K.C. ALFRED, PAUL BERSEBACH, DAVID CRANE, KORAMA DANQUAH, AMANDA FLETCHER, JEFF GOERTZEN, TANYA WARD GOODMAN, HANS GUTNECHT, HODA MALLONE, LIZ OHANESIAN, LEONARD ORTIZ, DON SPROUL, AMY WALLEN, A.K. WHITNEY
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
LAILA DERAKHSHANIAN
cover ILLUSTRATION
JEFF GOERTZEN
Fresh perspectives, creative people
DEAR SUBSCRIBERS,
This might seem surprising coming from the person who leads your local news organization, but the truth is our job is to deliver more than news across Southern California.
Don’t get me wrong, our watchdog reporting to hold institutions accountable to its citizens is more vital than ever, as is the reporting on everything from how the weather is impacting communities to updates on our favorite sports teams. But beyond the headlines, great local news does more: It connects you to trends in culture and to the innovators and creators who are shaping the current conversation. This type of reporting helps all of us gain perspective, find inspiration, and connect to each other through community.
As you’ll see, flipping through the beautiful pages of this issue of PREMIUM Magazine, we’re celebrating books, artists and all the ways that the arts add meaning and value to life.
You’ll find our fourth annual “Noteworthy” feature, a salute to the authors and books from our region that helped shape conversations, received awards from critics and love from readers, and made powerful statements over the past year. It’s just one of the many ways our coverage focuses on fostering and celebrating the people and places that make Southern California such a vibrant and exceptional place to be.
Find out about the trend of repertory cinema that’s giving new life to old movie theaters and connecting people. Get to know a master luthier and his life’s work done out of a small shop in charming Claremont. Meet creative people who have found a way to bulldoze through blocks to keep making art. All this and much more is featured in this issue.
Quality local news delivered to our valued subscribers is more than a day’s work. It’s our calling, our vocation. I want to extend my gratitude to our team of writers, editors, illustrators, designers and photographers who make it happen.
This exclusive-only-to-subscribers magazine you are reading right now is one of the many benefits you receive throughout the year as part of your subscription. Thank you for your support of local journalism. Your support allows us to keep telling the important, interesting stories that hold us together.
Good vibrations
Pacific Symphony’s new conductor Alexander Shelley on how music meets the moment
BY SAMANTHA DUNN
From catastrophic fires to mudslides, plane crashes, political upheaval — let’s just say that calamity seemed to be the opening act of 2025. Seeking an antidote to the venom of relentless headlines, I’ve found myself listening to music more than ever. Which made me wonder: How and why does music act as more than mere entertainment, but perhaps offer deeper wisdom and perspective?
For answers, I turned to London-based conductor Alexander Shelley, who is the incoming artistic and musical director of Orange County’s Pacific Symphony. He’s one of the most generous and accessible arts educators I have ever come across, always willing to take time for a conversation about the arts. This despite a demanding roster of artistic appointments in addition to Orange County: He serves as both music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) in Ottawa, Canada, and as London’s Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra principal associate conductor. He also is music and artistic director at Artis in Florida, leading the Naples Philharmonic. Shelley’s latest album, “Poema: Ad Astra,” was recorded with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra.
He returns to the Pacific Symphony May 1-3 for his first performances with the orchestra since being announced as the next music director.
“I want to extend heartfelt prayers and thoughts to everyone in Southern California,” Shelley told me via Zoom. I was speaking to him in the wake of the fire catastrophes in Los Angeles County. “I’ve been, as everybody around the world has been, watching and thinking and trying to send some solace and positivity over there. I would be remiss if I didn’t start any comments by just sending, you know, an embrace.”
The rest of our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Dunn: Thank you. The impulse toward wanting to hear music seems almost frivolous to me at this point, but I was wondering if we could talk about why the arts might be exactly the place we need to turn when we’re feeling the way so many of us are feeling right now. Alexander Shelley: When we think about the ways that we interact with the world, we have interaction with things that we can measure, things that we can put a sort of material value on. You know, the things that we can just identify, name and quantify.
But the actual essence of music deals with all of those things that aren’t manifest, cannot be measured, but represent the essence of the human experience. The ideas of hope, of aspiration, of loss, of melancholy, of love — all those words that we experience as being as real as anything. We wake up in the morning and we feel something, and that is the realm in which music operates.
The music of Bach, for example, which was written hundreds of years ago, can speak as profoundly to the experience of love or loss as something that was written today, because the human experience hasn’t changed over millennia and the things that
Samantha
Alexander Shelley is the new artistic and musical director at the Pacific Symphony Orchestra in Costa Mesa. His selection was announced during an event at Segerstrom Concert Hall.
PHOTO BY PAUL BERSEBACH, SCNG
art seeks to describe and to capture hasn’t changed in millennia. And that’s true of music, visual arts, literature. You go back to the Greeks and beyond, across cultures and across languages. You can read things where you think, “You know, if my best friend had written that now that would make sense.”
So there is a constant there, which is the human experience. All through human experience we have had to deal with loss and devastation. Artists have tried to find ways to conjure a description of it, but also through that description a catharsis, a way of saying, “We’re a community. We’re a group. We’ve all been through this. Let’s hold each other across time and across cultures.”
Permit me a small digression: The day my mother died I found myself going to a church, even though I hadn’t been to mass in I don’t know how long. I went because it felt like a place that was big enough and old enough to hold that kind of grief. It makes me think about the kind of music that you’re engaged in as a conductor, the kind that has been around for centuries.
like.’ So you’re supposed to leave feeling terrified. And then there’ll be another where it’s just about love, and you should have the hair on your arms stand up because you feel so full of that sense of joy and everything in between. To your earlier comment, it’s the opposite of frivolous at a time of loss to seek the company of others in endeavors that deal with the feeling of being human. We quite often haven’t yet got words for the things that we’re feeling when we go through trauma and tragedy. And yet composers and writers and visual artists and filmmakers and poets, they have found the words.
moment of a single note being held where he looks back at what was, and you feel in the music so deeply, that sense of “It was so beautiful, life, and I don’t want to let go. But I have to let go. And I know that what’s coming next is going to be greater still.”
I think the act of being in a room together for a collective experience that the group can’t necessarily define, but it is unequivocally real, that is a kind of religious act. When we’re in a stadium, you can even not really care if one of the teams wins. Sometimes just the human experience of the collective fills you with something that is deeply enriching. And I believe that’s what we do in a concert hall, too.
Part of the beautiful challenge of communicating what a symphony orchestra does is that we run the full gamut of human experiences. There’ll be experiences you go into that are tragic and devastating when you hear them in the concert hall — music that just hits you in the heart. You’re supposed to leave feeling like you’ve experienced a trauma, because a composer needed to share that. Think of [Russian composer] Shostakovich, a piece that was written under the thumb of totalitarianism. The composer had to express it as a gift to later generations, to say, ‘I know you think you know that totalitarianism is bad. But this is what it felt
In times of trouble, what are the pieces of music you find yourself going toward, for solace?
One of my absolute personal favorites is a piece by a great romantic German composer Richard Strauss, and he wrote it when he was very young. He was 22, 23 years old.
Is that on your new album?
Yes, it is! “Death and Transfiguration” it’s called. And it’s the most extraordinary piece of music. In the first half, you meet someone on their deathbed. You can hear the heavy breathing and the heart giving up, and then he has an attack of fever, and he has memories of childhood. Then another attack of fever, and he has memories of the greatest moments of his life — until there’s a final attack of fever and with a hit of a gong you hear his life end. The second half is the soul rising up to whatever’s next. In this case, it is a kind of Christian vision of heaven. But whatever anyone believes comes after, or take it in a metaphorical sense. Then the themes from his life are transfigured and changed. And then this
And then he goes through those gates, and then there’s the most extraordinary kind of fulfilling climax in the music, of arrival and of oneness. As a listener, you feel oneness. And what’s happened is that the composer has actually unified two harmonic ideas that are diametrically opposed. You wouldn’t be able to analyze it listening to it unless you’re a musician, but you feel it. This is the amazing thing about music.
Do you ever listen to contemporary music? Trying to imagine you bopping along in the car to Beyoncé, and I’m having a hard time…
Oh, no, no, absolutely I do. It’s one of my favorite things, particularly if I’m juggling a lot of repertoire for work. You know I’ve played jazz piano since I was a kid and I was in a cover band as a keyboarder. We started off with parties and weddings, but then we played some relatively big gigs. I love pop music, I mean, I honestly love all music — all stuff in the right context, it’s amazing.
I think that it would be hypocritical or disingenuous to say that there’s better music and worse music. Within all styles and genres, including classic music, there are duds, you know, pieces that aren’t very good. But in pop and in Latin, in world and in electronic and in classical, you know, I can think of loads of pieces that are really brilliant and serve a particular purpose as well. Music is not all supposed to do the same thing.
current People’s theater
Pasadena Playhouse will mark its centennial in May
Many people don’t know that California has an official State Theatre —
The Pasadena Playhouse. Initially founded in 1917, the theater was moved to its current South El Molino Avenue location in 1925. In advance of its centennial celebration in May, the Playhouse’s Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman can explain what the State Theatre of California designation means.
