Celebrate the joy of reading at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, happening April 18–19 at the USC campus.
This FREE, weekend-long event brings together hundreds of authors, poets, storytellers, and book lovers for panels, signings, performances, and family-friendly activities across indoor and outdoor stages.
Wisdom Quarterly joins in to distribute free Buddhist titles at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 2026 (Book Row behind main stage)
Find LAist.com at two booths, Booth 154 (marketing team) and Booth 723 (education team), connecting with the LA and OC community, giving away free books, and sharing plenty of LAist swag.
Whether one is catching a panel or just exploring the festival for reading material in the company of authors, stop by to say hello and be part of one of the country’s largest celebrations of storytelling. Free, open to the public, with no RSVP required. More
(KCW Attractions) April 28, 2025: LA Times Festival of Books at USC (April 27, 2025) featured TV star Wilmer Valderrama. Who? He's a Hollywood man-about-town (who dated many incredible women to prove his prowess as a super sexy Latin heartthrob, who is now on about writing with an insightful discussion concerning his book, An American Story. Hear his inspiring journey and thoughts on his work. #AnAmericanStory
We often hear said that "Los Angeles has no culture." That may be. But we do have the country's largest book festival.
Who knows who's doing all that reading, but we buy a lot of books and launch more careers than Nashville, Frisco, and even the Empire State, the Big Apple, where allegedly if one can make it there, one can make it anywhere.
How to boil down this mega literary festival full of authors, promoters, publishers, and poets?
To boil down the whole two-day event on the USC campus near the heart of the city (DTLA), there was this former teenage heartthrob named Avan Jogia. His post-teen fans mobbed the Poetry Stage tent to marvel at his ability to write, express emotion, and cuss. It was hot. (It wasn't but if one loves a TV star and sees him in real life, dressed in suit, tie, and checkered Vans, hey, that's something. What is it? An opportunity to sell lots of copies of a personally autographed hardcover poetry book about the darker side, very Emo and slightly Goth, called Autopsy (of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob).
USC encourages responsible graffiti: It's lit
The annual Los Angeles Festival of Books on the USC campus (now in a kind of lockdown status requiring picture ID to enter) is here, hosted by the Los Angeles Times.
It is two full days of authors, book sales, literary performances, networking, seeing and being seen, getting published, and maybe even wrangling a book deal with a major publishing house.
Don't count on it. There's nearly no money on anything but novels that get picked up and converted into something else by the Hollywood Machine, the dream of any serious writer eager to cash in rather than promote the art of communication and literature.
Books, books, read books on Venus and Mars!
There is also a religious section and a massive Buddhist organization giving out FREE sacred Buddhist texts and titles from both the back-to-basics historical Buddha-oriented Theravada tradition and the much larger Amitabha (a Cosmic Buddha) and Guanyin (Goddess of Compassion) emphasizing Mahayana school and its apocryphal writings. A lovely Muslim organization will have literature as in years past. Bring a book bag, enjoy food and live entertainment, and lots of schmoozing and walking around like a college coed. Info: Festival of Books
30 Years of Stories: The L.A. Times Festival of Books Returns
Modern "readers" prefer more pictures, manga, anime, and comics with easy emotional signaling
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is marking its 30th anniversary as it returns to USC’s University Park Campus all day on April 26-27, 2025. For three decades, this beloved event has brought together book lovers, authors, and storytellers to celebrate the written word. Join fellow book enthusiasts as USC welcomes the community to its campus for this annual event. Visit the L.A. Times Festival of Books at USC website
"[H]ome is a safe zone/no, bitch face is safe zone,/bitch face is home" ("Ode to My Bitch Face")
Get Lit Host Mason Granger baseball cap and t-shirt (LAist.com design/Get Lit)
Young poet Olivia Gatwood reads for her large YouTube following (nytimes.cf)
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The Prose Bowl: A Night of Spoken Word Poetry with [the youth poets of] Get Lit
It’s a celebration of Los Angeles poetry at LAist with Get Lit - Words Ignite! In this new three-part live event series, Get Lit youth poets, standout local artists, and a nationally renowned featured poet will get together for a night of spoken word performance poetry hosted by Get Lit’s Mason Granger (he/him).
