The Hammer Museum presents ongoing reading series featuring today's most talented and provocative authors. All readings are followed by book signings at the Hammer Bookstore.
All Hammer public programs are free. Tickets are required, and are available at the Billy Wilder Theater Box Office one hour prior to start time. Limit one ticket per person on a first come, first served basis. Members receive priority seating, subject to availability. Reservations not accepted, RSVP's not required.
New American Writing
Rachel Kushner & Salvador Plascencia
Rachel Kushner's debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was published this month to rave reviews in the New York Times Book Review: “Her style is sure and sharp, studded with illuminating images…a dreamy sweet-tart meditation on a vanished way of life and a failed attempt to make the world in America’s image.” A frequent contributor to Artforum, Kushner was editor of Grand Street and Bomb and now co-edits Soft Targets. Salvador Plascencia’s novel The People of Paper, has been translated into over half a dozen languages, and his short stories and reviews have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Tin House, and McSweeney’s. He was previously an assistant lecturer at The University of Southern California where he taught The Sheridan Baker Thesis Machine.
Janet Kaufmann & Thomas Lawson
Janet Kauffman is the author of several books of fiction, including Places in the World a Woman Could Walk. Her new book, Trespassing, is composed of short fiction and essays that illustrate the impact of modern factory farms on a rural Michigan community. It considers the consequences of violating nature’s limits, giving readers a vivid impression of the irreversible damage that violation causes to our habitat. Thomas Lawson is an artist with a diverse, project-driven output. He has shown paintings in private galleries and public museums and has created temporary public works. He has written a book of selected writings, Mining for Gold, as well as three short chapbooks: The Pest of Scotland, Paranoia on the High Seas,, and An Escape Towards Liberty. He has been Dean of the Art School at CalArts since 1991 and co-editor of Afterall since 2002.
Meghan Daum & Nina Revoyr
Meghan Daum is a columnist at the Los Angeles Times and has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, Vogue, and The New York Times, among others. She is the author of the bestselling essay collection My Misspent Youth,, the critically acclaimed novel The Quality of Life Report, and is currently working on a book about real estate and identity entitled Give Me Shelter, due out in 2010. Nina Revoyr is the author of three novels: The Necessary Hunger, Southland, and The Age of Dreaming. Library Journal has called her new novel, The Age of Dreaming, “fast-moving, riveting, unpredictable, and profound” and Los Angeles Magazine writes that Revoyr is “fast becoming one of the city’s finest chroniclers and myth-makers.”
Some Favorite Writers is sponsored by the UCLA Department of English and Friends of English.