See you at Hollywood Hotel and the Last Bookstore

Just a reminder that I’d love to see you at a couple literary events coming up this month:

The Table Presents: Redemption
Sunday, April 15, 2018, 2:30 pm to 5 pm
Hollywood Hotel, 1160 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles
Free and open to the public!

L.A. Lit Fic – a book club with Siel Ju
(Facebook event page)
*We’ll discuss Scott O’Connor’s A Perfect Universe — and Scott will drop by at the end to answer Qs & sign books!*
Tuesday, April 17, 7:30 pm
The Last Bookstore, 453 S. Spring St., Los Angeles.
Tickets: $35.95 (includes book, libations, snacks)

In other news:

I was interviewed on the Read More Podcast, and the episode is now out!

I judged the fiction contest for Prism Review, the literary journal at University of La Verne. Thanks for the honor and congrats to all the winners!

I said some nice things about Vermin on the Mount for an article at Fear No Lit. Read it — The interview with Vermin host Jim Ruland is both informative and funny — and go to the next Vermin!

Hope to see you IRL soon —

Cake Time celebrates 1 year — April 2018 giveaway

*** Winner selected! Congratulations to Sarah in Montebello, Calif.! ***

Has it already been a year? Around this time last year I celebrated the release of my first book, Cake Time — and haven’t stopped celebrating since.

Cake Time by Siel JuAnd the celebration continues — with a Cake Time giveaway!

First, a bit about the novel-in-stories. When people ask what it’s about, this is what I usually say: It’s about a smart girl who makes risky choices about men and sex in Los Angeles. But here’s a slightly longer description:

Daring yet aimless, smart but slightly strange, Cake Time’s young female protagonist keeps making slippery choices, sliding into the dangerous space where curiosity melds with fear and desires turn into dirty messes.

In “How Not to Have an Abortion,” the teenaged narrator looks for a ride from the clinic between her AP exams. In “Easy Target,” the now-college-grad agrees to go to a swingers party with a handsome stranger. A decade later, in “Glow,” she is suddenly confronted by the disturbing and thrilling fact of her lover’s secret daughter.

Ultimately, Cake Time grapples with urgent, timeless questions: why intelligent girls make terrible choices, where to negotiate a private self in an increasingly public world, and how to love madly without losing a sense of self.

One copy of  Cake Time will be given away to one of my blog readers. All current email subscribers will be automatically entered to win the copy. Subscribe now if you’re not yet getting my occasional newsletters.

For a second chance to win, comment on this post below, naming your favorite kind of cake. The giveaway closes April 30, 2018 at 11:59 pm PST. US addresses only.

The Table: A Reading series that mentors would-be lit event hosts

So you’d like to start a reading series — but don’t know where to start. Well, now there’s a reading series to help you with that!

The Table Reading Series pairs would-be lit event hosts in need of guidance with more seasoned mentors who have lit event organizing experience under their belt. From planning the reader line-up to budgeting to promoting the event, the newbies get the help they need planning one event for the series, while mentors get to pass on their knowledge and know-how. The idea is that organizing one event for The Table will empower the new hosts with the experience and confidence they need to plan more events on their own.

Dreamed up by Natashia Deon, author of Grace and organizer of the (now sadly defunct) Dirty Laundry Lit reading series, The Table held its first event July 2017, with an event curated by Zoe Ruiz. Since then, there’s been one event a month at the Hollywood Hotel, with a new host or few for each event — and new mentors.

“It’s a one time experience for all, unless a mentee chooses to become a mentor,” Natashia says.

I finally made it to my first The Table reading in February. Themed Writing of Exploration, the event was put together by writers Rachael Warecki and Ashley Perez. There were spirited readings, a short panel discussion, a full bar, and free chocolate on the tables —

Make sure to come to the next The Table event — because I’ll be reading! Also in the lineup are memoirist Patrick O’Neil, poet Julayne Lee, Carl Kemp, and Erika Ayon. The event’s organized by Ramona Pilar and Anita Gill, with Women Who Submit cofounder and poet Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo serving as mentor.

