CaliforniaAuthors

The Wonder Years: Athletes Who Never Slow Down

2009-07-07T03:50:33Z

I am excited to announce the upcoming publication of The Wonder Years: Portraits of Athletes Who Never Slow Down, a stunning book being released this summer by Chronicle Books. I was privileged to work on this project with Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Rick Rickman and an extraordinary cast of senior athletes and former Olympians who inspired and humbled me daily. These folks give us all hope for the future.

For the past two decades, Rick has traveled the country chronicling the lives of aging adventurers and amateur athletes who defy the conventional wisdom about what it means to grow old in our society. He likes to talk about the senior underground, a movement that has quietly exploded to include an astonishing 350,000 men and women now competing at the local and state level in hopes of making it to the show – National Senior Games.

No surprise that Rick’s passion led him to become the official photographer for the National Games. These championship games arrive on the West Coast for this first time in August 2009, just as The Wonder Years is being released. More than 10,000 elite athletes will gather on the Stanford University campus Aug. 1- 15 to compete for medals in 18 sports.

These athletes keep raising the bar higher and higher — breaking barriers, setting records, and showing us all the path to The Wonder Years. I’m delighted to introduce some of these exceptional men and women and to share some of Rick’s portraits right here at California Authors.

Writer’s life: At home with Ayelet Waldman

2009-06-14T01:45:56Z

LA Times writer Susan Salter Reynolds spends a day in Berkeley with Ayelet Waldman — Jersey girl, Wesleyan smarty-pants, Harvard Law grad, former public defender, mother of four, and author of a new book, Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. “Sitting around her kitchen table, surrounded by her children’s drawings and books and all that sunlight,” Susan writes, “you’d swear this was the Bay Area version of the Cleaver household.”

A California writer’s notes on a simpler life

2009-06-10T19:21:57Z

Pico Iyer reflects on the Joy of Less in the NYT:

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did.

Connelly’s grim slice of the times

2009-05-23T20:13:14Z

The New York Times features Michael Connelly’s 20th (!) crime novel, The Scarecrow, which reprises reporter/hero Jack McEvoy. This time, though, the once-cocky newsman is searching for a SoCal serial killer and fighting for his own survival. Says Marilyn Stasio, “Here, the voice is considerably more subdued and more than a little desperate, as Jack, who has just been pink-slipped at The Los Angeles Times, latches on to another psycho as his professional meal ticket, envisioning one last great story before The Times, if not the entire newspaper industry, goes down in flames.” Keep reading here.

Two-award day for All the Saints of the City of Angels

2009-05-11T20:38:14Z

This just in from J. Michael Walker: “A quick note at midday to share some awesome news: All the Saints of the City of the Angels just won (in the same week!) two awards. First, We won the US Review of Books-Eric Hoffer Award for Art Book of 2009. Also, We won the Independent Publishers Book Award for Best General Non-Fiction about the Pacific-West United States. (This prize was a tie for the Gold with a very cool book, California Trip, by Richard Blair and Kathleen Goodwin.”

Congrats!

Best Books Awards, Northern California edition

2009-04-25T01:49:54Z

The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association handed out its annual book awards this week. Executive Director Hut Landon shares the winning titles:

Fiction: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Dial).

Nonfiction: The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems, by Van Jones (HarperOne).

Poetry: My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, by Jack Spicer (Wesleyan University Press).

Children’s Literature: Steinbeck’s Ghost, by Lewis Buzbee (Feiwel & Friends).

Children’s Illustrated: One, illustrated by Kathryn Otoshi (KO Kids Books).

Regional Title: Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, by Frances Dinkelspiel (St. Martin’s).

Catch a ride to the Festival of Books

2009-04-25T01:48:15Z

SoCal Book Scene offers this excellent suggestion: Hitch a ride Saturday with Vroman’s or Warwick’s to the Los Angeles Festival of Books at UCLA. Take a moment to do the math: 130,000 attendees. 24,000 parking spots. Then get on the bookstore bus.

Here’s the rundown on this year’s festival, which features 450 authors, opening with Friday night’s Book Awards dinner and continuing through Sunday on the UCLA campus.

Remembering California novelist James D. Houston

2009-04-19T00:35:17Z

From the Los Angeles Times:

James D. Houston, a novelist, essayist and short-story writer firmly rooted in the West, whose works explored his native California, Hawaiian culture and, in collaboration with his wife, the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, died Thursday at his home in Santa Cruz. He was 75.

His death was due to complications of cancer, according to his daughter Gabrielle.

