- Title: Founder and lead facilitator of Julie’s Book Groups, a service that provides moderation for private book clubs.
- Location: Mid-City Los Angeles
- The job: Goler selects and researches books, prepares discussion questions, and moderates about 10 private monthly book clubs.
- Brass tacks: Groups hire Goler for a standing monthly meeting, most often held in private homes.
- Run of show: Dinner and drinks from 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m., discussion from 7:45 p.m. to around 9 p.m. Groups range from 10 to 22 members; Goler’s preferred size is 14.
- Clients: Predominantly women, many of them writers in entertainment. Many of Goler’s groups meet for years, sometimes decades. “They are like a family,” she says.
- Past picks: The House of Doors, by Tan Twan Eng; The Lion Women of Tehran, by Marjan Kamali; The Painted Veil, by W. Somerset Maugham.
- Genre: Mostly contemporary fiction that’s widely reviewed. “Anything that Maureen Corrigan recommends on NPR, I like,” Goler says.
- Tone: Structured discussion meets fun dinner party.
- Ethos: Goler wants to know every member by name. When the discussion drifts, she steers it back with her go-to prompt: “Why did the author choose to [blank]?”•
This article appears in Issue 35 of Alta Journal.
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Jennifer Lewis is the editor in chief and publisher of Red Light Lit, a small press and reading series established in 2013. She is the author of the short story collection The New Low, published by Black Lawrence Press.