On a nuts-and-bolts level, California’s State Legislature convened in 1937 and decided that The Pasadena Playhouse, of all the theaters in California, was their choice as the state’s official representative. The Playhouse earned this distinction by being the first theater in the country to perform every play by William Shakespeare. The designation honors the fact that the Playhouse brought international attention and acclaim to California.
So many decades later, that’s as true today as it was in 1937; The Playhouse received the Regional Theatre Tony Award in 2023. But being the State Theatre does not, Feldman said, mean that they receive any state funding — a common misconception among patrons. (They do have a very cool plaque, though.)
Being the State Theatre also means being a fixture in the community — and supporting that community in difficult times. In the early days of the Eaton fire, when many area schools were closed, the Playhouse opened its doors and provided a free day camp for local children. The camp was open for multiple weeks at no cost to the families, whether or not their homes had been lost. During 2023’s historically lengthy
SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, the Playhouse also provided striking union members with free tickets to their programs.
“It’s a people’s theater,” Feldman stressed. “This is not about just me as the artistic director saying, ‘This is what I want to show you.’ It’s deeply embedded in community from our early, early roots.”
Playhouse founder Gilmore Brown, in his writings, likened the Playhouse to a public library of theater — there for all to benefit.
When asked about the next 100 years and the venue’s role in the community, Feldman talked about youth programs the Playhouse provides and the practical applications of art for the leaders of tomorrow.
“We’re not here trying to create 25,
30 Broadway stars coming out of one class. I hope that happens, but that’s not the reality,” he said. What theater programs really teach is much more fundamental to society: “The point is that we will make better doctors and engineers and thought leaders in the world, who are using skills of empathy and collaboration, and working with one another and using creativity to solve problems.”
So, if you want to inspire yourself to be the most creative and collaborative you can be, find a community artistic pursuit to be a part of. And, of course, check out a show or take a tour at the Pasadena Playhouse and see what 100 years of community has built.
–Korama Danquah
:: pasadenaplayhouse.org
Take 3
New books spin the Hollywood story
From the struggle of working-class Angelenos, to the starstudded, escapist fantasy of celebrity, to the self-reflective nostalgia of old Hollywood, three new books by Southern California authors interrogate the eternal theme of Hollywood intrigue. Each tells differing stories with unique perspectives, but they share the same conversation about the lore and mythology of Tinseltown:
In the novel “Hollywoodski,” longtime LA bard Lou Matthews introduces readers to Dale Davis, a writer whose rags-to-richesto-rags-again story is all too common in the fickle landscape of Hollywood. Despite the fading of his once-bright star, Dale still has hope that his next big break is around the corner. “Hollywoodski” speaks to Los Angeles’ shadows, the hustle to succeed, and the grittier realities of a city that is both enamored with and skeptical of the entertainment industry.
“When the Stars Align” by Melissa de la Cruz, slated for a
May release from Mindy Kaling’s imprint with Amazon, takes on pop culture in a story about three prominent teen superstars and their falls from grace: a wild-child movie star, the socialite daughter of billionaire hoteliers, and the mega pop star whose controlling parents took everything away. The girls turn into women and must confront how their youth has shaped their modern lives. The novel taps into the romantic, fairytale-like quality that many seek in the promise of Hollywood, while showing the rigors of life under the scrutiny of fame.
In “Golden Hour: A Story of a Family and Power in Hollywood” by Matthew Specktor, coming to bookstores in April, the author illuminates the age-old struggle between art and commerce. Specktor, the son of legendary CAA agent Fred Spector, has a unique perspective on living and working in Hollywood. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, “Golden Hour” blends intimate family drama with the history of how Hollywood grew into what we know it as today. Specktor renders a fascinating portrayal of those in and just outside of the spotlight. The book balances nostalgia with thoughtful critiques, where the stories about Hollywood’s golden years also weigh the real costs to the people who lived through them.
– Hoda Mallone
Above: Pasadena Playhouse Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman inside the theater. Below: The Pasadena Playhouse is California’s official State Theatre.
PHOTOS BY LEONARD ORTIZ, SCNG
A meeting of scribes
Sixth annual San Diego Writers Festival welcomes area storytellers
What’s like a book festival, but not a book festival? A writers festival!
On Saturday, April 5, the sixth annual San Diego Writers Festival will bring together people who love stories. Like a book festival, author panelists will discuss their books, but unlike a book festival, there will be “experiential opportunities to get in touch with your creative spark,” says program director Anastasia Zadeik.
Attendees can participate in creativity workshops including Promptapalooza, an engaging free-write session facilitated by Kristen Fogle, executive director of San Diego Writers, Ink; Networking for Introverts with author Dennis Crosby; The Almost Right Word interactive play with author Stephen Kiernan, and even a nature walk with writing prompts. Other traditional workshops include Writing Spy Fiction; Life Gives You Lemons, So Write Memoir; and Crafting Compelling True Crime Stories.
Plenty of published author panels also will
take place: Reclaiming Women’s History with author Elizabeth Hobbs; Mental Health in Fiction, with author Sally Pla; and Weaving Fact and Fiction with North Park author Elizabeth DeLozier. Jill Badonsky, creativity guru and author of “The Muse is In: An Owner’s Manual to Your Creativity,” will be on a panel about taking care of yourself. Storytelling performances — such as readings from the International Memoir Association’s Shaking the Tree short memoir anthology, curated narrative nonfiction performances, poetry and poetry slams — will take place throughout the library campus.
This year’s theme is “Be the Change.”
“Every story matters, and everyone has a story,” says Zadeik, adding that The Writers Festival aims to build community by helping people put their stories out into the world. And you don’t have to be published to share your story.
Admission is free; the location is Coronado Library, 640 Orange Ave., Coronado.
–Amy Wallen
:: sandiegowriters festival.com
Author, author!
Looking to interact with celebrated authors? Here are some events happening across Southern California, along with suggestions for where to keep an eye out for more of your favorites.
Los Angeles
LIVE TALKS LA
Live Talks LA presents onstage conversations between artists and thought leaders at unique Los Angeles venues, with virtual and in-person ticket options:
An Evening with Gretchen Rubin
April 9
Glorya Kaufman Performing Arts Center, Los Angeles
» New York Times bestselling author of “The Happiness Project” and “Better Than Before,” Gretchen Rubin discusses her new book, “Secrets of Adulthood: Simple
Truths for our Complex Lives.”
An Evening with Maria Shriver
April 10
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre, Santa Monica
» Award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author and former first lady of California, Maria Shriver shares from “I Am Maria: My Reflections and Poems on Heartbreak, Healing, and Finding Your Way Home.”
Robert Crumb and Dan Nadel in conversation with Matt Groening
April 23
Aratani Theatre, Los Angeles
PHOTO BY DAVID CRANE, SCNG
» Celebrated cartoonist Robert Crumb and biographer Dan Nadel discuss “Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life” in an onstage conversation with “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening.
An Evening with Dave Barry
May 22
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre, Santa Monica
» Dave Barry appeared at the first Live Talks LA event, in May 2010. Celebrate the 15th anniversary with Barry and his memoir, “Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up,” a hilarious ride from humor columnist at the Miami Herald to celebrated author. :: livetalksla.org
ALOUD
The Library Foundation of Los Angeles has been
curating author conversations for more than 30 years to engage and entertain the local community:
Viet Thanh Nguyen — To Save and to Destroy: On Writing as an Other
April 8
Mark Taper Auditorium, Los Angeles
» Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his new essay collection, “To Save and to Destroy: On Writing as an Other,” an unflinchingly personal meditation on the literary forms of otherness.
The Antidote: Karen Russell in conversation with Jason De Leon
April 10
Mark Taper Auditorium, Los Angeles
» Karen Russell — Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient and bestselling author of “Swamplandia!” — will
discuss her new novel,
“The Antidote,” with Jason De Leon, recipient of the National Book Award and bestselling author of “Soldiers and Kings.”
:: lfla.org
Writers Bloc Presents Michael Luo
May 5
The Ebell of Los Angeles
» Michael Luo, executive editor at The New Yorker, will discuss his upcoming book, “Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America.”
:: writersblocpresents.com
LA Times Festival of Books
April 26-27
USC campus, Los Angeles
» The LA Times Festival of Books is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year with a series of author talks, panels and the annual book prizes event.
