The moment we’ve all been waiting for is almost here! We hope you’ve had an invigorating time reading Robin Coste Lewis’s Voyage of the Sable Venus, in preparation for Thursday’s event with Lewis herself, host John Freeman, and hopefully you, dear reader!
We are eager to hear Freeman talk with Lewis about the process of writing Voyage of the Sable Venus, art history, and the Western literary canon.
Here are the details of the event:
- When: Thursday, June 17, at 5 p.m. Pacific time.
- Where: To join the event on Zoom, click here.
- What: Your host, John Freeman, will be in conversation with Robin Coste Lewis, author of Voyage of the Sable Venus.
- Author questions: Please send questions for Robin Coste Lewis to info@californiabookclub.com. You can also submit them using Zoom’s chat feature after the event begins.
- Attend to win: We will be giving away author-signed copies of Voyage of the Sable Venus to five attendees, selected at random, following Thursday’s program.
- Mark your calendars: Upcoming CBC discussions with William Finnegan, author of Barbarian Days, on July 15 (at 5:30 p.m.); Dana Johnson, author of Elsewhere, California, on August 19; and Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell, on September 23.
To sign up for Alta Journal’s California Book Club for free, click here. And don’t forget to join your fellow book club members in the Alta Clubhouse for ongoing discussions about our selected book of the month.
Thanks, and see you Thursday!
JOIN THE CLUBHOUSE CONVERSATION
ART JOURNEY
CBC host John Freeman outlines the way Robin Coste Lewis’s Voyage of the Sable Venus is an “exhibit of exhibits, an ode to Black joy, and a meditation on the metaphysics of the Black body—in particular, a Black woman’s body.” Alta
FEVER DREAM
Alta Journal’s books editor, David L. Ulin, considers how Rosecrans Baldwin’s Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles is an “ambitious and audacious piece of writing,” even as it “makes leaps it can’t quite sustain.” Alta
POET LAUREATE
Did you know that Robin Coste Lewis was named the poet laureate of Los Angeles in 2017? Read more about the work she spearheaded in that role. Alta
BOOKS FOR PRIDE
A group of writers from the Bay Area have made an amazing list of LGBTQIA+ books to read during Pride Month. Datebook
HARD TOPICS IN FICTION
“Overlooking painful stories is still part of the problem,” Lisa Taddeo says of confronting the complexities of life in her writing. Bustle
THE DOCK OF THE BAY
Dan Gentile found the Bay Area dock where Otis Redding composed one of his last songs, which became a megahit in the late ’60s. SFGate
GENRE OF CONFINEMENT
Miriam Pensack details the horrors of incarceration, focusing on pieces of writing from and about Guantánamo Bay. Los Angeles Review of Books
AROUND THE WORLD
Maggie Shipstead speaks with Laurie Muchnick about the research and writing process of her latest book, Great Circle. Kirkus Reviews
TAKE THAT, AMAZON
Dave Eggers’s The Every—the follow-up to his scathing satire of tech, The Circle—is due out in October, and the novel’s hardcover edition will be available exclusively from independent bookstores. New York Times
WRITING PROCESS
“I try not to be in control of the meaning of my writing, or even the themes, and try instead to obey the sound of them, the form of them,” Rivka Galchen says of writing Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch. Vulture
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