CaliforniaAuthors - News and notes from America’s largest book market
March 16, 2010

Flash: CaliforniaAuthors news via Twitter

West Coast book news moves fast. Now CaliforniaAuthors keeps pace with Twitter updates. Here are our most recent tweets.

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The latest on Book Soup and other SoCal bookshops

The SCIBA newsletter brings this upbeat report from the indie book world:

2010 is off to a roaring start with rep changes, a new store and several new owners to our existing stores. Pages: A Bookstore (Manhattan Beach) celebrates [its] grand opening on March 12. Both The Frugal Frigate in Redlands and The Yellow Book Road have new owners that are continuing the traditions of great independent bookselling in their stores. Vroman’s purchase of Book Soup is complete, keeping Book Soup as Glenn Goldman intended – Bookseller to the Great & Infamous!

Posted by Donna Wares, January 26th, 2010 | Permalink
File under: Booksellers

About Arianna Huffington’s new book club

Four years after creating the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington moves into Oprah’s territory with the launch of the HuffPost Book Club. “Her first selection praises the slowness that’s gone missing from our lives,” says writer Toby Warner. “So, is the queen of 24/7 news downshifting?”

Read Warner’s Q & A with Huffington at Bold Type.

Posted by Donna Wares, October 28th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Bookbloggery

Update: SCIBA names 2009 book award winners

On Saturday night, indie booksellers from throughout Southern California gathered at the Los Angeles Biltmore to hand out book awards at the annual Author’s Feast.

Here’s a rundown of the 2009 winners:

Fiction: Shanghai Girls by Lisa See (Random House)
Nonfiction: Celebrating with Julienne by Susan Campoy (Prospect Park Books)
T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award: The Grift by Debra Ginsberg (Shaye Areheart Books)
Children’s Novel: Hunger by Michael Grant (HarperCollins)
Children Picture Book: Too Many Toys by David Shannon (Scholastic)
Glenn Goldman Art & Architecture Book Award: Faces of Sunset Boulevard by Patrick Ecclesine (Santa Monica Press) and Annie Liebowitz At Work by Annie Liebowitz (Random House) (tie)

Previously at California Authors: SoCal Independent Booksellers Awards, 2009 edition.

Posted by Donna Wares, October 25th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Prizes and awards

LAT: Vroman’s to buy Book Soup

Two of Southern California’s major independent bookstores are about to become partners: Pasadena-based Vroman’s has signed an agreement to purchase Book Soup in West Hollywood, the Los Angeles Times reports tonight.

Glenn Goldman, Book Soup’s longtime owner, began looking for a buyer when he fell severely ill, and the fate of the store has been up in the air since his death early this year. “Glenn and I had talked about it,” Vroman’s President and chief operating officer Allison Hill told The Times Friday night, “and we’ve been in conversations with the seller since January.”

Read more of Carolyn Kellogg’s report here.

Previously at CaliforniaAuthors: `The little store he made so carefully’

Posted by Donna Wares, October 9th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Booksellers, Southern California

SoCal Independent Booksellers Awards, 2009 edition

The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association has named its finalists for the 2009 SCIBA Book Awards.

The awards honor fiction, nonfiction, mystery and children’s books by Southern California writers. This year, indie booksellers have added a new category — the Glenn Goldman Art & Architecture Book Award — in honor of the beloved founder of West Hollywood’s Book Soup. We are especially proud to announce that CaliforniaAuthors’ own Donna Wares is nominated in this new category with photographer Rick Rickman for their book, The Wonder Years.