:: events.latimes.com
Right:
Below: Author Dave Barry
PHOTO BY HANS GUTKNECHT,
Left: Maria Shriver, former first lady of California, speaks at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Author Viet Thanh Nguyen
PHOTO BY ANGEL VALENTIN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Orange County
A Slice of Literary Orange
Jennifer Weiner
April 14
Clifton C. Miller
Community Center, Tustin
» Jennifer Weiner, the New York Times bestselling author of 19 novels, will be talking about her latest release, “The Griffin Sisters’ Greatest Hits.”
Complimentary copies are available while supplies last, so get there early. No registration required. Information: 714-5663034, or email ocpl. programs@occr.ocgov.com. This event is part of a free speaker series presented by Orange County public libraries at various venues across the county.
:: ocpl.org/page/sliceliterary-orange
Witte Lectures
M. Chris Fabricant
April 18-19
Central Library, Newport Beach
» Chris Fabricant is a renowned attorney and a fierce advocate for criminal justice reform. In “Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System,” Fabricant delves into the pervasive issue of flawed forensic science and the urgent need for systemic change.
» The Pulitzer Prize winning author will be discussing his memoir, “A Man of Two Faces,” in which he considers the larger stories of refugeehood, colonization and ideas about Vietnam and America, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.
:: nbplf.foundation/
programs/library-live-24-25
Segerstrom Center for the Arts
David Grann
April 16
Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Costa Mesa
» The bestselling author of “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “The Lost City of Z,” among others, David Grann is an award-winning staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. He’ll be talking about his creative process. :: scfta.org
Pasadena/San Gabriel Valley
Patti Callahan Henry in conversation with Julia Whelan
April 3
Vroman’s Bookstore, Pasadena
» The next ticketed event at California’s largest and oldest independent bookstore features Patti Callahan Henry, the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author
discussing her latest literary mystery novel, “The Story She Left Behind,” with Julia Whelan, dubbed “The Adele of Audiobooks” by the New Yorker. :: vromansbookstore.com
Open Book
June date TBD
A Noise Within Theater, Pasadena
» This conversation series created by the Pasadena Literary Alliance provides opportunities to engage with authors of all kinds. Check the website for updates. :: pasadenaliteraryalliance. org
Long Beach
Wit and Wisdom
An Evening with Isaac Mizrahi
April 19
Carpenter Center, Long Beach
» Isaac Mizrahi might be best known as a fashion designer — he was the topic of his own documentary, “Unzipped” — or as the host of his self-named talk show,
but Mizrahi also is a cabaret performer and the author of two books, including the memoir “I.M.,” published in 2019. :: carpenterarts.org
By Any Other Name: In Conversation with Jodi Picoult
April 2
» Jodi Picoult is the New York Times bestselling author of 29 novels, including “My Sister’s Keeper” and “A Spark of Light.” She’ll be talking about her latest novel, “By Any Other Name.”
:: libraryc.org/ westlinnlibrary/70482
The Thrill of Writing Action, Adventure and Suspense: In Conversation with Gregg Hurwitz
April 24
» If you love action-packed adventure, you might enjoy hearing New York Times bestselling author Gregg Hurwitz talking about his “Orphan X” series.
Isaac Mizrahi will be at Long Beach’s Carpenter Center on April 19.
Art house chic
Across the region, repertory cinema is experiencing a renaissance
BY LIZ OHANESIAN
Supernatural battles flashed across the screen at Los Feliz’s Philosophical Research Society on a Saturday night last October. Swords were drawn. Lasers shot from hands and eyes. Strange creatures manifested. “Kung Fu Halloween,” a video mix compiled and edited by the found footage artists EXP TV with clips culled from obscure martial arts films, was a wild ride.
It was quite a departure from the vibe there several
months earlier, when I sat inside the same aging auditorium for the Los Angeles premiere of “Energy: A Documentary About Damo Suzuki,” a moving look at the impact of the creativity and spirituality of a former singer for the German band Can, who died in early 2024 as he faced a cancer resurgence.
In 1934, Manly P. Hall, author of the esoteric compendium “The Secret Teachings of All Ages,” founded the Philosophical Research Society as a
means of gathering seekers looking for philosophical and spiritual wisdom. The group’s headquarters has long been known for its library of rare books and varied public programs, but, today, it’s also one of L.A.’s coolest spots to see repertory, or revival, screenings and newer films that fall into the indie art house niche.
You won’t find luxury seats or a fully loaded concessions stand at PRS, but you likely will be introduced to everything from new
documentaries to vintage, foreign films rarely seen in the U.S. While some, like “Energy,” deal directly with the themes at the core of PRS’ mission, others are more loosely connected, whether it’s through references to mythologies or the sheer creativity on screen. They are the sort of films that often get buried by streamer algorithms, if they’re streaming at all.
“For me, the movie theater has always been like a chapel, a cathedral, a place of congregation,” says Alex
McDonald, programmer and event manager for PRS. “The work that I do, I see as connected to that original mission and quest of meeting people where they are and offering them options to find inspiration and stimulation and enrichment and connection through these arts.”
The big hits at PRS are as eclectic as they are unexpected. “The Legend of the Stardust Brothers,” a new wave musical from Japan, has sold out twice. So has “Nutcracker Fantasy,” a late 1970s stop-motion film produced by Sanrio. But, a program dedicated to the works of avant-garde artist Maya Deren also was popular here. PRS’ biggest sell-out event, McDonald surmises, was likely the screening of the Polish science fiction film, “On the Silver Globe.”
“More and more, I’m
seeing that people are adventurous and beginning to trust our programming, to come and take a chance on it,” says McDonald.
The fact is that we’re sitting on over a century of film history and the technology to access a significant swath of it whenever we want. The flipside of this privileged time, though, is that it’s incredibly easy to get stuck in an algorithmic loop, to fixate on watching only what lands on the front page of your streaming apps or hits your social media recommendations. Sometimes, you need to go to the theater to dig yourself out of that rut.
It’s not just PRS that’s seeing new audiences boom. Across greater Los Angeles, in-person screenings are thriving in established theaters, cultural centers and microcinemas. Scroll
through a movie listings site like revivalhubla.com and you’ll find a bounty of options every day of the week, the selections ranging from silver screen classics to art house fare to midnight movies that go beyond “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
At The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana, the only nonprofit art house theater in Orange County, audiences are lining up for more than just repertory cinema staples. Take the theater’s recent Wong Karwai series as an example. You might expect crowds for “In the Mood for Love” or “Chung King Express,” both of which have made critics’ lists for the best films of all time, but Trevor Dillon, the theater’s director of programming, rentals and special events, also has seen the clamor for what he refers to as the director’s “B-Side” films as well, such as “Days
of Being Wild” and “As Tears Go By.”
“It was so packed,” he says. “I can’t even imagine what this would have done here, specifically at the Frida, prior to COVID.”
Five years ago, many feared that movie theaters wouldn’t survive the pandemic. “Even preCOVID, there were a couple years where things felt like the scene was dying out,” says McDonald. “I think the pandemic, in a way, helped this scene bounce back and grow. I think that people really realized how much they wanted to go out and be in an audience and experience these things together.”
That has led to a movie theater renaissance in the region. Longtime repertory theaters, including the New Beverly and The Egyptian, are now joined by upstarts such as Vidiots in Eagle
A scene from the cult classic “Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy” is projected onto an outdoor screen at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Feliz.
PHOTO BY ALEX MCDONALD, PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH SOCIETY
Rock. The South Bay’s singlescreen Gardena Cinema recently pivoted to repertory programming. Performance venue 2220 Arts + Archives frequently hosts specialty film events and Echo Park VHS shop WHAMMY! screens movies in their microcinema. Those are just a few of the indie venues across the region.
sales person for American Genre Film Archive (AFGA), a nonprofit that oversees a library of 2,000 movies. In addition to working with theater bookers, he hosts two film series: Movie Hooky Club, on Tuesday afternoons in USC’s IMAX theater; and Wild Things on Wednesday nights at Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Los Angeles.
Berg is also a longtime friend of mine, one who has introduced me to a slew of movies I might not have otherwise seen. Most recently, at an afternoon USC screening, the movie was “Thrilling Bloody Sword,” a martial arts-heavy retelling of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” with eye-popping, nowretro special effects and a surprisingly funky score.
When Berg hosts his Wednesday night screenings at Alamo Drafthouse, he often asks how many people are seeing the movie for the first time.
“The majority of the hands go up,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what the movie is. It could be ‘Videodrome’ or something way more obscure. The fact is that everything is obscure now because of the sheer quantity of movies in the world that everyone has access to.”
And, when it comes to repertory screenings, even the country’s biggest chains, such as AMC and Regal Cinema, are booking anniversary runs and 4K restorations.
“I think that, right now, the movie-going scene is the greatest it’s ever been in Los Angeles since I’ve been alive,” says Bret Berg.
By day, Berg is a theatrical
Sometimes, Berg is also seeing the movie for the first time. That’s often the case for the USC screenings, which are largely from the AFGA collection, and sometimes for the Alamo Drafthouse screenings as well, like when his co-host selected “The Legend of Billie Jean,” the 1980s drama starring Helen Slater and a teenage Christian Slater. “It escaped even me,” he says, adding “And, it floored me.”
