October 12, 2011
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Los Angeles has had a ringside seat during the long last century of racial struggle in America. The bouts have been over money and jobs and police brutality, over politics and poetry and rap and basketball. Minimizing blackness itself has been touted as the logical and ideal solution to the struggle, but in Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line, Erin Aubry Kaplan begs to differ. With eloquence, wit, and high prose style she crafts a series of compelling arguments against black eclipse.
Here are thirty-three insightful and wide-ranging pieces of literary, cultural, political, and personal reporting on the contemporary black American experience. Drawn from the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Salon.com, and elsewhere, this collection also features major new articles on President Barack Obama, black and Hispanic conflicts, and clinical depression. In each, Kaplan argues with meticulous observation, razor-sharp intelligence, and sparkling prose against the trend of black erasure, and for the expansion of horizons of the black American story.
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August 28, 2011
Cherise Charleswell
Author of Real Talk TIPS: Laugh-Out-Loud Pointers & Suggestions For The Morally Challenged, Socially Inept, & Those Who Love Them
For Immediate Release
Contact: Cherise Charleswell 818-521-8422
Event Date: Saturday October 1, 2011
Time: 11:00am – 7:00pm
Location:
The Promenade at Howard Hughes Center
“The Rave 18”, 6081 Center Dr. Westchester, CA
15th Annual Cameron’s Family Book Festival
The Cameron Eugene Jackson Children’s Library will be hosting the largest book club meeting in the Los Angeles area. The festival is free to the public, and includes a day of author signings, panel discussions, and workshops.
The purpose of this project is to promote and celebrate Literacy, music and “The Arts” as well as to help stamp out illiteracy. We would be honored if you would participate. The success of the Festival is directly due to authors like you who plan to embrace this EVENT with your presence.
For more information please contact Marilyn Pitts, Director/Author-Vendor Booths at (323) 841-BOOK or ccnmax@aol.com.
August 7, 2011
LOS ANGELES (AUGUST 2011) – Known as the ‘fastest growing book expo in the country’, the Los Angeles Black Book Expo is set to take place at the Los Angeles Convention Center #403 on Saturday, August 20 from 10:00AM until 6:00 PM. An awesome array of featured guests, celebrities, powerful speakers, and the best up and coming authors join the annual literary celebration. Fresh from her appearances on the Mo’Nique and Wendy Williams shows, the expo is proud to announce Danielle Spencer-Fields known as Rog’s sister Dee from the television show ‘What’s Happening’ is one of the featured guest appearing at the expo this year. At 2:00PM in Room 404 A of the Meeting Room Concourse, she will discuss her new book, “Through The Fire: Journal of a child star” and will take questions from the audience.
Also appearing at LABBX; author and speaker Jewel Diamond Taylor, actress, producer and author Cherie Johnson, Essence bestselling author J.M. Benjamin, contemporary jazz artist, speaker & author Russel Blake, bestselling author Pamela Samuels-Young, NAACP Award winner David G. Brown round up part of the outstanding lineup taking part at the expo.
This year’s expo will feature lively panel discussions and workshops with topics such as a graphic novel panel hosted by Geoffrey Thorne (In the Heat of the Night, TNT’s Leverage, Ben 10, Star Trek: Titan novel), Anthony Montgomery (Star Trek: Enterprise, VH1′s Single Ladies) and Brandon M. Easton (WB’s new ThunderCats series, Transformers: Armada, BlackSci-fi.com) at 12:00 PM in Room 402A followed by a discussion by the Journal of Pan-African Studies of Manning Marable’s ‘Malcolm X: A Life or Reinvention’ beginning at 1:00PM in Room 402 B. Other subjects as they relate to publishing, urban lit, health, relationships, cultural issues, spirituality, creative writing and marketing tips for aspiring authors will also be presented. Poetry, open mics and children’s programs will also be included throughout the day. Admission for LABBX is free to the general public.
The L.A. Black Book Expo is sponsored by the California Crusader News. Empire Beat Magazine and Authors N Focus are media partners.
For more information please visit www.labbx.com or at (323) 718-5678 or info@labbx.com.
About the Los Angeles Black Book Expo
The Los Angeles Black Book Expo through its fiscal sponsor, Amen-Ra Community Assembly of California, Inc. (Amen-Ra Theological Seminary) is a 501(c) (3) organization. It began on June 2004 to celebrate the written word, promote literacy and to showcase new and established authors, storytellers, spoken word artists, children’s book authors, emerging writers, publishers, booksellers, editors and book reviewers local and nationwide.
April 26, 2011
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He’s a hip-hop icon credited with single-handedly creating gangsta rap in the 1980s. Television viewers know him as Detective Odafin “Fin” Tutuola on the top-rated TV drama Law & Order: SVU. But where the hype and the headlines end, the real story of Ice-T — the one few of his millions of fans have ever heard — truly begins.
Ice is Ice-T in his own words — raw, uncensored, and unafraid to speak his mind. About his orphan upbringing on the gang-infested streets of South Central Los Angeles. About his four-year stint in the U.S. Army’s famed “Tropic Lightning” outfit. About his successful career as a hustler and thief, the car crash that nearly killed him, and the fateful decision to turn away from a life of crime and forge his own path to international entertainment stardom.