The Table Presents: Redemption
April 15, 2018, 2:30 pm to 5 pm
Hollywood Hotel, 1160 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles

Want to be the next host for The Table — or want to mentor a new host? Just email Natashia at info@tablelit.com to get started. Or  go to an event! “The best way to be involved is to come to the event and find me,” Natashia says. “Let’s chat.”

Why There Are Words LA: A nationwide lit series comes to LA

Lots of cities have great literary reading series — and whenever I happen by one while traveling, I wish there were something like it in L.A. too. Other writers, apparently, have also had this same thought — then actually taken action to make it happen. One San Francisco-area reading series has now spread to seven cities across the United States, from Austin to New York to Los Angeles!

That series is Why There Are Words. Founded by Peg Alford Pursell in Sausalito back in 2010, the series came to Los Angeles in February 2017, thanks to a couple of my favorite local literary people, Ashley Perez and Patrick O’Neil. Each event is held in a different space, featuring a motley crew of writers, some published, some not, some local, some on tour.

And I got to read in the series back in April last year! It happened in a sunny Koreatown living room — readers at the mic up front, wine, drinks, and Skylight Books selling books in the back.

The event happens every other month 2nd Sunday of the month, and the next one — themed “Spring is In the Air” — is coming up Sun., April 8 at 6:30 pm at KaffeBaren in downtown LA. Be there to hear Dana Johnson, Yelena Moskovich, Julia Fierro, Kate Maruyama, and Lisbeth Coiman.

Follow Why There Are Words’ Facebook page to hear of future events.

Earlier: 12 literary reading series in Los Angeles

Chat L.A. fiction with me and Scott O’Connor at LA Lit Fic book club 4/17

Thanks to everyone who came to the very first LA Lit Fic — a new book club on L.A. fiction hosted by The Last Bookstore and moderated by me. We talked about Woman No. 17  by Edan Lepucki, who came by at the end to answer questions, mingle over wine and cheese, and sign books.

Sad you missed it? Then get your ticket now for the next LA Lit Fic — so you have time to read the book! We’re reading Scott O’Connor‘s fantastic short story collection, A Perfect Universe. Published just a couple months go, A Perfect Universe tells ten L.A. stories, starring a teenage bicycle thief, an aging actor, coffee shop regulars, and other very L.A. types.

There will be wine and an equally festive non-alcoholic drink, plus cheese, crackers, cookies, and crudite. And yes, Scott himself will drop at the end to answer burning questions, sign books, and hang out with the fans!

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LA Lit Fic with Siel Ju
(Facebook event page)
Our April read: Scott O’Connor’s A Perfect Universe
Tuesday, March 20 at 7:30 pm – 9 pm (Edan arrives 8:30 pm)
The Last Bookstore, 453 S. Spring St., Los Angeles
Tickets: $35.95 (includes a copy of the book, party, and more)
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Be there! Feel free to email or tweet me with any questions.

Earlier:
6 best book clubs in Los Angeles
11 best bookstores in Los Angeles for writers

Hermione Hoby on naivete, trust, and the gradations of love

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Does love exist? Can life matter? Would you try to change the past? These are basically the questions I ask the writers I interview, disguised — some better than others — as questions about writing.

And my latest interviewee, Neon in Daylight author Hermione Hoby, was game for all the oddball questions! Also, she taught me a new word. You know those moving walkways in airports that scoot you along like you’re a piece of luggage on a conveyor belt? Those are called travelators.

Read on to find out if love exists —

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Siel: Neon In Daylight is a coming-of-age story of a girl who moves to New York — with a blurb by Stephanie Danler, who also wrote a coming-of-age story of a girl who moves to New York. I loved both books — and clearly have a thing for coming-of-age novels set in big cities…. What is your favorite coming-of-age novel? Did it or other books serve as a model for your own?

Hermione: Naively, or perhaps plain incorrectly, I never thought of what I was writing as a coming-of-age story, probably because Bill and Inez were as important to me as Kate (the young woman who moves to New York.) I realize, in fact, that I’m really obtuse about the term; I couldn’t tell you what a coming-of-age story is and maybe that’s because life just seems to me a coming of age story – we’re endlessly becoming ourselves.