Winners will be announced Oct. 24 at the annual Author’s Feast in Los Angeles. Here’s the complete list of finalists:

Fiction
sciba-awards-fiction-2009

The Signal by Ron Carlson (Penquin)
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See (Random House)
The Women by T.C. Boyle (Penquin)

Nonfiction
sciba-awards-nonfiction-2009

Eat Los Angeles by Colleen Dunn Bates (Prospect Park Books)
Losing My Religion by William Lobdell (HarperCollins)
Celebrating with Julienne by Susan Campoy (Prospect Park Books)

T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award

Trust No One by Greg Hurwitz (St. Martins)
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (Ballantine Books)
The Grift by Debra Ginsberg (Shaye Areheart Books)

Children’s Novel

Hunger by Michael Grant (HarperCollins)
Pendragon Book Ten: Soldiers of Halla by D. J. MacHale (Simon & Schuster)
The Year the Swallows Came Early by Kathryn Fitzmaurice (HarperCollins)

Children Picture Book

Pete and Pickles by Berkeley Breathed (Penguin)
Too Many Toys by David Shannon (Scholastic)
Our Library by Eve Bunting (Houghton Mifflin)

sciba-awards-art-2009

Glenn Goldman Art & Architecture Book Award

The Wonder Years by Rick Rickman & Donna Wares (Chronicle Books)
Faces of Sunset Boulevard by Patrick Ecclesine (Santa Monica Press)
Annie Liebowitz At Work by Annie Liebowitz (Random House)

Read more about the awards here.

Previously at CaliforniaAuthors.com: 2008 SoCal Book Awards.

Posted by Kate Cohen, August 24th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Art, Booksellers, Children's books, Fiction, Mystery/crime, New Release 2008, New Release 2009, Nonfiction, Prizes and awards

Reading LA: `I’ve seen the future and it is literate’

Sophie Heawood of UK’s Independent takes in the LA bookscape and marvels at a thriving scene.

There’s one shop called Skylight Books, where they had to hastily scrawl signs saying “full to capacity” last night, after so many people crowded on to the street to see hit author Dave Eggers talk about his new book and sign copies…

Then there’s Family, an intriguing shop that celebrates local underground talent, selling writing by a bunch of old drunks like Charles Bukowski and a generation of DIY-published new ones…

And then there’s the wonderful and enormous Book Soup, stocking 60,000 hand-picked titles on that same Sunset Strip where Hugh Grant hand-picked his prostitute…

Keep reading here.

via paperhaus

Posted by Donna Wares, August 24th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Booksellers, Buzz, Los Angeles

Tip: Try punishing the tendency to avoid writing

caspianBest-selling author and USC Creative Writing Professor Gina B. Nahai talks with with Poets & Writers Magazine about finding inspiration. She offers this suggestion:

“(S)ome of my students who’ve had trouble finishing a book or a story because they keep second-guessing every word they write, swear by the Web application Write or Die, which ‘encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing.’ I’m told it’s stressful, but I’ve seen great results in terms of productivity.”

Read more of Nahai’s comments and suggestions from other writers here.

Posted by Donna Wares, July 21st, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Writing

The Wonder Years: Athletes Who Never Slow Down

wonder-years-cover
I am excited to announce the upcoming publication of The Wonder Years: Portraits of Athletes Who Never Slow Down, a stunning book being released this summer by Chronicle Books. I was privileged to work on this project with Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Rick Rickman and an extraordinary cast of senior athletes and former Olympians who inspired and humbled me daily. These folks give us all hope for the future.

For the past two decades, Rick has traveled the country chronicling the lives of aging adventurers and amateur athletes who defy the conventional wisdom about what it means to grow old in our society. He likes to talk about the senior underground, a movement that has quietly exploded to include an astonishing 350,000 men and women now competing at the local and state level in hopes of making it to the show – National Senior Games.

No surprise that Rick’s passion led him to become the official photographer for the National Games. These championship games arrive on the West Coast for this first time in August 2009, just as The Wonder Years is being released. More than 10,000 elite athletes will gather on the Stanford University campus Aug. 1- 15 to compete for medals in 18 sports.

These athletes keep raising the bar higher and higher — breaking barriers, setting records, and showing us all the path to The Wonder Years. I’m delighted to introduce some of these exceptional men and women and to share some of Rick’s portraits right here at California Authors.