All this speaks to the power of human recommendations. If a friend recommends a movie
Audience members share a laugh during a screening.
PHOTO BY DILLON HOWL
Art house venues offer film buffs the chance to view diverse offerings like the Polish sci-fi movie, “On the Silver Globe.” COURTESY OF KADR
to you, it’s because they know you well enough to understand where your interests and their interests align. When film programmers schedule screenings, they’re taking into consideration a mix of their own tastes and the venue’s mission and goals, as well how they’ve seen audiences respond to previous events.
It’s the opposite of a streamer making recommendations based on a calculation that you don’t quite understand. You might think the algorithm knows you until you realize it’s been recommending movies you’ve already seen multiple times in the past month.
“There are these incredible programs that come out and then nobody knows about them because it’s on to the next thing, moving on, or they’re buried by something algorithmically,” says PRS’ McDonald. “I think the human touch of having somebody select a film to share with people in a group setting … people are hungry for that.”
In the final quarter of 2024, The Frida itself experienced a “huge boom” in attendance, which Dillon credits to several factors, including the theater’s marketing director, Bekah Phillips. “She is so locked in and so on the pulse,” he says.
Sometimes, socials influence the bookings, like when The Frida snagged indie film “Dinner in America,” which was released in 2020, but gained traction on TikTok more recently, for five nights of sold-out screenings. More often, though, the theater’s social media presence is encouraging audiences to take a chance on movies that are new to them. With an Instagram feed chock full of memes, fan-made content and references to social mediabased film fanatic circles, The Frida is dissolving the
line between arthouse and cult films.
Dillon points to a December screening of “Barry Lyndon” as an example. Sure, the Stanley Kubrick film isn’t obscure, but it’s also not a pop culture touchstone like “The Shining” or “A Clockwork Orange.” Social media, he says, is “making these movies more accessible and fun and letting people see that they can be accessible and that art houses don’t need to be a stuffy place.”
At PRS, social media can make or break a screening, like with the recent L.A. premiere of the restored 1985 French animated film “Gwen and the Book of Sand.”
“Nobody had really heard of it,” says McDonald. “It sold, maybe, 25 tickets and then we dropped a trailer that I cut online and now it’s sold out within the span of four days or something like that.”
After the death of director David Lynch, PRS screened the documentary “David Lynch: The Art Life” to a packed house that, similarly, found out about the event via socials. “A year ago, two years ago, with the following that we had on Instagram, we would have sold a handful of tickets to that,” says McDonald. “It sold out within less than 24 hours.”
There’s a paradox here in that the popularity of these human-curated, IRL events are heavily reliant on social media to get people to the theater, but the end result is one where people ditch the phones for an experience that you can only have in person.
“The people who see this on social media are not just putting down their phones and coming to the theater, they’re coming with their friends. Groups of people are coming to see these films,” says Dillon. “It’s not just ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ that that’s happening at anymore.”
The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana
PHOTO BY LEONARD ORTIZ, SCNG
IN TUNE WITH JIM BROWN
Claremont luthier finds love and craft in the shape of a violin
BY DON SPROUL
JB
Violins is tucked into a small building off Alley 38, just south of West Bonita Avenue in Claremont. One might expect its location in Claremont is the result of the arts-friendly college culture of this community located just inside LA County’s eastern-most edge.
After all, the Folk Music Center founded by Ben Harper’s grandfather is just around the corner. The nearby city Post Office is home to a W.P.A.-sponsored mural painted by Milford Zornes. Down the street is a 1927 train station built for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway now on the National Register of Historic Places because of its Spanish Colonial Revival architecture. Claremont: arts friendly, historic, culturally aware.
But no. The reason, like Jim Brown’s philosophy, is simpler.
Jim Brown uses a plane to shape a violin at his shop.
He loved seeing the purple jacaranda blossoms that cascade as he drove up Indian Hill Boulevard in late spring. His first shop was in a 250-square-foot space at what is known as the Old School House at the northwest corner of Indian Hill and Foothill Boulevard.
When he opened his doors more than 25 years ago, Brown had only two instruments to show, violin and cello, though each was highly rated. The venture marked a return to an old love that had never really faded.
“I always fiddled with wood in my life, starting in about the sixth grade,” he said.
That fiddling around led to stints repairing wooden golf clubs, teaching golf as club pro, exchanges with Dodgers and Angels players at Orange County courses, turf management and eventually an apprenticeship with a
Violins for sale line the wall at Jim Brown’s shop in Claremont.
Riverside-based luthier who taught him how to make instruments in the Italian style.
It was a long way round to where he is today.
Discovering
wood and art
Born in Fontana, Brown started tinkering with building marionettes in grade school after an aunt who had a collection of the puppets gave him issues of 1930s-era Popular Mechanics which diagrammed how to make everything needed for a complete miniature theater and players.
With a love of woodworking and musical arts ranging from classical guitar to choral, he expected to make a career as a music educator. But upon graduating from college in the 1970s and recognizing a bleak outlook for arts in schools, Brown had second thoughts and, as he puts it, “turned tail and ran,” venturing instead into a career of professional golf.
But dreams, like first loves, don’t easily fade away.
When he wasn’t teaching or managing a golf course, he was working as a professional singer in downtown LA. He
also was hanging around violin shops and decided he wanted to make a cello and found himself most interested in making instruments in the Italian way, in line with the methods of Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, who was rivaled only by Antonio Stradivari.
Origins of the craft
For a fee, Brown apprenticed himself to Ruth Esther Evans, a Riverside luthier who had studied with Italian maker Mario Antono Frosali who had worked in New York before moving to Los Angeles.
In his recollection of his early career, Brown pauses to sketch out the history that brought the violin to today’s excellence and lands on a point of contention in the world of classical music: Stradivari or Guarneri. Both Italians crafted fine instruments. But of those violins, Brown most cherishes the Guarneri for their power, projection and brilliance.
Violinpros.com compares the two styles of violin as being like white and red wines. The Strads are light, sweet and precise, while the Guarneri yield tones with
they’re not, because they lack the presence of the human spirit. …
“That’s something that Frosali used to teach, ‘Never make your violins too perfect, or they won’t trust you.’”
Carrying on traditions
To step inside Brown’s shop today is to enter a world of brown hues, richly toned woods and instruments waiting for the hand of a musician or craftsman.
deep, dark richness.
As Brown puts it, Stradivari was a genius in mind and culture and took the violin and changed it completely. The layout, the arch size — “the whole bloody thing, and it turned out just right,” Brown said. The Strads were almost perfect, and while the Guarneri had flaws in the making, they more than made up for it in quality of sound.
“The violin has never been improved since then,” Brown said. While some, mostly retired engineers are still trying to make it better, he says, there’s one thing lacking: romance.
“The Germans make their violins by measuring, measuring, measuring. The Italians make them by just drawing lines, perceiving their lines, perceiving their shapes, conceiving what is and just making it.”
“The violin lets you know it was made by a person. That’s the most important thing. You know when you look at an Italian violin, you know it was made by a person, by hand. You look at a German (instrument), and they are so spec’d out, so perfect in every way. … But
To the left hang rows of violins ranging in sizes scaled for children to full-sized instruments and larger violas. Also on the wall, like racks of arrows, are perhaps 100 bows. On the floor, a standing cluster of 20 or so cellos, in three rows including a few in the corner. To the right of the door, various standing instrument cases and a partition from the old shop. It can be a busy place. Customers are advised to make an appointment, but regulars drop by to pick up or leave an instrument or bow. Not surprising, considering Brown’s is a place of repair, restoration and rentals.
But the instruments themselves, he says, are living creatures. As such, they respond to changes in humidity and the weather.
During the recent winds and fires, Southern California’s relative humidity levels dropped to exceptional lows reaching, by some reports, into the single digits.
“When that happens, every cello in the shop comes unstrung. And violins too, because the wood gives off the moisture. … (Then) the holes expand, and all the pegs let go.”
“We hear our instruments unwind in the shop throughout the day, ‘piinngg,’ like that, a peg will let go and ‘piinngg.’ …
Then it gets rainy, and music students call.
PHOTOS
BY PAUL BERSEBACH, SCNG
Jim Brown carves a violin at his shop.
“‘I can’t turn my peg,’ because all that moisture is back. Now they’re stuck in there really, really tight. So we have to pull them all out and reseat them back in again. That’s the life of these instruments, all of them; it’s lesser on violins, but the bigger the instrument the more profound the effect.
“That’s part of what these instruments are all about,
they are living creatures. And they change their voice and how they react and play.”
Professionals understand how to make adjustments, and makers too, Brown said, have to work on instruments in a mindful way aware of humidity levels where their customers live.
But when events occur, the calls come in.
