LA Review of Books

This week’s show features a recap of Laurie’s recent trip to Broadway, including a review of the hit musical Hamilton. We also discuss the new documentary City of Gold, about legendary Los Angeles food critic Jonathan Gold, and talk with screenwriter John Romano about the late Charles Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

This week’s guest is the acclaimed and often controversial author, playwright, actress, and radio columnist Sandra Tsing Loh. Her latest book, The Madwoman in the Volvo, is an unforgiving memoir about parenting, menopause, and adultery, and she takes us through the entire story and its adaption into a play at the South Coast Repertory theater in Costa Mesa, CA. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

On this week’s show we discuss the new FX miniseries American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, author Antoine Wilson returns to recommend the French short story writer Guy de Maupassant, and Linda Hervieux joins to talk about her new book Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

On this week’s show we discuss the new Showtime series “Billions,” Jerry Stahl returns to endorse Philip Kerr’s trilogy of Berlin novels, and we’re joined by professors Norman M. Klein and Margo Bistis to talk about their new book and companion multimedia project, “The Imaginary 20th Century.” Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

On this week’s show we discuss a panel that Tom Lutz recently moderated at UC Irvine on the limits of free speech with regard to cartooning. Also, former Los Angeles Times book critic David L. Ulin recommends one of his favorite LA books, Armed Response by Ann Rower, and we talk with screenwriter John Romano about his work on the upcoming film adaptation of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

LARB law editor Don Franzen talks about the career of the late supreme court justice Antonin Scalia and whether his unique legal theories will survive him. We’re also joined by Daniel Olivas and Ruben Rodriguez, co-editors of an upcoming anthology of Los Angeles poetry, "The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles", from Tia Chucha Press. "The Coiled Serpent" publishes on April 15, 2016, and Tia Chucha Press will host a launch party for the book during the AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Conference, on March 30, at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

In this conversation taped at a recent LARB Luminary Dinner, Mexican American novelist and pioneer writer of gay literature John Rechy discusses his life and career with LARB Editor-in-Chief Tom Lutz.

On this week’s show, Laurie and Seth (sans Tom) speak with Michael Tolkin, the novelist and award-winning screenwriter of The Player, about his theory that the character of Tom Sawyer is darker than we remember; film critic and beloved Iowan John Powers joins to discuss the results of this week’s Iowa caucuses and whether he feels guilty, as a journalist, for rooting for Trump; and NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar talks about Mycroft Holmes, his well-received debut novel about the brother of Sherlock Holmes. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

On this week’s show, a conversation on the wildly popular Netflix show Making a Murderer; an interview with Phil Zuckerman, author of Living the Secular Life and founder at Pitzer College of one of the first departments of secular studies; and a recommendation by author Bruce Bauman of three books that he describes as a “philosophical and foodie trilogy of the early part of the 20th century.” Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

This week we discuss Woody Guthrie L.A.: 1937 to 1941, a chronicle of Guthrie’s formative years in Los Angeles, during which he not only experimented and refined his music but also found his calling as a political songwriter. Co-authors Darryl Holter and William Deverell join to talk about Guthrie’s legacy in Los Angeles, and Holter even plays a rare Guthrie tune about the city's 1934 New Year’s Eve flood. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

Colin Marshall talks with David. L Ulin, former book critic at the Los Angeles times and author of such books as 'The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith', 'The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time', and the novella 'Labyrinth'. He's also edited the anthologies of Los Angeles writing 'Reading Los Angeles' and 'Another City', and his new book, 'Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles', deals directly with his nearly 25-year history in the city and what it means, to him and others, to live here.

This week’s show features some surprising opinions on the career and life of David Bowie; an interview with author Alex Espinoza, who is currently helping launch California’s first bilingual MFA program at Cal State LA; and a discussion of Sean Penn’s Rolling Stone feature with Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Featuring Tom Lutz, Laurie Winer, and Seth Greenland. Produced by Jerry Gorin. The LARB Radio Hour airs Thursdays at 2:30pm on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles.

Our latest book club featured Percival Everett's 'Half an Inch of Water'. LARB editor-in-chief Tom Lutz spoke with Everett, a prolific writer and professor at USC, at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles on December 12, 2015. Sign up for Tom's Book Club, in which you'll receive four book each year via mail, get exclusive access to conversations with the author and LARB staff about the book on Facebook, and access to live interviews with the author either in person or via video or podcast. https://lareviewofbooks.org/toms-book-club/

Colin Marshall talks with Brad Listi, founder of literary and culture site The Nervous Breakdown and author of the novel Attention. Deficit. Disorder. He is also the host of the podcast Otherppl, on which, right here in Los Angeles, he has conducted “in-depth, inappropriate interviews” with over 400 writers about their lives, their working methods, their social media habits, and what they think happens when we die — among many, many other topics.

Colin Marshall talks with J. Ryan Stradal, fiction editor at The Nervous Breakdown, editor-at-large at Unnamed Press, and advisory board member at 826LA. He is the author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest, which offers at once its own spin on the modern food novel and its own spin on the modern family novel, telling dozens of stories about midwesterners and the food they eat through the rise of one young girl, connected to all of them, who becomes one of the most respected chefs in America.