Come early to enjoy sweet snacks from Day & Night Cereal Bar, sips, a DJ set from Austin Antoine (he/him), and tons of cool people to connect with in the name of poetry.
Drinks, music, and snacks start at 6:00 pm, and the show kicks off at 7:00 pm. Join LAist for its series kickoff on Friday, Sept. 8, with feature poet Olivia Gatwood.
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GET LIT YOUTH POETS
Pluto Saidkarie*
Jasmine Minchez*
Jonathan Smith*
Naomi Farkas*
Dharma Lemon
Austin Antoine
Raul Herrera
Celia Douglas
Christian Perfas
Erica Almond
*2023-2024 The Get Lit Players (GLPs) are an award-winning performance troupe of youth poets, who’ve performed at the United Nations, Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center, and White House — to name only a few. Every year they perform live for over 50,000 of their peers, and their videos have been watched online over 300 million times.
Message from the event organizer: Register for The Prose Bowl: A Night of Spoken Word Poetry with Get Lit. Free seats will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis unless one reserves a Preferred ticket. The doors will open 30 minutes prior to the show. Questions? Reach LAist via email at events@laist.com. The Prose Bowl | LAist.com
Upcoming Series dates: Fridays, Oct. 6 and Nov. 17, 2023
ABOUT THE POETS: ...DHARMA LEMON (she/her) is a writer and teaching artist from Los Angeles. Dharma is quirky and passionate. She writes about feminism, body positivity, the environment, and racial injustice. She is inspired by writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Huey P. Newton, Patricia Smith, and Amari Baraka. Dharma has performed and taught workshops at UCLA, CAAM, and The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. She has performed at Firedrill Fridays with celebrity activists like Jane Fonda, Joaquin Phoenix, Rainn Wilson, and many others. Dharma has also performed in "Artists for Amazonia '' with Kali Uchis, Barbara Streisand, Morgan Freeman, among others. Dharma Lemon has been published in GLAFF’s book titled Bridges, performed in the closing ceremony of GLAFF, and presented a “Tree of Life Award” to Patricia Arquette. Her passion doesn't just register in her writing but also in her love for activism....
The Get Lit Players will spend the next year honing their skills and enjoying exciting and unique workshops, paid performance and networking opportunities, and a lifetime of support from Get Lit’s community.
ABOUT FEATURED POET:
Yeah, I have resting bitch face (Buttons Poetry)
OLIVIA GATWOOD (she/her) is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and has received international recognition for her poetry, writing workshops, and work as a Title IX Compliant educator in sexual assault prevention and recovery. Her work historically focuses on stories about young womanhood as a site for obsession, intimacy, and hysteria, often pulling from horror and surrealism to depict a coming of age. Gatwood's performances have been featured on HBO, Huffington Post, MTV, VH1, and BBC, among others. Her poems have appeared in The Poetry Foundation, Sundance Film Festival, Lambda Literary, and The Missouri Review, among others. She is the author of two poetry collections, New American Best Friend and Life. She is the co-writer of the film The Governesses alongside Director Joe Talbot (The Last Black Man in San Francisco). Her debut novel, Whoever You Are, Honey, will be released in 2023. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
ABOUT HOST: Mason Granger is the deputy director at Get Lit. Originally from Philadelphia by way of Willingboro, NJ, Granger is a poet with 19+ years of professional experience on stage and in classrooms across 49 states and six countries as part of the performance poetry trio, The Mayhem Poets. In 2014, he created SlamFind, a digital platform to connect fans of poetry videos with the poets and live poetry venues where these videos are born. Connecting the poetry community to itself and the rest of the world continues to be the foundation of his work to this day.
