Blog: Sunday Reading Party at 826LA

Sunday afternoon in Echo Park, Father’s Day.  It’s quiet around Sunset and Logan.  I meandered through Stories only to find out the reading I was going to see was next door, behind Echo Park Time Travel Mart.  I walked into a cozy room of black leather sofas, long tables and lots of stuff pinned to the walls.   826 LA, a non-profit writing and tutoring center (practically all volunteer based) for young people ages 6-18, it’s usually occupied by these kids being helped with their homework, SAT prep, learning about how to write a book and more.  Today, however, us older folks were sipping alcohol drizzled lemonades and waiting to hear the ladies, with MC J. Ryan bartending, getting the growing crowd loosened up to enjoy 4 writers, 4 women writers, that is. 

I came because Jac Jemc who I had met at the Vermont Studio Center in February.  We were both on residency there and as she recalls, ‘kitchen bitches’ together, side by side prepping food and cleaning pots and pans.  I came to support a new friend.  And that brought me to a new place in LA.  I keep wanting to do that these days, be in new places in my hometown (remind me to write about going to the roller rink and bowling alley/karaoke bar, next time).

First up on the carpet was Sarah Tomlinson reading from her new novel, ‘The Year of Mr. Nobody’, a fictional account of a 19 year old poet attempting to stalk Keith Richards in Marrakesh.  Ms. Tomlinson is a Maine-bred, Los Angeles-based writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Huffington Post, to name a few.  And she’s the author of the S. Tomlinson, a cocktail that is now infamous in Boston.

Then came Nikki Darling, reading from a piece she chose because Echo Park surfaces frequently as a backdrop throughout the text, like when she mentions her grandparents first port of call was Carroll Street, direct from Canada.  “I’m half-Mexican but from the wrong side’ she uttered.  She took refuge in ‘the cool shadows of libraries’ before heading off to Cal Arts to earn her MFA in Critical Studies.  Nikki’s writing music criticism appears regularly in the LA Times and LA Weekly.   She told us that she just completed an epic novel about Harrison Ford and Oedipus Rex but wasn’t ready to share that just yet.

A towering Ann Friedman got up and read next.  She noted that it was good to be reading finally with ‘all ladies but not at an all ladies’ event’.  She read a story about a white hamster, the kind she would have liked to have returned but couldn’t.  And how that refers to many ‘white hamster’ moments in life.  The listeners giggled loudly at many a moment of her quips.   Ann is the curator of LadyJournos!, a website that highlights the work of women journalists.  And most recently was the executive editor of GOOD and deputy editor of The American Prospect.

Finally came my friend, Jac Jemc who lives in Chicago and is at the tail end of a cross-country book tour.  She read from her debut novel, My Only Wife, from Dzanc Books.  The tone of her work is more like hues inside of a poetic prism of solitude (to wax poetic myself).  She countered the lively rapid-fire verbiage of her cohorts with a more tingling quietude.  It rounded out this event very well.   For a Sunday afternoon gig in Echo Park where drinks are included, your donation goes towards a good cause… and the parking is free, I’d say more please.

For more info on 826LA and volunteering, contact: Kristin Lorey, Programs and Outreach Coordinator, Kristin@826LA.org

For more info on these kinds of reading series, contact:  J. Ryan Stradal jryanstradal@gmail.com