This is some serial killer shit.

Atlantic City, 1935. My mother's father is in the center.

We have a cover.

I couldn’t agree more.

Thanks to @lareported.bsky.social for giving me the space to think through @metrolosangeles.bsky.social's D Line Extension, due to open in the next few months. lareported.substack.com/p/metro-d-li...

“Novels are far more than simple entertainment; they are a means of facing society’s failures head on.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

“Comfort, for all else is futility.” 4columns.org/ulin-david-l...

Disconcerting? That’s my alma mater, speaking the hard truths.

Another week, another $100 million that a broke city will magically conjure up for a megaevent that's not supposed to cost taxpayers a dime

No cover yet, but here's the title page. Coming September 22. Very excited about this one.

LA's council passed this motion which will request that LA28 present how, exactly, the organizing committee is working with federal law enforcement including "guardrails the City can enact to ensure that the City's most vulnerable communities are protected." Unfortunately, it's just that, a request

Patriot.

Fare thee well now Let your life proceed by its own design Nothing to tell now Let the words be yours, I'm done with mine www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZOi...

Remembering today that having your heart broken is a necessary step on the path to becoming fully human. Whichever heartbreak is your first, it’s probably critical that a state break your heart so that you can develop a political imagination. If this is your first, I’m sorry and also welcome.

Lonesome and a long way from home.

Renee Nicole Good

If you have time to doom scroll, you have time to read books!

Special shoutout to David L. Ulin, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Susan Straight and Susan Brenneman for contributing.

Happy New Year, everybody. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuuO...

"A writer who knows what he's doing doesn't know very much." ~ Nelson Algren

“Unreleased, unrecorded, performed once or twice a cappella, no instruments at all in its history—the Platonic ideal of a song, for me, so tenuous that it can barely be said to exist; momentary; self-contained.” www.altaonline.com/books/nonfic...

"One cannot make up time. One can make up a story or a face or a bed. Ugh. I find it all repellent."

Heads up: You should read David Ulin’s 2 cents’ worth on the penny

Belief, however, is an inside job. This, too, is a lesson I have learned. What really happened that July 4? Then and now, I believe a penny saved my life.

"The ordinary can tell a deep story. I don’t write novels that have enormous adventure plots, or mysteries where a secret is unfurled. I’m interested in finding a specific detail that allows me to explore something resonant and deep.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

LOS ANGELES PEOPLE, YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS THIS: Please join us as the 2025 Chowdhury Prize in Literature is presented to @clairedederer.bsky.social. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. 📷 Wednesday, November 12, 7:30 PM 📷 Bovard Auditorium (USC). RSVP Link: visionsandvoices.usc.edu/events/50710...

Glad to live in California, a state where I can still walk into a pharmacy and walked out vaxxed for flu and COVID. It's called science, in case you were wondering.

Delighted to panelize this afternoon at the Biltmore for the Urban History Association conference with this stellar trio of luminaries: Naomi Hirahara, Hector Tobar, and Walter Mosley.

You know you don't want to miss this.

The best way to find your next read might be closer at hand than you thought. Lydia Davis’s new book, "Into the Weeds," charts a more serendipitous path to reading, David L. Ulin writes:

Congratulations @clairedederer.bsky.social!!!

We are delighted to announce that @clairedederer.bsky.social will receive the 2025 Chowdhury Prize in Literature and will accept the prize during an onstage event at USC on November 12, 2025. Please come and celebrate Claire and her incisive, brilliant work. open.substack.com/pub/airlight...

“I found that I was thinking about reading—reading the writing of someone else.” www.theatlantic.com/books/2025/1...

“There used to be more time to make a getaway. Now they’re flashing everybody’s mug shot all around the world in the blink of an eye, pretty soon there’s no place to run anymore.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

“The plot of this book is persistence in making myself available.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

Gratitude and love to Paul Yamazaki, City Lights's longtime book buyer, who will receive the Northern California Book Awards GROUNDBREAKER AWARD at their ceremony this Saturday, 2pm, held at the SF Main Library’s Koret Auditorium. It's free to attend. See you there? poetryflash.org/programs/?p=...

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “We need a new way of thinking about fire: as not only natural disaster, but also environmental threat with a high risk of long-term harms to health,” David L. Ulin, a professor at the University of Southern California, writes.

Wildfire "survivors in Los Angeles, as well as elsewhere, are on their own more than ever." @davidulin.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/o...

@davidulin.bsky.social in @nytimes.com Los Angeles Is Contaminated Now www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/o...

As the wildlife urban interface expands and fires become more toxic, Californians have become, perhaps, the canaries in the coal mine, in a world where environmental devastation provoked by climate change is now a commonplace. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/o...

"A tale has many tails, and many heads, particularly if it’s true. Like life, it is a river with many branches, rivulets, creeks, and distributaries. I’ll get to everything, I swear.” www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

Zócalo's latest miniseries explores L.A.'s Literary Public Square. Read from @davidulin.bsky.social on his journey from NYC to L.A., Brittany Menjivar & Sammy Loren on the "alt-lit" scene, @lynellgeorge.bsky.social on making literary community, and John Szabo on libraries. zps.la/LitLA

Rereading, of course, can be a complicated process. Or, more accurately, it can cut both ways. www.altaonline.com/books/fictio...

I may be an old school parent in this regard, but whatever happened to saying no? wapo.st/45LEVQT

Zócalo is thinking about Los Angeles' literary public square. Where do readers and writers come together to tell stories and imagine together? Long-time L.A. writer @davidulin.bsky.social on the city as its own literary genre: zps.la/4m7WrFK

We need to be able to upset the hierarchies, escape the strictures, to follow our work where it will go. This, too, is what Los Angeles taught me: that I would have to think for myself. www.zocalopublicsquare.org/los-angeles-...

I wish I were old and the whole damned thing were finished; then I shouldn't get this depressed feeling for nothing at all.

It’s a very low bar, I know, but Mike Lee must be the stupidest US Senator.