Tag Archives: literature

GuerrillaReads No. 70: Monica Wesolowska

Today on GuerrillaReads we launch a special partnership with New Short Fiction, L.A.’s longest-running spoken word series. The writers you’ll see over the next few weeks are all alumni of NSF’s Emerging Voices program. 

Monica Wesolowska‘s work was featured on the NSF stage in 2008. Her writing has appeared in such places as Best New American Voices 2000, Carolina Quarterly, Quarter After Eight, Literary Mama and  New York Times bestseller My Little Red Book. Wesolowska’s debut memoir, Holding Silvan: A Brief Life, is now available from Hawthorne Books.

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GuerrillaReads No. 69: Practical Photovoltaics

For me, reading science textbooks can be like reading in a foreign language written in a familiar Latin script. I may be able to sound out the words, but I don’t always understand what they mean.

The maximum power point is the best combination of voltage and current. This is the point at which the load resistance matches the solar cell internal resistance.

They say the best way to learn a foreign language is to move to the country and live among its people. Welcome to the nation of Practical Photovoltaics by Richard. J. Komp. This book has been a very useful source of background material for a novel I’m writing. The more I read, the more I understand my characters and what they know.

This reading and my light-up dress were inspired by the celebrated Fashion Show Poetry Event and the inimitable Kate Durbin.

Hayley Roper-Fingerhut designed and constructed the lighting for the dress. Video is by Ben Gibbs.  

GuerrillaReads No. 68: MIKE the PoeT

MIKE the PoeT has a date with Density.

He’s got so much guerrilla poetry street cred, that we’re featuring him for a second week in a row. Mike is a fixture in the LA literary scene, writing about the city and its subcultures:

Who’s Sunset Strip sipping?
As the neon super-semiotics
is punctuating the power of place
In this distinctive social space
you call your own home

Mike also blogs at KCET and he’s been featured in the LA Times.

GuerrillaReads No. 67: MIKE the PoeT

MIKE the PoeT is ALIVE in Los Angeles!

Mike Sonksen has been doing guerrilla poetry readings for fifteen years. “On the subway, out on the street, even in the middle of literary events when I wasn’t invited.” His love for the city is rooted in honesty about its beauties and its shortcomings.

I’m alive in Los Angeles
Where there are more angles than isosceles
City topography’s undulating across massive landscapes
We move from chain link to palatial gates in separate economic states

We’ll feature another video from Sonksen next week on GuerrillaReads.

GuerrillaReads No. 66: Santino J. Rivera

¡Ban this! Santino J. Rivera double dog dares you.

Rivera reads his poem “Librarian’s Creed,” which appears in his new book, ¡Ban This! The BSP Anthology of Xican@ Literature.

I must read better than my enemy
Who is trying to ban my books
I must read, write and educate minds everywhere
Before he succeeds.

He did this guerrilla reading at LA’s own Cypress Park Library, just before An Evening of Mass Education. More than twenty contributors to the anthology read from their work, live at the library. More about the event and the book at the Broken Sword Publications website.

As Rivera says, “You can ban our books but you can’t ban our minds.”

GuerrillaReads No. 65: Cheryl Klein

Highland Park’s own Cheryl Klein is the author of Lilac Mines and The Commuters, and a bunch of other great stuff. She also keeps the carbo-healthy Bread and Bread blog.

Klein joined us on the GuerrillaReads Video Walk on March 24, and read these three lovely poems.

GuerrillaReads No. 64: Barbara Andrade DuBransky

We had a fabulous time on the GuerrillaReads video walk! Among the readers who joined us was Barbara Andrade DuBransky. We shot her video in front of an amazing mural showing the history of Highland Park.

Here she is, reading about meditation and grace.