I don’t think any books served as direct models, but probably a huge portion of almost everything I’ve ever read fed into this book. At a certain point, however, you have to disregard influence and abandon emulation and just become stupid and intuitive and let the book speak to you, rather than the other way round.

I can give you a whole, non-exhaustive litany of writers I love, and with whom I’d be ridiculously honored to be thought of as “in conversation”, but I don’t think that many of them are legible in Neon in Daylight: David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, Zadie Smith, Anne Carson, Virginia Woolf, Joy Williams, Lydia Davis, Toni Morrison, Dana Spiotta, Rachel Kushner, Maggie Nelson, George Saunders, Shirley Hazzard, Elizabeth Hardwick and, argh, a load more too. Just in the last few months I’ve had my mind/heart blown by Ocean Vuong, Sally Rooney, John Keene, Olga Tokarczuk, Carmen Maria Machado…

These are my favorite lines of your novel:

“It’s never love, as soon as you feel the next love. Because isn’t that a prerequisite of the condition? That you tell yourself everything that came before wasn’t really it.”

Which makes me ask — Do you think love is a real thing? Meaning — Do you feel a specific feeling called love exists? Or does love exist only in the naming — Is love simply just whatever conglomeration of feelings we choose to call love at any particular point in time and space?

Oh, I’m so glad these lines spoke to you! And oh wow, a phenomenological question. I believe in love, absolutely, but not as an absolute. What I mean is, it’s not the monolith we make it – there are gradations and it’s not a fixed entity because we’re not fixed beings – we’re relational. The problem is that so many of narratives, from all parts of culture, high and low, render it as both absolute and endgame.

On top of writing fiction, you also work as a freelance journalist. I’m curious how you divvy up your time between these different modes of writing — if at all. And is one form of writing more important to you on a personal level than the other?

When I’m writing fiction the journalism just seems so much easier. It’s like that moment when you step onto a travelator at the airport; you’re still walking and still lugging your suitcase behind you but it’s way speedier and with that mechanised speed comes a sort of levity; one might even be compelled to walk backwards, essay a spot of moonwalking.

Conversely, if I’ve been writing journalism, which is necessarily formulaic, and then I go back to fiction, it feels like freedom.

I love journalism, I believe in the profile as a way to illuminate cultural narratives through an individual, and I’ve seen writers make great literature out of the form, but fiction will always be more important to me. It’s embarrassing to use words like “sacred” but the truth is, it’s always been that for me. It requires more of a reader, for one thing. The reason people cry at novels is because they bring themselves to the narrative – without even knowing it they weft themselves in with the characters, it’s a mutual construction. I’ve always been hopelessly moved by the fact of that mechanism – that communion between writer and reader.

If you were to go through the entire first book process again, from acceptance to publication, is there anything you might do differently?

Oh god, I’d take out a large loan; it’s quite hard to survive on freelance journalism rates, and money-terror is just about the most destructive, suffocating thing for creativity. I wasted so much time, in that respect. It feels almost impossible to inhabit that loose, associative, dreamy, open state required to write fiction when you physically can’t breathe properly out of anxiety about paying the rent. I wish we had a culture that lent more financial support to artists but, well, that’s wishful, and we have to work with what we have. Same old story, same as it ever was.

What are you working on now?

It feels overblown to call it “A Second Novel” because it’s, like, twenty five thousand words right now, but it very much feels to me like it might become a novel. It seems to be telling me where it’s going and what I need to do and I trust it. Although: a month or so ago I told an older and much more accomplished writer that it felt so fluent and great compared to the first (which was excruciating) and how brilliant it was to feel this momentum and yada yada. Whereupon he gave me this grim, shrewd look and asked how many words in I was. I told him, he nodded and then he said, “Ah, the honeymoon. Just you wait.”

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Enter to win a copy of Hermione Hoby’s  Neon in Daylight by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered. Good luck!