LIVE! From City Lights

Nelson George celebrates the release of his two new books, The Lost Treasures of R&B and The Hippest Trip in America: Soul Train and the Evolution of Culture & Style with City Lights and Adam Mansbach. Nelson George is an author, Read More ...

Zyzzyva celebrates its 30th Anniversary at City Lights! hosted by Laura Cogan and Oscar Villalon with a special presentation by Octavio Solis, featured in the Zyzzyva Winter issue. Zyzzyva is publishing a piece of his called “Retablos,” vignettes of his Read More ...

Barry Gifford reads from his new novel The Up-Down, published by Seven Stories Press. A breakthrough novel from an American master about lost loves and the search for meaning in unlikely places. Barry Gifford’s culminating work of fiction follows a Read More ...

Eli Horowitz reads from his co-authored book with Chris Adrian, The New World, an ambitious and imaginative novel that pushes the boundaries of the science fiction genre. An innovative story of love, decapitation, cryogenics, and memory by two of our Read More ...

Emily Schultz reads from her new book The Blondes with special appearances by Joyland Magazine alumni Ruth Galm and Rachel Khong. During a still hot autumn in New York City, a rabies-like illness spreads among blonde women, causing them to Read More ...

City Lights celebrated the release of The Complete ZAP Comics and ZAP Comics itself at a party on Jaunuary 22nd, 2015. The Complete Zap Comix from Fantagraphics with Robert Williams, Victor Moscoso, and Paul Mavrides discussion moderated by Gary Groth Read More ...

Viet Thanh Nguyen reads a thrilling excerpt from his debut novel, The Sympathizer at City Lights. “Magisterial. A disturbing, fascinating and darkly comic take on the fall of Saigon and its aftermath and a powerful examination of guilt and betrayal. Read More ...

Ryan Gattis reads from his latest and best work to come, All Involved, a historical fiction novel that details the brutality of the Rodney King riots at City Lights. A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast’s Richard Price—a brutal and mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty, set in the chaotic streets of South Central L.A. in the wake of one of the most notorious, incendiary, and racially charged trials of the 1990s, involving the severe beating of a civilian black man and three white LAPD officers During the infamous 1992 Rodney King Riots in LA, 4,000 California Army National Guardsmen patrolled the city to enforce the law. At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted two Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue civilian Rodney King, and failed to reach a verdict on the same charges involving a third officer. Less than two hours later, the city of L.A., a powder keg of racial tension, exploded in violence as people took to the streets in a riot that lasted six days. In 144 hours, fifty-three lives were lost. Yet, that number does not account for the murders that occurred outside active rioting sites—some committed by gangbangers who used the chaos to viciously settle old scores. A gritty and cinematic work of fiction, All Involved vividly recreates this turbulent and terrifying time through seventeen interconnected first-person narratives. Focusing on a sliver of Los Angeles almost completely ignored by the media during the riots, Ryan Gattis paints a portrait of modern America itself—laying bare our history, our prejudices, and our complexities. Resonant with the voices of gang members, firefighters, graffiti kids, and nurses caught up in these extraordinary circumstances, All Involved is a literary tour de force that catapults this edgy writer into the ranks of such legendary talents as Dennis Lehane and George V. Higgins. “All Involved is a symphonic, pitch-perfect, superlative novel.  It is visceral and adrenalin-fuelled, yet tender and even darkly comic.  It is audacious, unflinching and subversive.  It doesn’t judge.  It swallowed me whole.”—David Mitchell, author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas Ryan Gattis is a novelist, lecturer at Chapman University, and Creative Director for urban art crew UGLAR (uglarworks.com). He is the author of the novels Roo Kickkick & The Big Bad Blimp; Kung Fu High School, The Big Drop: Homecoming and The Big Drop: Impermanence. He lives in Los Angeles.

City Lights, Radar Productions, Mutha Magazine, and Raising a Reader Bay Area were thrilled to celebrate the publication of their first kid’s book on March 28, 2015 at City Lights Bookstore. Author Kate Schatz and artist Miriam Klein Stahl offered an engaging presentation that involved a reading from the book, a slideshow and Q&A, and a conversation about how to be rad! Kate and Miriam are both mothers and teachers, so they’re no stranger to entertaining young folks—audience participation was encouraged. This event was hosted by Michelle Tea! At this event, Miriam also participated in silk-screening, so guests brought a t-shirt, onesie, or other clothing item to rock their own Rad American Women A-Z gear!