Ice by Ice-T is both a tell-it-like-it-is tale of redemption and a star-studded tour of the pop culture firmament. The acclaimed rapper and actor shares never-before-told stories about friends like Tupac, Dick Wolf, Chris Rock, and an antler-clad Flavor Flav, among others. Readers will ride along as Ice-T’s incendiary rock band Body Count narrowly escapes from a riotous mob of angry concertgoers in Milan, and listen in as the music legend battles the self-appointed censors over his controversial “Cop Killer” single.
Most of all, Ice is the place where one of the game’s most opinionated players breaks down his own secret plan for living, offering up candid observations on marriage and monogamy, the current state of hip-hop, and his latest passion: doing one-on-one gang interventions and mentoring at-risk youths around the country.
With insights into the cutthroat world of the street — and the cutthroat world of Hollywood — Ice is the inspirational story of a true American original.
Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption-from South Central to Hollywood
by Ice-T and Douglas Century
One World/Ballantine
Available April 19, 2011 in Hardcover
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April 22, 2011
The 5th Annual Leimert Park Village Book Fair in Los Angeles is scheduled for Saturday, June 25th, from 10am to 6pm.
As in our previous festivals, the Book Fair will attract a large number of visitors to the Leimert Park Village for an entertaining day of readings, poetry, and musical entertainment. The centerpiece will be the Authors Tent where we will gather our community of authors to share and sell their works to the public.
The 2011 line-up for the Leimert Park Book Fair of authors, panel discussions, and entertainment promises to be the BEST year ever.
April 14, 2011
To give exposure to African-American authors and writers, increase their book sales, motivate, and develop aspiring new writers and authors.
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WHEN:
Saturday, April 16, 2011 – 9:00am to 4:00pm
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WHERE:
Carson Community Center
801 E. Carson Street
Carson, California 90746
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ACTIVITIES:
Seminars and Workshops
Exhibit Booths
Poetry Jam Competition
Let the Elders Speak Forum
Children’s Writing Contest
Children Writers’ Competition Showcase
April 7, 2011
The annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books will be held:
Saturday April 30, 2011 from 10am – 6pm
Sunday, May 1, 2011 from 10am – 5pm at:
University of Southern California
The intersection of Exposition Blvd and S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90089.
Tickets & Admission
General attendance is free!
Parking
Parking at the USC campus will be $10.
December 20, 2010
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Welcome to Compton where life is similar to Baghdad. Take a peek inside the lives of three childhood friends and journey with them through adult hood. Who dies? who goes to prison? who falls in love? who makes it out? you’ll have to read to find out.
Just Like Compton: Finally a real hood novel (Volume 1)
by Kevon l Gulley
CreateSpace
Available November 7, 2010 in Paperback
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October 30, 2010
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Providing insight on homelessness, political corruption, and the potential effects of gentrification, this urban noir tells the tough story of Magrady, a semi-homeless Vietnam veteran in Los Angeles. As he searches for a friend who has gone missing from Skid Row and who may be involved in a dangerous scheme, Magrady must deal with take-no-prisoners community organizers, an unflinching cop from his past, frequent flashbacks of war, an elderly sexpot, the drug culture, and the perils of chili cheese fries at midnight.
A rollicking interview with the author wherein he discusses ghetto literature, politics, noir and the proletariat, and the unknown future of books, is also included.
The Underbelly (Outspoken Authors)
by Gary Phillips
PM Press
Available September 1, 2010 in Paperback
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August 20, 2010
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NYU Press
Available May 5, 2010 in Paperback
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Los Angeles is well-known as a temperate paradise with expansive beaches and mountain vistas, a booming luxury housing market, and the home of glamorous Hollywood. During the first half of the twentieth century, Los Angeles was also seen as a mecca for both African Americans and a steady stream of migrants from around the country and the world, transforming Los Angeles into one of the world’s most diverse cities. The city has become a multicultural maze in which many now fear that the political clout of the region’s large black population has been lost. Nonetheless, the dream of a better life lives on for black Angelenos today, despite the harsh social and economic conditions many confront.
Black Los Angeles is the culmination of a groundbreaking research project from the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA that presents an in-depth analysis of the historical and contemporary contours of black life in Los Angeles. Based on innovative research, the original essays are multi-disciplinary in approach and comprehensive in scope, connecting the dots between the city’s racial past, present, and future. Through historical and contemporary anecdotes, oral histories, maps, photographs, illustrations, and demographic data, we see that Black Los Angeles is and has always been a space of profound contradictions. Just as Los Angeles has come to symbolize the complexities of the early twenty-first-century city, so too has Black Los Angeles come to embody the complex realities of race in so-called “colorblind” times.
Contributors: Melina Abdullah, Alex Alonso, Dionne Bennett, Joshua Bloom, Edna Bonacich, Scot Brown, Reginald Chapple, Lola Smallwood Cuevas, Andrew Deener, Regina Freer, Jooyoung Lee, Mignon R. Moore, Lanita Morris, Neva Pemberton, Steven C. Pitts, Carrie Petrucci, Gwendelyn Rivera, Paul Robinson, M. Belinda Tucker, Paul Von Blum, Mary Weaver, Sonya Winton, and Nancy Wang Yuen.
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