Posted by Donna Wares, June 23rd, 2009 | Permalink
File under: New Release 2009, Photography

Writer’s life: At home with Ayelet Waldman

LA Times writer Susan Salter Reynolds spends a day in Berkeley with Ayelet Waldman — Jersey girl, Wesleyan smarty-pants, Harvard Law grad, former public defender, mother of four, and author of a new book, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. “Sitting around her kitchen table, surrounded by her children’s drawings and books and all that sunlight,” Susan writes, “you’d swear this was the Bay Area version of the Cleaver household.”

Posted by Donna Wares, June 13th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Author's life, New Release 2009

A California writer’s notes on a simpler life

Pico Iyer reflects on the Joy of Less in the NYT:

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did.

Posted by Donna Wares, June 10th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Author's life

Connelly’s grim slice of the times

The New York Times features Michael Connelly’s 20th (!) crime novel, The Scarecrow, which reprises reporter/hero Jack McEvoy. This time, though, the once-cocky newsman is searching for a SoCal serial killer and fighting for his own survival. Says Marilyn Stasio, “Here, the voice is considerably more subdued and more than a little desperate, as Jack, who has just been pink-slipped at The Los Angeles Times, latches on to another psycho as his professional meal ticket, envisioning one last great story before The Times, if not the entire newspaper industry, goes down in flames.” Keep reading here.

Posted by Donna Wares, May 23rd, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Mystery/crime, New Release 2009

Two-award day for All the Saints of the City of Angels

This just in from J. Michael Walker: “A quick note at midday to share some awesome news: All the Saints of the City of the Angels just won (in the same week!) two awards. First, We won the US Review of Books-Eric Hoffer Award for Art Book of 2009. Also, We won the Independent Publishers Book Award for Best General Non-Fiction about the Pacific-West United States. (This prize was a tie for the Gold with a very cool book, California Trip, by Richard Blair and Kathleen Goodwin.”

Congrats!

Posted by Donna Wares, May 11th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Uncategorized

Best Books Awards, Northern California edition

The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association handed out its annual book awards this week. Executive Director Hut Landon shares the winning titles:

Fiction: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Dial).

Nonfiction: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, by Van Jones (HarperOne).

Poetry: My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, by Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press).

Children’s Literature: Steinbeck’s Ghost, by Lewis Buzbee (Feiwel & Friends).

Children’s Illustrated: One, illustrated by Kathryn Otoshi (KO Kids Books).

Regional Title: Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, by Frances Dinkelspiel (St. Martin’s).

Read more here.

Posted by Donna Wares, April 24th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Northern California, Prizes and awards

Catch a ride to the Festival of Books

SoCal Book Scene offers this excellent suggestion: Hitch a ride Saturday with Vroman’s or Warwick’s to the Los Angeles Festival of Books at UCLA. Take a moment to do the math: 130,000 attendees. 24,000 parking spots. Then get on the bookstore bus.

Here’s the rundown on this year’s festival, which features 450 authors, opening with Friday night’s Book Awards dinner and continuing through Sunday on the UCLA campus.

Posted by Donna Wares, April 21st, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Booksellers, Events and festivals

Remembering California novelist James D. Houston

From the Los Angeles Times:

James D. Houston, a novelist, essayist and short-story writer firmly rooted in the West, whose works explored his native California, Hawaiian culture and, in collaboration with his wife, the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, died Thursday at his home in Santa Cruz. He was 75.

His death was due to complications of cancer, according to his daughter Gabrielle.

Houston was the author of nine novels, including “Snow Mountain Passage” (2001), inspired by a personal link to the ill-fated Donner Party of early California history, and “Bird of Another Heaven” (2007), about a 19th century woman of Hawaiian and California Indian ancestry.

Keep reading here.

Lisa Alvarez at the excellent Mark on the Wall blog has compiled a collection of links and remembrances. “Jim was one of the good guys,” she says.

Posted by Donna Wares, April 18th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Uncategorized

Dictionary Project seeks an author spokesperson

T. Katz sends word that the California Dictionary Project, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that donates dictionaries to third graders in public schools, is looking for a California author to help spread the word about the group’s work.

She explains: “Yes, a well-known California author (or even more than one would be super) who would be willing to lend their smile and `stamp of approval’ (a paragraph or two) on the website and print material to show support of the California Dictionary Project.