Houston was the author of nine novels, including “Snow Mountain Passage” (2001), inspired by a personal link to the ill-fated Donner Party of early California history, and “Bird of Another Heaven” (2007), about a 19th century woman of Hawaiian and California Indian ancestry.

Keep reading here.

Lisa Alvarez at the excellent Mark on the Wall blog has compiled a collection of links and remembrances. “Jim was one of the good guys,” she says.

Dictionary Project seeks an author spokesperson

2009-04-17T14:09:48Z

T. Katz sends word that the California Dictionary Project, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that donates dictionaries to third graders in public schools, is looking for a California author to help spread the word about the group’s work.

She explains: “Yes, a well-known California author (or even more than one would be super) who would be willing to lend their smile and `stamp of approval’ (a paragraph or two) on the website and print material to show support of the California Dictionary Project.

“That’s about it. Just hoping to find someone who wants to help shine a light on an important part of the learning process — the sometimes underappreciated dictionary — a tool that can open so many new doors for children as they expand their horizons beyond the words they hear day-to-day, thanks to the authors and books who challenge them to do so!”

Interested? Send an email to Elizabeth Rhein (rhein@californiadictionaryproject.org) for more information.

Want to know more about the project? Visit californiadictionaryproject.org.

Two years of love and danger in Iran

2009-04-15T01:14:05Z

The New York Times features the first chapter of Honeymoon in Tehran, a slice-of-life from Iran by California writer Azadeh Moaveni. She opens with her own backstory:

My career as a journalist for Time magazine had begun with an Iranian election in 2000, and though in the intervening years my reporting took me across the Middle East, it was in covering Iranian elections that I felt most at home. My real home, of course, was in northern California, where my parents still lived and where I had been born and raised, in a community of superlatively successful Iranian-Americans — doctors, lawyers, bankers, and venture capitalists — afflicted with émigré nostalgia. I visited California occasionally to attend friends’ weddings, see my relatives, and fill a suitcase with Whole Foods products I could not find in Beirut, where I had lived since 2003. Situated on a glorious stretch of the Mediterranean, Lebanon for me was at the perfect geographic and existential distance from Iran. The proximity meant I could take a quick flight to Tehran for a few days of reporting, and then retreat to my calm, westernized life of Pilates classes and cocktail bars.

Keep reading here.

NorCal awards, book festival giveaway and April buzz

2009-04-07T00:51:32Z

The Northern California Booksellers Association names its 2008 Book Award finalists — and will pick the winners April 19.

Vroman’s is giving away a pair of tickets to ride on the bookstore bus to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA on Saturday, April 25.

Mary McNamara kicks off the Times’ fictional serial today. Carolyn Kellogg explains, “In `Money Walks,’ each short chapter will be written by a different Los Angeles novelist, including Jerry Stahl, Marissa Silver, Seth Greenland, Denise Hamilton and Aimee Bender. Mary McNamara promises she’ll wrap it all up April 24.”

Edward Humes, the author ofEco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers and Millionaires Who are Saving Our Planet, fires back at Times car guy Dan Neil for using a book review for “his own class warfare rant about the rich.”

Ellen Sussman has an essay in the just-published collection, Because I Love Her: 34 Writers Write about the Mother/Daughter Bond, edited by Andrea N. Richesin. “My piece,” Ellen says, “is about the vast differences between the world of my childhood and that of my daughters — and what got lost, what got found, along the way.”

Wil Wheaton pens an ode to Print on Demand publishing.

Frances Dinkelspiel shares a roundup of Bay Area writers with new books.

Derek Powazek says , “There has never been a better time to be making media.”

Firoozeh Dumas finds new fans in another California city: . Carlsbad is reading her Funny in Farsi this month.

Browsing Skylight Books: favorite book videos

2009-03-29T17:15:20Z

Bookseller and late-night reader Emily Pullen stars in Skylight’s debut video, sharing her latest find at the bookstore’s blog.

Skylight Recommends from Emily Pullen on Vimeo.

San Francisco celebrates Lawrence Ferlinghetti

2009-04-04T05:38:32Z

The Chronicle’s Heidi Benson catches up with San Francisco poet and City Lights founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who turns 90 next week.

A snippet from the interview:

Q: Can writing be taught?

A: It has to be taut.

Q: Is texting poetry?

A: It can be.

Read the full story here.

P.S. Mayor Gavin Newsom has declared March 24 “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day,” and the City Lights staff invites everyone to send along birthday wishes, via e-mail, to: lfbirthday@citylights.com.

