Tag Archives: memoir

GuerrillaReads No. 100: Lynn Harris Ballen

Lynn Harris Ballen is perhaps best known as a senior producer and co-host on KPFK radio’s fearless Feminist Magazine. She’s also an important player in the LGBTQ literary scene in southern California.

Ballen grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era. Her family’s role in the struggle for majority rule in that country is at the center of the memoir she is currently writing. In this guerrilla reading, Ballen gives us a tantalizing preview of the story she will tell.

And with that, GuerrillaReads turns 100 today! I’ll admit, we’re kinda proud to still be alive and kicking.

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GuerrillaReads No. 85: George Cattan

George Cattan is a life-long political junkie. He was born in Palestine, lived for many years in Syria, and has been writing about political struggles his whole life. He writes in Arabic, and we are fortunate to have this video of him reading in English translation from his memoir.

“Politics,” Cattan tells us, “is like an addiction.” In this reading, he explains how his thinking about politics has evolved over more than seventy years of life experience.

Cattan read for GuerrillaReads as part of a program run by Orange County-based Tiyya Foundation, which provides basic necessities for refugees and displaced American families.

GuerrillaReads No. 61: L. Marie Cook

L. Marie Cook describes herself as “a sexually open potty mouth with a lot to share.” Watch her guerrilla reading from the 10th annual West Hollywood Book Fair to get a taste of what she has to offer in her book, Lay Me Down.

You can read more of Cook’s work – and learn more about the author – on her blog.

GuerrillaReads No. 52: Jeanne Córdova

Jeanne Córdova is a proud troublemaker with a storied history. She’s been an activist nun, human rights editor for the L.A. Free Press, and political organizer. Her newest book, When We Were Outlaws: a Memoir of Love & Revolution, tells her personal story in the context of the struggle for gay rights and women’s liberation in the 1970s.

Learn more about Córdova – writer, activist, publisher and Latina – on her website.

GuerrillaReads No. 46: Stephanie Hubbard

Stephanie Hubbard is an award-winning poet, screenwriter, memoirist and documentary filmmaker. Here she is doing a guerrilla reading from her newest book, Bluff Island Rescue Service.

Here’s a brief intro to the book:

The year before she was born, Stephanie Hubbard’s father – a Madison Avenue magazine writer – bought Bluff Island, an uninhabited forty acre island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Stephanie grew up on this island, a true believer in her father’s idealized version of splendid isolation. But what began as a family adventure became a daughter’s lifelong struggle….

Read more at the book’s website or connect with it on Facebook.