“It’s kind of like what’s happening right now.” Brown says his teacher Evans warned him if you open a business and are any good, you won’t have time to make violins. “They’ll swamp you with repairs, and they need them all at the last minute because the concert’s tonight or the rehearsal’s tomorrow, so you don’t have time to build.”
Normally, Brown says he might build a violin in three or four months; some luthiers just “crank them out,” building four, five or six violins a year. Brown’s projects of late have been taking a year and a half. Currently, he has three violins in different stages of production.
But having been a careful and voracious student,
Jim Brown calls instruments “living creatures” for their variety of tone and texture.
Brown is committed to giving back to the music and arts community. He works to help students, parents and educators and has given away instruments.
“We do take care of kids and their parents and try to promote music and arts of any kind in schools. And we live by that, and we honor that,” Brown said. He considers it part of
of students.
The pandemic shutdown and restrictions that followed ended that.
Tools, wood and workbenches
In his workshop today, Brown looks over an assortment of ready-to-hand tools and wood supplies.
He has three work stations, two oriented for repair and a third where he crafts new instruments. The bench is cluttered with the accouterments and leavings of his trade: shavings and bits of wood, files, pliers, a steel rule, a clamp, bow hair, small block planes, bottles of glue, thinners and oils, small bowls including a mortar and pestle.
It looks as much like a shrine as a workbench. It was previously owned by Frosali, his teacher’s mentor. Two black and white portraits of the mustachioed, balding Italian lean against the nearby wall.
Making a violin is not hard, Brown says. “It’s 77 pieces of wood you have to make. Not a one of them, by itself, is hard to do.” Cutting molds, blocks, cutting out a form, it needs to be done carefully, taking your time.
“It’s easy,” he adds. “Anybody can do that if you work with wood, if you can make that cut.
Finding the right tone
So, with all this time dedicated to violins, does Brown enjoy playing what he works on?
“No. Why should I play them?”
Not to see how they sound?
“I can get everything out of them I need soundwise. That only needs open bows (bowing technique). But to hear the sounds a violin makes, you have to hear the overtones,” Brown said.
And in a sidestep into the mechanics of sound and music theory, he explains that a good violin has a lot of overtones: the fundamental, or primary, note when played also has a variety of components, those components and their complexity, yield the quality of sound.
While many people can discern the fundamental or dominant note and maybe a step or division above, very few can hear more of what makes the pitch. Brown hears more.
“That’s what makes me good at this, I have the hearing of a dog. It’s just a gift.
“I can hear the overtones up three or four levels … maybe the fifth on a good day.”
the mission.
He also has directly taught about 15 adults and put together violin-making workshops with Chicagobased luthier Michael Darnton at the Claremont Colleges that ran 15 years.
Over time, those five weeklong summer sessions each year brought training in the Cremona, Italy, style of violin making to hundreds
“You can’t use sandpaper on this wood, it just disturbs the surface and makes it look crappy. You’ve got to use sharp tools, sharp, sharp — sharper than what people think of as sharp. Sharper than a razor blade, you’ve got to know how to work with tools like that.
“Probably the most important element in making a violin comes from choosing the wood.”
The wood must be quartersawn, straightgrained, aged and stable, and following the steps, simple, but one step at a time.
When you can hear the overtones that well, he says, when you can discern the pitches that well, you can bring the instrument into a fine level of tuning.
“I can adjust everything I need to adjust with just hearing those pitches. Not many people can do that.”
But to listen to Brown, it’s pretty clear what’s to be heard. It’s all about promoting the arts, giving back.
His relationship with music and craft?
Maybe it’s best described in the sheet music for a 1910 song on display in his store window: “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”
PHOTO BY PAUL BERSEBACH, SCNG
A WOMAN’S WORLD
These California publishers specialize in creating books by female authors
BY A.K. WHITNEY
Women’s History Month may be almost at an end, but it’s not too late to celebrate the fact that these days, female authors are publishing as many books yearly as males.
Zibby Publishing author Patty Lin is photographed at Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica.
In a 2023 study, “The Welfare Effect of GenderInclusive Intellectual Property Creation: Evidence from Books,” University of Minnesota economist Joel Waldfogel looked at sales on Amazon, reviews on Goodreads, and other data, and concluded that, as of 2020, women are now penning 50 percent, maybe even slightly more, of the books published yearly.
This is a huge leap from 10 percent a century ago, and 20 percent 60 years ago. And while this is welcome news for anyone who believes in gender parity in creative fields, it is not surprising to publishers, particularly ones at companies that have made it their mission to elevate women’s voices.
“I think that women writing and women reading, and that sort of symbiotic community of writers and readers — energized by book clubs, energized by word-of-mouth recommendations that come from all different sources, whether it’s your friends or your booksellers or it’s media personalities who have led book clubs — has driven a very robust environment for reading and publishing by and among women,” says Anne Messitte, publisher of Zibby Publishing, which, since 2023, has published only women (though one male author has a book dropping this year).
Before joining the company, Messitte spent several decades at Random House, helming its Vintage and Anchor divisions. One of her more famous discoveries was “50 Shades of Grey” author E.L. James.
“So yes, I’m not surprised that women have achieved parity,” Messitte continues. “In fact, I would say if one were to delve into the self-publishing arena, I would even venture to guess women are the majority.”
Self-publishing used to be a costly and exhausting endeavor because authors not only had to pay a printer to produce their books, they also had to get bookstores to sell them, or else their work would gather dust in a storage space.
But since the early aughts,
“I think that women writing and women reading, and that sort of symbiotic community of writers and readers — energized by book clubs, energized by word-of-mouth recommendations that come from all different sources, whether it’s your friends or your booksellers or it’s media personalities who have led book clubs — has driven a very robust environment for reading and publishing by and among women.”
Anne Messitte, publisher of Zibby Publishing
companies like Amazon have been offering authors the chance not only to print digitally (e-books are not only much cheaper to produce, they can be sent instantly all over the world), but on paper, and then sell their work through their websites. The ease and reasonable price of these services (Amazon charges nothing up front for e-books,
just a percentage if the book sells) made them incredibly popular, with every aspiring author now able to unleash their brilliance on the world.
But did more women take advantage of this technology than men? That was apparently true in 2015, when a study from a now-defunct literary community called FicShelf found that 67 percent of self-published authors were female. While there is no confirmation that this is still the case, in 2024, the Alliance of Independent Authors found that self-published women made 40.9 percent more money than self-published men.
Former Seal Press editor Brooke Warner agrees that gender parity in publishing is a step in the right direction. That said, Warner contends there’s still work to do before women — particularly women of color, older women, LBGTQ, and disabled women — achieve true equality in the field.
“I think it’s an interesting time,” says Warner, who started woman-focused She Writes Press in 2012 with author Kamy Wicoff. “I think it’s true that women probably publish more books these days than men do, but I also think that when it comes to questions of who gets published, or who gets attention, and who gets marginalized, it’s absolutely true that men get more awards and men get more opportunities.”
The FicShelf study also found that male authors outnumbered women three to two in traditional publishing, but again, that was 10 years ago. The Alliance study, however, found that men make 41.4 percent more money than women when signed by a traditional publisher. A traditional publisher covers all the costs of production and printing, and usually pays authors for their work up front — a payment called an advance. If authors sell enough books to earn back their advance, they start getting some of the profits from the book sales, known as royalties.
Unfortunately, even true equality among the sexes in publishing doesn’t mean the average author will ever make
enough money writing to give up her day job.
“If you go into the writing game, you cannot expect to make a living at it,” author Michael Castleman said on the Nov. 19 episode of the Southern California News Group’s podcast, “Bookish.”
His newest book, “The Untold Story of Books, A Writer’s History,” paints a rather bleak picture of the publishing landscape, and goes through its history, from scribes who wrote every manuscript by hand, to the Gutenberg Press, which mechanized the process, to e-books, which traded paper for pixels.
Castleman said that nowadays, only 6 percent of authors can expect to sell more than 1,000 copies. The main reason is that about 2 million new books are published every year. And yes, about two-thirds of those are self-published.
“It’s never been easier to release books, and it’s never been harder to promote them,” Castleman said. “These days, every new book is a blade of grass on a golf course, and it’s very, very hard to get noticed.”
So unless you’re already a best-seller, or a celebrity with millions of fans, your chances of becoming as rich as J.K. Rowling are slim, even if you’re signed by a big publishing house.
Nor is this a new problem.
Jane Austen sold the copyright for “Northanger Abbey” to a printer who just set it aside. Since she had lost the rights to her work, and couldn’t afford to buy them back, she decided to publish “Sense and Sensibility” by commission. “By commission” back then was risky, because it meant she had to pay back all the printing and other costs if her book failed to sell. Luckily, it was a hit, but even then, she never earned enough money from that, or any of her other work, to live in any sort of luxury before dying at just 41 years old. And yet, there is hope for aspiring women writers with reasonable financial expectations.