The Baffler Party with Tom Frank and John Summers celebrated the release of No Future For You: Salvos from The Baffler from The MIT Press (Co-published with The Baffler) at City Lights Book store. There’s never been a better time to be outside the consensus—and if you don’t believe it, then peer into these genre-defining essays from The Baffler, the magazine that’s been blunting the cutting edge of American culture and politics for a quarter of a century. Here’s Thomas Frank on the upward-falling cult of expertise in Washington, D.C., where belonging means getting the major events of our era wrong. Here’s Rick Perlstein on direct mail scams, multilevel marketing, and the roots of right-wing lying. Here’s John Summers on the illiberal uses of innovation in liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts. And here’s David Graeber sensing our disappointment in new technology. (We expected teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, and immortality drugs. We got LinkedIn, which, as Ann Friedman writes here, is an Escher staircase masquerading as a career ladder.) Packed with hilarious, scabrous, up to-the-minute criticism of the American comedy, No Future for You debunks “positive thinking” bromides and business idols. Susan Faludi debunks Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg’s phony feminist handbook, Lean In. Evgeny Morozov wrestles “open source” and “Web 2.0” and other pseudorevolutionary meme-making down to the ground. Chris Lehmann writes the obituary of the Washington Post, Barbara Ehrenreich goes searching for the ungood God in Ridley Scott’s film Prometheus, Heather Havrilesky reads Fifty Shades of Grey, and Jim Newell investigates the strange and typical case of Adam Wheeler, the student fraud who fooled Harvard and, unlike the real culprits, went to jail.

Hosted by Wave Books Editor at Large Matthew Zapruder, with authors Garrett Caples, Anthony McCann, Hoa Nguyen, Cedar Sigo, & Rachel Zucker reading from their recent books published by Seattle-based poetry publishing house Wave Books. Wave Books is an independent poetry press based in Seattle, Washington, dedicated to publishing exceptional contemporary poetry, poetry in translation, and writing by poets. The press was founded in 2005, merging with established publisher Verse Press. By publishing strong, innovative work in finely crafted trade editions and hand-made ephemera, we hope to continue to challenge the values and practices of readers and add to the collective sense of what’s possible in contemporary poetry.

Roxane Gay discusses her new book, Bad Feminist, at City Lights Book Store. Bad Feminist is a collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

The book release party for Deep Code by John Coletti, no. 12 in the City Lights Spotlight Series. John Coletti reads from his new collection, with an appearance from Micah Ballard, author of Waifs and Strays (CL Spotlight No. 6), who reads “greatest hits” and new work. *** Deep Code explores “side language,” as a subset of other languages, whether slang or metaphor, to both communicate and obfuscate. Combining a bent lyric perception with a fragmentation redolent of French cubism, Coletti portrays contemporary urban experience, from power relations and personal loss to nights among city dwellers recording their convivial distress, glad and dissolute at once. Part teddy bear fleeing the cultish outlines of the American northwest, part Apollinaire in Brooklyn, Coletti culls his materials from the ether and assembles them into resonant structures at once intensely personal and strangely universal—a little outrageous—both confusingly lovely and apt in their ungainliness. Lines like “I’m nearly home is what everyone says” and “triceratops & the bad glue / that made us good friends,” only begin to demonstrate the astute linguistic eye and deft line break sense of John Coletti. Praise for Deep Code: “A sonic surrealist typewriter clacks in rhythm across Colletti’s brow. Read it in his sweet-eye glance: poetry grams of tender touch. Tuff cookie meat! & mystery. Shit is electric wire awesome stuff.”––Thurston Moore “Deep Code is a theory of expressive subterfuge performed as piecemeal continuities. Its poems are distressed & fine like all the chances we forget we’re free to make for one another, edged to mellow like the contours of a party felt in general & intimate perception.”––Dana Ward About the Author: John Coletti is the author of the book Mum Halo (2010) and the chapbooks Same Enemy Rainbow (2008) and Physical Kind (2005). With Anselm Berrigan, he is the author of the limited edition Skasers (2012). He has served as editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter and co-edits Open 24 Hours Press. Other projects include a collaborative print with artist Kiki Smith, a chapbook collaboration with Shana Moulton, and a libretto for Excelsior, an opera composed by Caleb Burhans commissioned by Chicago’s Fifth House Ensemble which premiered in 2013.  

John Coletti talks to Garrett Caples about his book, Deep Code. Garrett Caples is the editor of the City Lights Spotlight Series, of which Deep Code is the 12th edition. In this interview, John Coletti reads the poem “Gasoline: Toys” from the collection and talks about the story behind its composition. The two discuss the difference between the form in this new collection and his last book, Mum Halo, and much more.

Thomas Page McBee speaks to City Lights about his new book, Man Alive. In this recording of the interview, McBee talks about his writing process and how he came to write the memoir. He also talks about his work in The Rumpus and what lays ahead for him in his literary career. For more about Man Alive, go here.