“That’s about it. Just hoping to find someone who wants to help shine a light on an important part of the learning process — the sometimes underappreciated dictionary — a tool that can open so many new doors for children as they expand their horizons beyond the words they hear day-to-day, thanks to the authors and books who challenge them to do so!”

Interested? Send an email to Elizabeth Rhein (rhein@californiadictionaryproject.org) for more information.

Want to know more about the project? Visit californiadictionaryproject.org.

Posted by Donna Wares, April 16th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Literacy

Two years of love and danger in Iran

The New York Times features the first chapter of Honeymoon in Tehran, a slice-of-life from Iran by California writer Azadeh Moaveni. She opens with her own backstory:

My career as a journalist for Time magazine had begun with an Iranian election in 2000, and though in the intervening years my reporting took me across the Middle East, it was in covering Iranian elections that I felt most at home. My real home, of course, was in northern California, where my parents still lived and where I had been born and raised, in a community of superlatively successful Iranian-Americans — doctors, lawyers, bankers, and venture capitalists — afflicted with émigré nostalgia. I visited California occasionally to attend friends’ weddings, see my relatives, and fill a suitcase with Whole Foods products I could not find in Beirut, where I had lived since 2003. Situated on a glorious stretch of the Mediterranean, Lebanon for me was at the perfect geographic and existential distance from Iran. The proximity meant I could take a quick flight to Tehran for a few days of reporting, and then retreat to my calm, westernized life of Pilates classes and cocktail bars.

Keep reading here.

Posted by Donna Wares, April 14th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: New Release 2009, Nonfiction

NorCal awards, book festival giveaway and April buzz

The Northern California Booksellers Association names its 2008 Book Award finalists — and will pick the winners April 19.

Vroman’s is giving away a pair of tickets to ride on the bookstore bus to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA on Saturday, April 25.

Mary McNamara kicks off the Times’ fictional serial today. Carolyn Kellogg explains, “In `Money Walks,’ each short chapter will be written by a different Los Angeles novelist, including Jerry Stahl, Marissa Silver, Seth Greenland, Denise Hamilton and Aimee Bender. Mary McNamara promises she’ll wrap it all up April 24.”

Edward Humes, the author ofEco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers and Millionaires Who are Saving Our Planet, fires back at Times car guy Dan Neil for using a book review for “his own class warfare rant about the rich.”

Ellen Sussman has an essay in the just-published collection, Because I Love Her: 34 Writers Write about the Mother/Daughter Bond, edited by Andrea N. Richesin. “My piece,” Ellen says, “is about the vast differences between the world of my childhood and that of my daughters — and what got lost, what got found, along the way.”

Wil Wheaton pens an ode to Print on Demand publishing.

Frances Dinkelspiel shares a roundup of Bay Area writers with new books.

Derek Powazek says , “There has never been a better time to be making media.”

Firoozeh Dumas finds new fans in another California city: . Carlsbad is reading her Funny in Farsi this month.

Posted by Donna Wares, April 6th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Buzz, New Release 2009, Prizes and awards

Browsing Skylight Books: favorite book videos

Bookseller and late-night reader Emily Pullen stars in Skylight’s debut video, sharing her latest find at the bookstore’s blog.

Skylight Recommends from Emily Pullen on Vimeo.

Posted by Donna Wares, March 29th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Booksellers, Los Angeles

San Francisco celebrates Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The Chronicle’s Heidi Benson catches up with San Francisco poet and City Lights founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who turns 90 next week.

A snippet from the interview:

Q: Can writing be taught?

A: It has to be taut.

Q: Is texting poetry?

A: It can be.

Read the full story here.

P.S. Mayor Gavin Newsom has declared March 24 “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day,” and the City Lights staff invites everyone to send along birthday wishes, via e-mail, to: lfbirthday@citylights.com.

Posted by Donna Wares, March 20th, 2009 | Permalink
File under: Booksellers, Hooray, Poetry, San Francisco
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