In his study, Waldfogel couldn’t figure out why women have achieved parity in publishing but
Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press & SparkPress
PHOTO COURTESY VICKI DEARMON
Vicki DeArmon, publisher of Sibylline Press and author of “Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire”
not in other creative fields. Setting aside female dominance in selfpublishing, another variable may be that, in the last decade or so, there’s been an uptick in women starting presses that focus on publishing women, and, more important, on helping them as much as possible to stand out from the hordes.
“One of our missions is to elevate the experiences of female writers,” Anne Messitte said.
Zibby Publishing is part of Zibby Media, which was founded by author Zibby Owens, and includes Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica.
While the publisher operates under the traditional model (which usually prefers an author to have a literary agent and/or a large social media following), it cannot match huge advances offered by the big companies. But what they do offer, Messitte says, is a personal approach and a welcoming community of fellow authors and readers.
The big publishers put out so many books every year that they usually don’t have much time (or funds) to work closely with each author, but at Zibby Publishing, Messitte says, “the central vision” is that all their authors are rock stars, and get treated as such.
“There were a lot of things about it that I didn’t expect, like for instance, I met a lot of other authors, and from what I hear, that’s not really that common,” said former TV writer Patty Lin, whose memoir, “End Credits: How I Broke Up With Hollywood,” was published by Zibby in 2023. “They really very consciously created a community of writers, so they had us do a retreat together. Especially as a debut author, it was so nice to have that community.”
Zibby Publishing is not the only press with that approach.
Northern California-based author Karen Nelson published her first novel, “The Sunken Town,” with Sibylline Press in 2024.
“One of the things I found the best about it,” Nelson says, “is that if I had been picked up by a very big publisher, well then, I’m a tiny, tiny fish in that pond, and so what I really appreciated about Sibylline is that they treat us all equally. They really do try to build a community. Now I’ve gotten to know the other authors there, and I feel supported.”
Sibylline Press was founded in 2022 in Grass Valley, Calif., by
four publishing industry veterans determined not just to see more women get published, but specifically, more women older than 50 get published.
“Our authors are women who have the wisdom of years,” says publisher Vicki DeArmon, a Glendora native now based in San Diego County.
Among them, the four Sibylline Press founders have a century’s worth of experience in publishing. “We interview our authors in person over the phone before we take on their book, and to a one, they describe a landscape that is not receptive to older women, and really doesn’t recognize the strength and the wisdom of older women and what they bring to the table.”
And while Sibylline is happy to be part of the push to publish more women, “frankly, we’re not ahead of the wave, but on top of the wave.”
“I have noticed a lot of publishing companies formed now expressly for women,” she said. “But when we came out with our publishing company for women over 50, that was a bit of an innovation.”
Sibylline does not require its authors to have an agent, or a social media following, also known as a platform.
“Generally, our women don’t have a platform, or have a small platform,” DeArmon said, adding that what matters most to her is that they’ve written a great book.
Sibylline follows a different business model from Zibby, not paying advances, instead asking the authors they accept to pay an initial fee of $3,000, and after that, monthly smaller fees over the next two years.
This helps with promotion costs, DeArmon explained. The company takes care of the editing and printing, and makes sure the book gets distributed to brick-and-mortar and online booksellers. Sibylline also launches a marketing campaign for each author as much on par with big publishers as possible.
Having authors share costs is part of a model often called hybrid publishing, though it seems very similar to Austen’s by commission model more than 200 years ago.
“It’s called hybrid because it’s neither traditional publishing nor self-publishing,” said Brooke Warner, who coined the term more than a decade ago.
She Writes Press calls itself a
hybrid, and exclusively publishes female authors. If accepted, the authors are expected to pay $10,000 up front. This price may seem steep, but it is an option for an author who doesn’t want to deal with self-publishing, and appreciates a beautiful end product. Like Zibby and Sibylline, She Writes also offers authors connections with other writers and helps with promotion and marketing.
The hybrid model has been criticized by various groups, including the Society of Authors and the Authors Guild, who say it makes it easier for bad actors to exploit vulnerable authors by sucking them dry financially with nothing to show for their work.
Warner agrees this is a risk.
“The better — and only — way to address the problem of bad actors in the publishing space, especially those who are coopting the good name of ‘hybrid’ for their own reputational and financial gains, is to educate would-be authors,” she wrote in a 2022 piece, “We All Need to Be Defended Against Predatory Publishing Practices.”
In the comment section, several She Writes authors defended their publisher and the hybrid model.
“I came to She Writes Press, the hybrid Brooke Warner leads, after two agents and 25 rejections from traditional and university presses over six years because they predicted the numbers my book would likely sell was lower than they could accept,” wrote Gretchen Cherington, author of “Poetic License, a Memoir.” “I went with SWP and quadrupled the numbers they predicted.”
Nelson is also happy with her investment in Sibylline, and plans to publish her second novel with them in 2026.
“I never went into this with any expectation of making money,” she said. “It was important to me that I found a press that was reputable, that had a vision for the future, and had a clear idea of who they were. And Sibylline met all that.”
Women authors having choices, and opportunities — now that’s something to celebrate, not just during Women’s History Month, but year-round.
“That’s the amazing thing,” Messitte said. “Great stories, excellent voices, can find their way now.”
SHAPE SHIFTING
Going with the creative flow sometimes means changing forms
BY TANYA WARD GOODMAN
In his book, “Catching the Big Fish,” the late director and artist David Lynch described every idea like catching a fish: You might sit in the boat all day without so much as a nibble on the line — but your chances of catching something big increase with regular practice, a sharp eye, and the willingness to go into ever deeper waters.
Solid work habits and curiosity supported Lynch throughout an incredibly productive career, but I think his massive and varied output was also due to an ability to easily shift from one form of artistic expression to another. His film and television work is only part of a legacy that includes paintings, drawings, furniture and comics. By refusing to limit himself to a single definition, he seemed to side-step creative blocks and cultivate a lifelong celebration of possibility.
Hoping to gain further insight into how moving from one outlet to another might deepen a creative practice as a whole, I spoke to a handful of shape-shifting creators who have cut trails from stage to screen, page to canvas, and beyond.
PHOTO BY LEONARD ORTIZ, SCNG
Storytelling art
For artist Ari Salka, painting began with invention. “I’m very dyslexic,” he explained, “so communication of ideas, at first, was much more accessible through painting and drawing.”
In a formal training residency at Yale, followed by graduate work at UCLA, Salka created a personal iconography of repeated imagery that included angels, outstretched hands, and sutured incisions. Early on, self-portraiture became a way to examine and celebrate changes in his own body.
“Art is about telling stories,” Salka said. “I’m deeply interested in the ways that sometimes painting — abstract painting — allows for conversations to happen with past, present and future selves.”
These exchanges have continued in earnest throughout a decade of work. Salka will often cut or tear a portion of canvas from one piece and use it to begin another, eventually obscuring or re-imagining the original image. This kind of recycling and re-use pops up again in the artist’s poetry.
“I might use a line to begin a poem,” Salka explained, “but may obliterate the line as I write.”
Using one idea as bait for another is a logical extension of Lynch’s fish metaphor as is Salka’s assertion that some ideas call for specific interpretation, while others may be left openended. Ultimately, Salka’s work is an invitation. “Like therapy, you want someone to draw from their own experiences and find their own answers within.”
Artist Ari Salka at his studio in Los Angeles
Dinah Lenney is the author of six books, including the memoir “Bigger than Life,” and “Coffee,” a collection of essays. Her film and television credits include a recurring role as Nurse Shirley on the 1990s NBC medical drama “ER.” Most recently, she has taken on the role of editor for “Snapshots: An Album of Essay and Image” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025).
“Isn’t it wonderful,” she writes in the book’s introduction, “that a painter or sculptor — especially a photographer — might intend to freeze time, only for the poet or writer who encounters that frozen moment to feel compelled to get it ticking again?”
It is perhaps no accident that Lenney’s own photography experiment began as she used her iPhone to document daily neighborhood walks during the big pause of the pandemic.
“It was stopping to take pictures that made me feel that I was absolutely in this life right now,” she explained.
A habit of posting her best snaps on Instagram, accompanied by a few lines
of text, inspired the recent collection. But she doesn’t consider even her best photograph as the end of the process. Instead, it functions as a portal to new work. She challenges herself (and her writing students) not to merely describe the photo, “but to conjecture beyond it — to remember, fantasize, rant or rave.”
While she’d originally conceived of “Snapshots” as a series of recent photos taken by the authors themselves, most contributors turned, instead, to family albums. The resulting investigations and interrogations of younger versions of themselves, their parents, and even long-dead pets, are compelling. Who is missing? Why are we here? What happened next?
“The book became much more interesting,” Lenney said. By including a list of prompts that might inspire a reader to turn a curious eye to their own photos, Lenney elevates the book to communal experience, perhaps expanding what Lynch might have referred to as “the ocean of pure consciousness.”
