EVENT DETAILS

[Cancelled] "Talking with Writers and Readers: Celebrating Radio and Podcast Literary Culture in Southern California" featuring Michael Silverblatt of Bookworm

In an abundance of caution and to ensure social distancing during the COVID-19 outbreak, this event has been cancelled.

Literary culture, civic and artistic life, political engagement and community-building are all enhanced through the most elegant and imaginative medium invented since the arrival of the printed word.  Radio, now also podcasts, is an enduring, popular and celebratory forum or platform for discussion of books, reading, history, art and more. In Southern California, two public/community radio stations have promoted, furthered and supported “books radio” with, first, the arrival thirty years ago of "Bookworm" on KCRW 89.9 FM (NPR) out of Santa Monica College, an award-winning program hosted by the legendary Michael Silverblatt, the most-listened to literary arts show on the air. More recent contributors to literary radio and podcast culture include the hosts of the "LARB Radio Hour" and "Bibliocracy Radio," two programs aired on Pacifica Radio’s KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California. The hosts of these programs have shared with listeners to non-commercial community-supported radio the writing of hundreds of new and emerging authors and contributed mightily to public discourse on literature and the arts. The diverse list of author guests interviewed by these hosts is too long to reproduce but includes all varieties of poets, nonfiction authors, novelists, journalists, memoirists, playwrights and more... including, of course journalist, fiction and nonfiction author Hector Tobar (The Barbarian Nurseries, Deep Down Dark).

This panel features conversation and question and answer with five literary media players representative of Southern California and national public/community radio-podcast culture.  Emcee:  Hector Tobar, author and associate professor of literary journalism at UCI, with celebrated "Bookworm" (KCRW) host Michael Silverblatt, "Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour" (KPFK) co-hosts Medaya Ocher and Eric Newman, and "Bibliocracy Radio" (KPFK) host Andrew Tonkovich.

There will be light refreshments plus a Q&A.

This event is free and open to the public.