Between 2016-2018, Mason was the official videographer for Poetry Slam Inc., producing several iconic poetry videos that continue to garner millions of views across multiple platforms. In the spirit of his mission of always keeping the "live" in "live poetry," he also hosted the weekly PoetNY open mic at Bowery Poetry Club in NYC from 2017-2019 while also serving as executive director of Bowery Arts & Science through 2019.
Now as a Los Angeles resident in his fourth year with Get Lit, Granger continues to pursue creative projects, while helping to shape the future of spoken word poetry education in the State of California and beyond.
SPECIAL ACCOMMODATIONS LAist is committed to providing access and accommodation for individuals with disabilities at events. To request accommodations, please email events@laist.com or call (626) 585-5222 at least one week (7 days) in advance of the event.
Read Values, Commitments, and Code of Conduct on orders on how to behave at nominally leftwing events.
Ticket revenue generated from these programs helps LAist continue to deliver timely and dynamic in-person and virtual experiences that support the public service mission of Pasadena's LAist as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Donate today
National Poetry Month: Annual event, April 29, 2023 reading
ALTADENA POETS LAUREATE present Poetry & Cookies. Join fellow writers for readings by poets published in the Altadena Poetry Review. This program is made possible by the Friends of the Altadena Library:
Angela Peñaredondo (she/they) is a queer, nonbinary Filipinx writer and author of nature felt but never apprehended (Noemi Press, March 2023), All Things Lose Thousands of Times (winner of the 2016 Inlandia…
Jen Bradford (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Bradford Theatres, March 15, 2011; Larry Mantle, AirTalk (scpr.org, 11/17/22)
Avenue Q: "The Internet is for Porn"
(Bradford Theatres) After nearly five years of mischief, bad behavior, and political incorrectness, London's funniest show by far hit the road and came to The Alhambra for one week only.
"THE BEST MUSICAL OF THE DECADE" screams the Sunday Times.
See bradford-theatres.co.uk for details and age suitability. See also Amanda Rodriguez.
From the moment there was an “online,” there was sex online. The famous test image used by software engineers to develop formats like the jpeg was “Lena,” taken from Playboy’s November 1972 centerfold.
Early bulletin boards and multi-user domains quickly came to serve their members' sexual musings. Facebook started as a way to rate “hot or not” Harvard co-eds.
In fact, virtually every significant development that defines the Internet we know and love (and hate) today — privacy issues, government surveillance, corporate individual spying and mass data collection (to then hand that data over to government agencies for the asking), online payments and online banking, dating, social media, streaming technology, mass data collection — came out of the meeting of sexuality and technology.
The kicker is, not only did sexuality vastly influence the Internet, but the Internet arguably changed modern human sexuality by giving every imaginable non-heteronormative community a place to explore, fantasize, thrive, and be accepted and out.
A lively history, filled with broad themes and backstories, pioneering personalities and eureka-moments, How the Internet Changed Sex... is a short, serious, and highly entertaining look at the intertwining convergence of sex and the Internet.
Written by Samantha Cole, who’s been on this beat as a senior writer for Vice, How the Internet Changed Sex... covers everything from:
Jennicam (remember her?) to the problem of “deep fakes”;
“A Brief History of Online Dating” to how the government has been trying to reckon with NSFW content;
cybersex to what VR (virtual reality) spaces like the Metaverse holds for future of human sexual interactions.
Porn is just one part of the story. Rather, this is a story about human nature during the digital gold rush of the last fifty years. More
The city and Southland’s free books and authors festival returns for its 8th year with two days of readings, panels, discussions, performances, workshops, and literary activities. Over 150 authors and special guest speakers will appear in more than 50 events from the afternoon into the late evening. LitFest Pasadena is held throughout the historic Playhouse District at Vroman’s Bookstore, the Pasadena Playhouse, and other local establishments within walking distance.
In memoriam: This year’s LitFest Pasadena is dedicated to [former food addict] Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic, who was a frequent participant and supporter of LitFest. He was also a contributor to the Literature for Life online publication and teacher resource, which brings authors into classrooms in Los Angeles public schools.
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