From stage to page to photo
Dinah Lenney
PHOTO COURTESY OF DINAH LENNEY
PHOTO BY
DAVID CRANE, SCNG
PHOTO BY DAVID CRANE, SCNG
Concrete words, abstract images
Place a drop of water under a microscope and you might find something resembling the paintings of Bernard Cooper. Merging the natural with the mechanical, his meticulously rendered shapes conjure phytoplankton and seed pods, hospital tubes, wire springs, and pipe fittings.
“I think my tendencies when I work are very much like writing,” said Cooper, the author of six books, including the memoirs “The Bill From My Father” and “My Avant-Garde Education.”
Though he’s stepped away from the keyboard, he is still interested in assembling “discrete or separate parts that connect and add up to a whole idea.” His visual
work, what might be described as “image sentences,” was inspired, in part, by the fantastical contraptions of inventor, sculptor, engineer Rube Goldberg. The work, said Cooper, “obeys literal and physical rules of the way things connect or move, but otherwise it’s not about the actual world.”
Cooper has made a career out of mining his experiences in the actual world, but he is not currently writing.
“I must not want to,” he admitted. He is, however, still trying to make sense of things.
“I think what happened is that with the beginning of the AIDS crisis, combined with the fact that as a memoirist I have a really
Bernard Cooper writes and paints out of his Silverlake studio and residence. A Cal Arts graduate, Cooper took up painting after having a successful writing career.
elegiac sensibility, there was so much grief everywhere,” he said.
Cooper, who wrote about losing his partner to a long illness, found himself “trapped a little by the pursuit of using the past as material and my retrospective sense got to be a little claustrophobic.”
In an almost sub-conscious move, he returned to the fine art practice he honed at Cal Arts.
While some of his earlier collage work kept thematic company with his writing, over the years, he has strayed from examining a personal narrative, reigniting his capacity for surprise.
“It’s become more generative,” he said. “I feel like I’m inventing life rather than remembering it.”
Artist, author and speaker Ari Honarvar at her San Diego home; she’s author of the novel, “A Girl Called Rumi.”
A novel path
Ari Honarvar’s own memories of childhood spent in the shadow of the Iran-Iraq war influenced the arc of her novel, “A Girl Called Rumi,” and inspired her mission to merge art, social justice and wellbeing.
Recalling what it felt like to be a 14-year-old new to the United States, the San Diego based writer, speaker and artist conducts workshops, in person and over Zoom, with refugees from Haiti, Mexico and Afghanistan. She offers support and also an opportunity to bask in the elation of self-expression. “It’s transformative to feel that collective power of communal dancing and art.”
The element of movement is key to all aspects of Honarvar’s work. “I really don’t like to do just one thing,” she said. “I like to do 50 different things.”
Combining words and imagery, her calligram paintings are visual representations of Persian poetry. Repeated in Farsi, a line from a Rumi poem, “bypasses the brain and goes right to the heart,” she said. For Honarvar, repeated recitation turns this line to a zikr — a hymn — that inspires a physical gesture that moves to the canvas in the form of color, texture or shape. In the ultimate cycle of inspiration, these colors or images often make their way into her writing.
“When you create the art or you live a certain way, your whole being is transformed.”
The recent death of Lynch inspired a collective outpouring of remembrances, many of which highlighted the contrast between Lynch’s dark themes and his generous spirit and sunny outlook. For Lynch, it took work to find balance. He praised his long-standing meditation practice for shoring him up against anger, depression and sorrow — a trio he referred to as “a vise grip on creativity.”
For any artist or writer or creative soul, there are days when the fish aren’t biting. When this happens, I might walk the trails in my nearby park or rake the leaves from the sidewalk. It’s not dancing, exactly, but it’s action.
Inevitably, I’ll notice the shape of a cloud or the pattern of branches painted in shadow on the concrete. The scent of jasmine might prompt a memory, long buried. I’ll think of my fellow creatives, all of us, our lines in the water, waiting, watching for the flash of scale and tail. If the words won’t come, maybe I’ll pull my paints from the cabinet.
“It’s always an experiment,” said Lynch. “Getting there is always thrilling, there’s so much happiness in it, but it doesn’t always happen in a smooth way.”
PHOTO BY K.C. ALFRED
“There’s a dance when you create the art or you live in a certain way,” Honarvar said. “When you create the art or you live a certain way, your whole being is transformed. So the person who is engaging in the alchemy is transformed, so the subject is transformed and the object is transformed — it’s not so individualistic — it’s just one.”
You can learn more about the writers and artists in this article here:
Here’s our fourth annual salute to California authors whose works made an impact last year.
BY SAMANTHA DUNN
Noteworthy ’24
If you’re keeping track, you might notice that we’ve added a couple of books to our fourth annual Noteworthy list, our salute to California authors whose books during the past year helped shape conversations, attracted considerable attention from critics and readers alike, made powerful statements and delivered unique reading experiences. In 2024, there were so many books by California authors whose influence reached beyond the region and reverberated across the nation that we had to increase the list from
10 to 12 to get an accurate reflection of the Noteworthy titles we covered.
Of course, awards and “best of” lists are never perfect representations of all that books mean to readers. At the same time, each year certain authors and the books they’ve published strike a chord that resonates deeply for many readers and impacts the culture at large. Our news group’s editors selected these Noteworthy works for how they connected, enlightened, provoked, entertained and inspired us. For that, we celebrate them.
PERCIVAL EVERETT
“James”
“James” was everywhere — dubbed by many a “modern masterpiece.” Percival Everett, a Distinguished Professor of English at USC, won the National Book Award for fiction for his novel reimagining Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the point of view of the enslaved character Jim. But that was only one of the laurels the book received: It also was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, shortlisted for The Booker Prize and was the Kirkus Prize winner. “James” made the list of the year’s best books in the New York Times Book Review, LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, TIME and more.
DANZY SENNA “Colored Television”
USC professor Danzy Senna is married to Percival Everett, and she had her own Noteworthy success in 2024 with “Colored Television.” Her novel was not only a national bestseller but also was a “Good Morning America” Book Club pick, a Washington Post Top 10 Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book. Of her dramedy about the fight between making art and selling out, Senna told our correspondent, “I lean into the reality of American culture and describe what I notice.”
PHOTO BY DUSTIN SNIPES, COURTESY OF RIVERHEAD BOOKS
ALEX ESPINOZA
“The Sons of El Rey”
The New Yorker named this epic about three generations of Mexican wrestlers one of its recommended books of 2024, calling it “an affecting exploration of masculinity, familial and cultural inheritance, and all the ways that love can be hidden and revealed.” The bestselling novel by UC Riverside English professor Alex Espinoza also made the longlist for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal in Fiction and was a finalist for the New American Voices Award.
JASON DE LEÓN
“Soldiers and Kings”
For seven years Jason de León, a professor of anthropology and Chicano studies at UCLA and the executive director of the Undocumented Migration Project, followed a group of human smugglers who were being paid to bring willing migrants across the southern border. The galvanizing result was “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling,” winner of the 2024 National Book Award for nonfiction. It also was selected as best book of 2024 by TIME and the Boston Globe, an NPR Book We Love and a New York Times Notable Book.
PHOTO BY CAT GWYNN, COURTESY OF SIMON & SCHUSTER
PHOTO
RACHEL KUSHNER
“Creation Lake”
Award-winning Los Angeles writer Rachel Kushner hit the zeitgeist with “Creation Lake,” about a disgraced FBI agent sent to infiltrate a commune of activists in France’s countryside who may be planning to disrupt a government initiative that would destroy their way of life. The novel was an instant bestseller and made the 2024 best book lists of the New York Times, The Atlantic, Vulture, NPR, Vogue, Washington Post, Chicago Public Library, The Economist and others. What’s more, the book was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Pen Faulkner Award, and shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
VENITA BLACKBURN
“Dead in Long Beach, California”
Los Angeles writer Venita Blackburn earned serious attention for her first novel, “Dead in Long Beach, California” — a New York Times Book Review
Notable Book of 2024, one of NPR’s 2024 Books We Love, and longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize.
“I knew it was going to be about loss because I was writing it during the pandemic,” Blackburn told our correspondent. It was this period of great transition, giving up on a way of being and also thinking that you can somehow get it again. There’s this illusion that we just have to wait it out, and we’ll be back to whatever normal was. But there’s no going back. Nothing is going to ever be what it was in 2019 and all the years before.”
RACHEL KHONG
“Real Americans”
A New York Times bestseller, a Read with Jenna Book Club pick, and winner of a Goodreads Choice Award, this compulsively readable novel considers the implications of gene therapy and American identity, and poses these questions: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? Rachel Khong, who lives in Los Angeles, is also the author of the award-winning novel “Goodbye, Vitamin.”
