Solnit to relate intimate details about her own life, from the history of her complicated and tempestuous relationship with her mother, now suffering from memory loss, to an unexpected invitation to visit Iceland, to her own medical emergency. 

Visit www.rebeccasolnit.com

 A riveting and revealing look at the shows that helped cable television

"The new golden age of television drama--addictive, dark, suspenseful,

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