Southern California, the setting of dark literary classics like The Big Sleep, L.A. Confidential, and Devil in a Blue Dress, is ideal for a noir novel, with its vast deserts, Hollywood glamor, and shady figures who lurk in unexpected places. Acclaimed authors Tod Goldberg and David L. Ulin know the setting and the genre well, and as part of our Writers on Writers series, they’ll join us on Alta Live to venture into their latest novels, exploring mystery, crime, and heart-pumping thrills in the Golden State. Longtime friends and colleagues, the pair will examine the question that every aspiring author wants to know: what does it take to make it as a working writer today? Join us for this fascinating conversation between two writers, experts at keeping us on the edge of our seats.
About the guests
Tod Goldberg is the author of over a dozen books, including The Low Desert, Gangsterland, Gangster Nation, The House of Secrets (which he coauthored with Brad Meltzer), Living Dead Girl, and the popular Burn Notice series, three times a finalist for the Scribe Award. His books have been published in a dozen languages around the world and were twice named a finalist for the VN international Thriller of the Year Award.
His short fiction has been collected in three volumes—Simplify, which won the Other Voices Book Prize and was a finalist for the SCBA Award, Other Resort Cities, and his book The Low Desert: Gangster Stories—and has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Mystery & Suspense. His nonfiction has appeared in numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal, among countless others and has earned five Nevada Press Association Awards for excellence, while his essay “When They Let Them Bleed” was selected for Best American Essays. For his body of work, Goldberg was honored with the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
Goldberg holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bennington College and is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside where he founded and directs the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. He lives in Indio, California, with his wife, Wendy Duren.
David L. Ulin is the author or editor of nearly 20 books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the novel Ear to the Ground. His fiction has appeared in Black Clock, the Santa Monica Review, Scoundrel Time, and Zyzzyva, among other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, he is the books editor of Alta Journal and a professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the literary magazine Air/Light.
About their books
Gangsters Don’t Die: Mafia hit man turned rabbi Sal Cupertine is ready to get out of the life. But it’s not going to be easy. His once-brilliant plan to pass himself off as Rabbi David Cohen is unraveling. Enemies on both sides of the law are hot on his trail. His wife and son are unreachable in witness protection and are probably in danger. In order to find his family, get out of the desert alive, and salvage his long-sought-after happy ending, Sal is going to have to confront some very bad people from his past.
Native American kingpin Peaches Pocotillo has wrested control of Chicago’s mob family while expanding his criminal empire in the West and now seeks to settle an old score with Sal. These two antiheroes have a history that stretches back decades, and the blood feud between Peaches and Sal will lead them to a violent showdown deep in the heart of the low desert.
As complications cast old revelations in a new light, including one that stretches back to the long-ago death of Sal’s infamous gangster father Dark Billy Cupertine, Sal must team up with some unlikely allies—and confront the reality of who he has become—in this stunning conclusion to the popular and critically acclaimed Gangsterland trilogy.
Thirteen Question Method: In Thirteen Question Method, a man hides out in a Hollywood apartment from a past he doesn’t want to remember and a present he is desperate to avoid. The summer sky is thick with ash, and across the courtyard, his neighbor won’t stop screaming. When she asks for help in an inheritance dispute with her estranged stepmother, he is drawn into a web of fear and manipulation, until he begins to lose sight of what is real. Echoing the work of Dorothy B. Hughes and James M. Cain, David Goodis and Albert Camus, Thirteen Question Method is a churning psychological thriller, set against the backdrop of contemporary Los Angeles. In a novel inspired by classic noir, David L. Ulin excavates the depths of a disintegrating soul.
About Alta’s Writers on Writers series
Celebrating writers and their work is one of the core missions of Alta Journal, and we’re proud to work with some of the West Coast’s best. But how do writers like C Pam Zhang, Forrest Gander, and Lydia Kiesling make the magic that results in our inevitable need to read one more chapter, turn one more page, and devour one more poem? Alta’s Issue 25, The Writer’s Issue not only examines the practice and art of writing but also includes a special pull-out guide to 126 books written by Alta contributors over the past two years. Alta Live, our Wednesday Zoom interview series, takes this focus on authors one step further with our Writers on Writers series that will feature noted authors and Alta contributors in conversation with one another. Throughout the month of October, Alta Live will exclusively offer intimate, eye-opening, and hopefully extremely fun discussions between two writers working in the same genre.•