NICOLA YOON
“One of Our Kind”
Last year our correspondent Michael Schaub named “One of Our Kind” a don’t-miss new release. The first adult novel by bestselling YA writer Nicola Yoon, it’s a thriller about a wealthy Black family in LA searching for a place to call home. “I didn’t know I was going to write a book for adults until I was writing the book,” Yoon said in an interview we published. A National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book recipient, and a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner, Yoon was the first Black woman to hit No. 1 on the New York Times Young Adult bestseller list.
OBI KAUFMANN
“The State of Fire”
In the wake of the catastrophes in January, artist and author Obi Kaufmann’s meditation on California’s relationship to fire shot up the bestseller lists. “The State of Fire,” which had been published in September, met the moment like no other. “Making the case to rethink California’s approach to fire — highlighting
its importance for biodiversity, habitat and soil chemistry — the book explores ancient and modern concepts of fire stewardship, best practices for the wildland urban interface, and an alternate look at the legacy of Smokey Bear,” wrote SCNG books editor Erik Pedersen.
DON WINSLOW
“City in Ruins”
An instant bestseller, Don Winslow’s “City in Ruins” was the final installment of the Danny Ryan gangland trilogy, which Stephen King called something to “equal ‘The Godfather.’”
As Winslow told our reporter Peter Larsen, it also marked a turning point for the writer, who owns a home in San Diego County: After 25 books, most of them crime novels, many of them acclaimed, Winslow was done.
“City in Ruins,” is his final book, period.
THOMAS FULLER
“The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory”
Look at how our columnist Jim Alexander described this book: “A group of deaf kids and deaf coaches are united in belief, steeled by adversity, and fueled by toughness and the idea that as long as they have each other, that’s all that matters.”
Writer Thomas Fuller, based in the Bay area, didn’t win awards for “The Boys of Riverside,” but he should have. Author Andy Martino noted, rightly, that it’s “an oasis of positivity in a divided America.”
PHOTO BY ROBERT GALLAGHER, COURTESY OF WILLIAM MORROW
PHOTO BY KIM MAX, COVER IMAGE
“Earth
In its starred review, Publisher’s Weekly noted that Moon Unit Zappa's “unvarnished prose and resolve to capture the difficult and beautiful parts of her upbringing with equal clarity elevates this above other memoirs by the children of celebrities.” In “Earth to Moon,” Zappa, daughter to legendary, iconoclastic musician Frank Zappa and his second wife Gail, tells not just the story of surviving childhood in a home with no limits and no guidance, but captures a corner of cultural history in poignant, unforgettable ways.
MOON UNIT ZAPPA
to Moon”
Object lessons
Physical or digital formats? On the joys and importance of both
BY KORAMA DANQUAH
Iwas about to drive my friend home after watching a movie. Before buckling my seatbelt, I reached across to the passenger’s side and pulled something small, square and plastic out of the glove compartment.
“Is that a CD?” my friend asked, astonished. While opening the jewel case, I confirmed that his eyes weren’t deceiving him. “That’s wild,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I saw someone use a CD.”
I slid the disc into the car’s CD slot and buckled up. I wasn’t surprised by his reaction. My millennial peers and I have cycled through so many ways to enjoy media in our (relatively) short lives. Now, in the age of streaming, all of the old analog ways can make you seem like a Luddite, or a hipster focused on maintaining a retro aesthetic.
I’m not a hipster and I’m not reluctant to embrace change. Quite the opposite, in fact. As a lover of media, I appreciate streaming options. Music streaming platforms give listeners cheap, unlimited access to millions of artists. We have access to films we never thought we’d be able to see from countries we’ve only read about. And e-readers allow us to hold in the palm of our hands more books
than ever.
From an artist’s perspective, digital media opens doors in unprecedented ways. Indie musicians don’t have to wait for a label to sign them before releasing music to the wider public. Authors can self-publish with just a few easy online steps. And independent filmmakers don’t have to shoulder the incredibly high cost of putting a film in theaters if they can use streaming as an option instead. I think this is fantastic! It’s created access that we should continue to expand on.
But I do think something has been lost.
When I lived in Accra, Ghana, as a teenager, I would get to school early so that I could buy a chicken sandwich from a man all the students called Brah Ema. He would grill chicken thighs over an open flame, chop them up, put them in buns and slather the whole thing with barbecue sauce. I loved those chicken sandwiches. Every morning before school I would eat one and read a book.
One of those mornings, I was reading my copy of “Born Confused” by Tanuja Desai Hidier while chowing down, sloppily, and I spilled most of the (extremely saucy) food on the book. For months, the book held the aroma of that Brah
“There’s a typo in my first edition copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.’
… Not investing in physical media is actually a genuine threat to the historical record.”
Ema chicken sandwich — barbecue sauce, the smell of the grill’s char, and chicken fat.
Now, almost two decades later, when I hold my copy of “Born Confused,” if I close my eyes, I swear I can still smell it.
I believe that objects hold stories. With every piece of physical media I own, I have a memory of when I found the exact DVD I wanted in a bargain bin, or of loaning a CD to a friend so they could burn a copy after they heard it in my car, or of unwrapping a book that my friend bought me because they knew I would love it. So many of our experiences in the world are ephemeral, and these physical pieces of media are anchors that hold our experiences here so we can go back to them as many times as we like.
Beyond the micro, personal level, I think there are large-scale reasons to encourage people in the practice of owning physical items. They act as a historical record — a snapshot of the time in which they were made.
For example, Disney changed their 2002 animated film “Lilo and Stitch” to omit a situation in which the titular character, Lilo, hides in a dryer. I understand why they did it — encouraging children to play in household appliances isn’t great — but it does bring up a larger issue.
The scene was changed after the first edition of the DVD was released, so the new version exists on Disney+ and in subsequent editions of the DVD. That’s why we have editions — people sometimes should make changes.
There’s a typo in my first edition copy of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” I don’t think the publishers should be forced to recreate that mistake with every subsequent
printing. But, with so much media only existing in digital formats, things can change constantly without most people knowing, and without there being a cemented version of the artist’s original work. Alicia Keys’ cameo in Usher’s Super Bowl LVIII halftime show began on a sour note (literally), but the official NFL version of the video has the note edited to be pitch-perfect.
Not investing in physical media is actually a genuine threat to the historical record. Obviously, Keys’ ability to hit a single note is not the most pressing part of our history, but all of these small things add up to what could eventually be bigger challenges. Like digital textbooks that can be altered to include or omit whatever the publisher — or the government — decides at any given time.
I’m not unaware of the many drawbacks of being an owner of physical media. Packing for a move is a nightmare, buying CDs and vinyl is far more expensive than paying $12 a month for Spotify, and there’s the issue of where to put things when space is one of the most expensive commodities today. And, as I mentioned earlier, digital media enables more independent artists to share their work without having to go through gatekeepers who often don’t know what audiences will respond to.
But I think there has to be a balance. I checked an e-book out of the library and I liked it so much that I bought a paperback copy. I saw that one of my favorite artists had a vinyl version of an album I really liked, so I made that the one physical purchase I made of their work for a while, but I still stream their other music every day. We need to find the happy medium between
convenience and posterity. Between access and memory.
I was recently confronted with one of the most difficult aspects of being a collector of physical media — what would you save in a fire? For most people it’s a hypothetical question, a thought exercise about what we value most. For us in Southern California, it’s a real and present concern.
I’m lucky that I was not directly affected by the devastating Palisades or Eaton fires, but I did voluntarily evacuate out of an abundance of caution. As I shoved clothes into a duffel bag, I had to think quickly — what was I going to take? At the end of the day, bulkier items won out over my DVDs, CDs and books. I took my first guitar and my framed college degree instead of the “Veronica Mars” DVD box set I had signed by Rob Thomas or my beloved fragrant copy of “Born Confused.”
Leaving them behind was the right call for me and I don’t regret it. Coming home to them (blessedly, all intact) did, however, solidify for me that I wanted to continue my practice of owning things. They are what makes my home my home. My house smells like my books, looks like the kaleidoscope of DVD cases on my living room shelf, and sounds like the CDs I’ve been carting around with me from place to place since I had my first Discman with anti-skip protection.
So, even though my friends sometimes tease me for being dorky and old-fashioned because I still own a Blu-ray player and bring a travel CD wallet on my road trips, I remind them that my collection is a mosaic of history and memories — and that they can feel free to borrow from it any time they want.
Our News Isn’t Just Local. It’s Personal.
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We’ll keep reporting the news that affects you in a personal way—accurately and objectively. Because if it’s happening in your backyard, it’s a big story to us.
May 21, 2019, The Press-Telegram.
Photo by Brittany Murray, Press-Telegram/SCNG.
May 18, 2021, The Orange County Register.
Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG.
May 28, 2022, Los Angeles Daily News.
Photo by Trevor Stamp, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG.
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