Kerry Madden-Lunsford grew up traveling around the South as the daughter of a football coach. Her first novel, Offsides, drew on her experiences, but is not an autobiography. She is one of the few writers authorized to write a biography of Harper Lee, Up Close: Harper Lee, which made Booklist’s Ten Top Biographies for 2009 for Youth. She […]
I recently interviewed Susan Straight on the telephone. During the first session, my recording software failed just as my two-year-old son woke up howling from an unusually short nap. A tired and hungry toddler is like an escaped rhinoceros; I have not quite worked out the glitches of single motherhood. Graciously, Susan allowed me to […]
Blas Falconer is the author of The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, 2012); A Question of Gravity and Light (The University of Arizona Press, 2007); and The Perfect Hour (Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press, 2006). He is also a co-editor for The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity (The University of Arizona Press, 2011) and Mentor & Muse: […]
I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at this blank page, fingers poised over the laptop’s keyboard. But it feels like a long time. A very long time. And my thoughts are all over the map; I see them as an army of impossibly tiny steer running in every direction and there’s me without […]
Jill Marr is an agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. She graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and a minor in History. She has a strong Internet and media background and nearly 15 years of publishing experience. After writing ad copy and features for published […]
I recently spoke with Anne Ursu, who has written both adult and young adult novels. She lives in Minneapolis and teaches at Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children, which is a low-residency program. Ursu is the author of five middle grade fantasies as well as two novels for adults. Her most recent book, The […]
Grossman is a New York Times national and international best-selling author. His first novel, Warp, was published in 1997. His second novel, Codex, became an international bestseller. The Magicians, the first book of a trilogy, was a New York Times Best Seller, won the 2010 Alex Award […]
Cosme Cordova was born in San Pedro de la Cueva in Sonora, Mexico, and brought to Riverside, California at five years old, where he still resides. Cordova is the owner of Division 9 Gallery (Riverside, California). In 2002 he co-founded Riverside’s Arts Walk along with Mark Schooley (Riverside Community Arts Association), which has run monthly […]
Elizabeth Earley holds an MFA in Fiction from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her stories and essays have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The First Line Magazine, Fugue, Hair Trigger, and Glimmer Train, among other publications. Elizabeth is the recipient of the David Friedman Memorial Prize for Fiction, has twice been a finalist for the AWP […]
Douglas Kearney is a poet, performer, and librettist from Altadena, California. Kearney has received a Whiting Writers Award, a Coat Hanger Award, and fellowships at Cave Canem, Idyllwild, and others. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Poetry, nocturnes, Pleiades, Callaloo, Fence, LA Review of Books, The Iowa Review, and The Ninth Letter. His produced operas include Sucktion, […]
D.J. Waldie is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, Where Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles, and other books about Southern California. He also is the author—with Diane Keaton—of two architectural studies: California Romantica and House. Jennifer McCharen: What are you working on right now? D.J. Waldie: For some years I’ve been writing a blog twice a week […]
Emily Rapp wrote the blog Little Seal during her son Ronan’s life. She began the blog after Ronan was diagnosed at the age of nine months with a rare form of Tay-Sachs disease. Rapp says in her book about Ronan’s life, The Still Point of the Turning World, that she “…began to write because it […]
Camille T. Dungy was born in Denver, Colorado and grew up in California. She received her B.A. from Stanford University and M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Dungy is the author of Smith Blue, winner of the 2010 Crab Orchard Open Book Prize, Suck on the Marrow, and What to Eat, What to […]
American author Mary Gordon was born in 1949 in Far Rockaway, New York. She was an only child to her mother, Anne, who was Catholic and her Jewish father, David, who converted to Catholicism when he was a young man. The death of Gordon’s father when she was seven years old deeply impacted her life. […]
Patrick O’Neil is the author of the memoir Hold-Up (13e Note Editions, Paris, France). He is currently in the process of writing a second book chronicling his former career as a roadie/road manager for several major punk bands during the 1980′s (Dead Kennedys, Flipper, TSOL, Subhumans). His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including: Fourteen […]
