Charles Wheelan’s “We Came, We Saw, We Left” charts the Wheelan family’s frantic global “gap year” — infections, iffy street food, tantrums and all.
Fresh from her breakout performance at the inauguration, poet Amanda Gorman bonds with Anderson Cooper over “Hamilton” and their shared speech impediments.
The president of historically Black Morgan State was so captivated by inaugural poet Amanda Gorman’s reading that he offered her a job on Twitter.
A new collection of old Didion essays, called “Let Me Tell You What I Mean,” has been published. Here’s where to rediscover the essay “Why I Write,” a spark of earnest hope behind the writer’s distant cool.
“Let Me Tell You What I Mean,” a new collection of old essays, offer a chance to reassess the writer’s politics and privilege.
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The 25th Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Stories & Ideas kicks off this weekend. Due to the pandemic, this year’s series of free events will be virtual. Here’s everything you need to know about how to tune in.
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The first virtual Festival of Books hosted more than two dozen panels. Here are seven of the most memorable, featuring Henry Winkler, Kevin Kwan and more.
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Friday’s ‘Science and Medicine’ panel featured Nicholas Christakis, Debora MacKenzie and Sonia Shah, with The Times’ Soumya Karlamangla moderating.
On Now
Kevin Kwan on writing during the pandemic and how he juggles so much work
10:53
On Now
Marlon James talks influences and mixing genres
9:48
On Now
Marilynne Robinson, Author of 'Jack,' in Conversation with Héctor Tobar
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Memoirs of The Black Experience
1:04:05
On Now
Viet Thanh Nguyen talks ‘narrative scarcity’
9:47
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“Chicken of the Sea” by Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ellison Nguyen A Reading and Conversation
41:01
On Now
Fiction: All You Need is Love
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Reading in the time of coronavirus
The nation’s overlapping crises have sparked the notion that audiences want to be uplifted, more than anything else. I disagree.
Bestselling novelist Lisa See brings’The Island of Sea Women’ to the L.A. Times Book Club
Jane and Raymond Wurwand commit $1 million in grants to support small businesses in Los Angeles County struggling to survive COVID-19.
2020 decimated our cultural and entertainment institutions. Artists have readjusted their ways of working. Many wonder if they can continue their craft even after the pandemic. Yet we’ve also seen resilience and creativity.
Across the city on Thanksgiving weekend, indie bookstores greeted lines of customers, kicking off a holiday season of high promise and existential concern.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio talks about her eye-opening book “The Undocumented Americans” and what it taught her about herself. She’ll join the LAT Book Club on Dec. 15.
Forget the ugly-sweater parties. Grab a to-go coffee and shelter in place with these excellent books, columnist Gustavo Arellano writes.
ReedPop announced Tuesday that it was retiring BookExpo, the largest publishing convention in the U.S. Some say its decline was inevitable, even before COVID.
It wasn’t too hard for editors at dictionary-maker Merriam-Webster to choose a word that rose above most in 2020: ‘pandemic,’ of course.
More on Books
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The national youth poet laureate read her galvanizing poem, ‘The Hill We Climb,’ just after Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th U.S. president.
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Annette Gordon-Reed, Ayad Akhtar, Héctor Tobar, Martha Minow, David Kaye and Jonathan Rauch discuss the Jan. 6 riot and what we do about it.
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Ladee Hubbard’s second novel, “The Rib King,” features a Black servant who finds himself on a sauce label — and another who controls her own destiny.
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Bestsellers List Sunday, Jan. 24, 2021
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Emily Rapp Black lost her toddler to Tay-Sachs disease. She talks to a fellow griever about ‘Sanctuary,’ her follow-up memoir about rebuilding a life.
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The Missouri senator’s “The Tyranny of Big Tech,” canceled by Simon & Shuster after Hawley’s involvement in the riot at the Capitol, will be published by Regnery.
Join Our Book Club
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See, hear and interact with world-class authors and newsmakers
Jan. 25: Lisa See discusses“The Island of Sea Women” with columnist Mary McNamara. 7 p.m. PT on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Dec. 15: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of “The Undocumented Americans,” and Marcelo Fernandez Castillo, author of “Children of the Land,” in conversation with Times editor Steve Padilla. Watch.
Nov. 18: The Many Worlds of Octavia E. Butler. Author Lynell George and Times reporter Julia Wick. Watch . Visit Butler’s L.A.
Sept. 24: Black Poets in a Time of Unrest with National Book Award winner Robin Coste Lewis and seven other poets. Watch.
Aug. 25: Brit Bennett, author of “The Vanishing Half,” in conversation with Times writer Carla Hall. Watch.
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Festival of Books
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For four weeks starting October 18, the Los Angeles Times, in partnership with USC, will celebrate 25 years of the Festival of Books, Stories & Ideas with 25 individual virtual events. Given ongoing guidance related to COVID-19, the Times has reimagined the festival as a communitywide gathering to be held online.
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She became the national youth poet laureate at age 16; six years later, she read her poem at Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ historic swearing-in.
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More than 250 members of the literary community signed a letter this week urging publishers not to sign book deals with anyone in the Trump administration.
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The director of “Marriage Story” and “The Squid and the Whale” will adapt one of Don DeLillo’s most beloved and influential novels.
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Powell’s Books has announced that it will not place the book ‘Unmasked,’ by conservative author Andy Ngo, on the store’s shelves following a backlash.
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Ashley Audrain’s first novel, ‘The Push,’ brings depth and nuance to the overhyped mystery tropes of the bad seed and the unreliable mother.
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The 2013 multimedia stage version of George Orwell’s novel “1984,” which has been adapted many times, is being developed as a five-part limited series.
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“Rebeldita la Alegre en el País de los Ogros,” by Oriel María Siu, was inspired by the glaring gap between her family’s experiences and the children’s books she saw on library shelves.
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Bestsellers List Sun., Jan. 17, 2021
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Since the Netflix adaptation of the revisionist Regency drama “Bridgerton” premiered on Christmas, Julia Quinn’s original book series is in very high demand.
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In “Glamour Ghoul,” a niece of Maila Nurmi — better known as Vampira — documents the exciting, fraught Hollywood life of a bygone horror camp icon.
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Author Dan Morain answers queries about his new book on Kamala Harris, like why she’s an only-in-California politician and what to expect from her as vice president.
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The heroine of “Charmed Wife,” the fourth novel by the ever-inventive Olga Grushin, gets a divorce and reinvents herself. Grushin has been there.
Recent hardcover fiction and nonfiction lists.