LAist chatted with Kevin Smokler a few weeks ago about his new book, Bookmark Now, and now you've got the chance to do so as well. If you didn't catch him last night at Skylight Books, you can hang with him and Lynn Isenberg and maybe some of us -isters (ed. note -- mainly me) tonight at Book Soup. The word nerd party starts at 7 PM. more ›

We spent Memorial Day Weekend away from the computer. We were enjoying the surprisingly pleasant weather outside running and reading books. We spent Saturday night at the Infusion Gallery with Cannibal Flower and their 80s prom art event (which featured an awful lot of art focused on the vagina as well as Vincent Calenzo). We caught up on our spring cleaning and we enjoyed "The Longest Yard" far more than we ever expected to. more ›

Kevin Smokler is a book man. He writes about contemporary literature all over the place and talks about it on NPR. He consults and lectures across the country about what we read and how and last year, when the NEA announced that reading was in decline, he got a little sad and then he got a little mad. He had run a very popular site about books and had created virtual book tours that were wildly successful. He read a bunch of sites that were very popular that talked lit and he knew young authors like David Sedaris, Nick Hornby, and Zadie Smith that could pack houses with young people that wanted to talk about their words. From there, his first book, Bookmark Now, was born. It is a collection of essays about writing and reading in our "unreaderly times." We got a chance to IM with Kevin during his own Virtual Book Tour about the written word in a multimedia world. more ›