Wendy C. Ortiz holds an MA in clinical psychology and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She’s a Los Angeles native who lived for eight years in Olympia, Washington before returning to Los Angeles. She lives with the love of her life and their daughter. Wendy has read at various venues […]
Luis J. Rodriguez has emerged as one of the leading Chicano writers in the country with fifteen published books in memoir, fiction, nonfiction, children’s literature, and poetry. Luis’ poetry has won a Poetry Center Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award, and a Paterson Poetry Book Prize, among others. His children’s books—America is Her […]
Dan Smetanka has worked in publishing for two decades, as an Executive Editor at Ballantine/Random House, and at Maria B. Campbell Associates, an agency that facilitates placement of American authors in international markets. He is currently an Executive Editor for Counterpoint and Soft Skull Press where his recent projects include Rockaway by Tara Ison, All […]
Riva’s agency, International Transactions, Inc., specializes in a holistic approach—one that both nourishes its connections to the publishing and entertainment worlds and closely shepherds its authors through the world of publishing. Riva brought decades of experience in the publishing industry to Antioch in December with his lecture on the business of writing. Lunch Ticket Editor in Chief Lise Quintana spoke to Riva about his views on the publishing industry, where it’s heading, and how new authors can become part of it.
Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and raised in Canada and the United States. He received a BA and MA in English Literature from the University of Albany-SUNY, and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. He is the author of several collections of both poetry and prose, the most recent […]
In its last issue, Lunch Ticket featured an image by MANDEM—a collaborative team that includes Maize Arendsee and Moco Steinman-Arendsee. Intrigued by their work and process, Visual Arts Editor Ashley Perez decided to run an interview with the pair in the current issue. MANDEM describes itself as “Mythpunk,” a moniker that combines “Steampunk” (a retro-futurist […]
Lin Oliver is a children’s book author and film producer. She currently heads her own production company, Lin Oliver Productions in Los Angeles. Her work has included the best-selling children’s series, Hank Zipzer, which she co-wrote with actor Henry Winkler from the television show Happy Days. Her television and film productions have won multiple industry […]
Susan Orlean was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from the University of Michigan. Since then, she has lived in Portland, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, and worked as a staff writer for the Willamette Week, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, and The New Yorker, where she has been since 1992. Her articles […]
Gary Phillips was born in Los Angeles in 1955, a month after Disneyland opened and five months after Charlie Parker died. He attended Cal State L.A. and has a B.A. in Design. Raised in South Central, Phillips grew up playing football in high school while reading comics, classic pulp and detective fiction, and the likes of […]
Jillian Lauren was born in New Jersey and found herself working in theater in New York by her late teens. Her work in theater led to a career in sex work, which became the subject of her memoir Some Girls, covering the time Lauren spent in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, youngest brother of the sultan of Brunei…
Aimee Bender is the author of two short story collections, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) and Willful Creatures (2005), two novels, An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) and a novella, The Third Elevator (2009). She contributed to The Secret Society of Demolition Writers and […]
Greg Neri writes poetry, prose, and graphic novels for young adults under the pen name G. Neri. He’s said, “I write provocative, edgy stories for reluctant readers, especially urban boys, in hopes that these kinds of books—immediate, compelling and told through the eyes of young males—will open minds to reading.” They’re not the only ones taking note […]
Arthur Sze was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2012. He was born in New York City and educated at the University of California, Berkeley. Sze is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Ginkgo Light (2009), Quipu (2005), The Redshifting Web: Poems 1970-1998 (1998), and Archipelago (1995). He is […]
No one knows books like David L. Ulin. On any given day, the Los Angeles Times book critic has an assortment of books within his reach, and each one is as different from the others as the hues of the rainbow. From The Best American Short Stories 2012 to Waging Heavy Peace, the meandering memoir […]
“The idea that poetry might not just be beautiful, but that it also might do something, is very important…It might help change the way we think about the world we live in, or the world that we’d like to live in.”
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