Beautiful bookstores, all-star libraries, LA stories

2009-03-20T19:47:46Z

Chronicle Books twitters about this lovely photo gallery: The most interesting bookstores of the world. San Francisco’s Borderlands Bookstore, and its hairless Sphynx cat, makes the cut.

Library Journal showcases the nation’s “star” libraries, including sixteen here in California

The Los Angeles Music Center invites Angelenos to share their life stories and oral histories this month. The theme: “Journeys Toward Justice.”

SealBeachDaily.com is giving away a copy of Great Escapes: Southern California this week, just in time for your spring staycation.

Seattle paper moves entirely online

2009-03-16T23:12:03Z

As Hearst shuts down its print newspaper in Seattle this week, Executive Producer (and award-winning former SoCal journalist) Michelle Nicolosi talks about the future of the new SeattlePI.com:

The creation of SeattlePI.com as a standalone digital news and information business is a great opportunity for us to try out many of the theories journalism professionals and academics have been throwing around for the past few years. Is it possible to run an online-only local news site that serves a city’s readers well while turning a profit? Is a digital news product a viable solution for cities whose papers can no longer afford to operate? We think so.

Keep reading here.

Bookstores and LA’s public transit

2009-03-15T05:05:37Z

Emily Pullen writes at the Skylight Books blog: “Did you know that you can get from Book Soup to Skylight by taking just one bus? And from Skylight to Vroman’s by taking just one bus? Talk about an easy day of literary adventure. Here’s how you do it. ”

Writing a new Wild West

2009-03-15T04:05:16Z

T. Jefferson Parker continues his outlaw phase with The Renegades, his latest crime novel. As the Globe and Mail explains today: “This is the sequel to L.A. Outlaws, which starred the female descendent of Hispanic hero/outlaw Joaquin Murrieta and introduced L.A. Sheriff’s Department Deputy Charlie Hood. The Renegades is about outlaws, modern cowboys and image, and it’s brilliant, witty and, in many ways, very disturbing.”

The book is set in Southern California’s Antelope Valley, a vast stretch of high desert north of Los Angeles, where, an Associated Press review notes, “thousands of affordable homes have been thrown up and where urban gangs are already starting to move in. The sheriff’s department considers it Siberia, but Charlie Hood has asked to be assigned here, preferring to patrol at night and alone.” Keep reading here.

Browse Jeff’s upcoming events here.

The Big Read vs. the Big Gulp

2009-03-11T20:24:33Z

Just spotted this tidbit over at The Elegant Variation:

“NEA Literature Director David Kipen has vowed to eat a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird if all 128 residents of Kelleys Island do not read the book.”

Mmmm.

Ten Speed Press sold & other bookish news

2009-04-07T00:47:36Z

Random House buys Ten Speed Press, the indie Berkeley publisher. “They have a lot of eclectic and quirky books, and I think maybe the soil in Berkeley helps grow that,” Crown Publisher Jenny Frost tells the New York Times. “I wouldn’t want to take that away.”

The Los Angeles Times announces its Book Prize nominees — and for once doesn’t make a production of running to NY to do it. At Jacket Copy.

Frances Dinkelspiel shares a video from the final author event at Stacey’s Books in San Francisco.

Former OC Register editor Diana McCabe has a new paranormal romance blog.

Long Beach author Alan Rifkin publishes his new novel, Alt. Country, in online installments, starting March 19.

Fresno author Mark Arax has a new collection of California stories, West of the West coming in April.

Aris Janigian, Mark’s cousin, has a new novel, Riverbig, too.

Heyday Books imagines Mother Goose in California.

California girl Barbie turns 50 — gets her own Malibu pad and a paperback edition of Barbie Loves L.A. too.

CaliforniaAuthors.com is now on Twitter.

From layoff to kick-off in seven days

2009-03-03T02:45:31Z

Southern California journalist Greg Hernandez goes from layoff to kick-off in just seven days — check out his new Greg in Hollywood website, which debuted today. “I think Oprah Winfrey would refer to this as a `wow moment,’” he writes.

How does a writer move that fast to jumpstart a new business? Well, Greg thrives on deadline — after two decades as a beat reporter, he’s a pro. Plus, he assembled an impressive launch team, including our own Kate Cohen, who created the Greg in Hollywood site with tech-savvy husband Val Cohen and search engine/web master Danny Sullivan — all former newspaper people. Read their Mission- Impossible-worthy backstory here.