Christine N. Ziemba

Anne Lamott's latest novel. Kleenex alert: Anne Lamott's just-released seventh seventh novel, Imperfect Birds, brings back the characters of Elizabeth and the now-teenaged Rosie that were chronicled in Lamott's earlier books Rosie and Crooked Little Heart. Lamott tackles issues of drugs and alcohol that devastates hundreds of thousands of young people, their families, and their communities across the nation each year. From her publisher: "As in her story, addiction in real life often creeps...

California poppies | Photo by fotonomous via LAist's flickr pool. DANCE The Annenberg Beach House Artist-in-Residence Holly Rothschild is holding a site-specific dance workshop tonight at 6:30 pm. She’ll guide participants in an exploration of site, movement and process during the free, two-hour workshop. Come early for a docent-led tour of the Beach House (formerly Marion Davies estate). TALK Tonight cartoonist, satirist and playwright Jules Feiffer discusses his new memoir Backing Into Forward. In...

Canteen's Outwrite at Skylight tonight. Think you have the word chops to take on New Yorker writer Dana Goodyear? Tomorrow at Skylight Books, Canteen literary/arts journal is launching a reading/competition series--Outwrite--that pits established writers against audience members. It's like Food Network's Throwdown with Bobby Flay--with pens not pans being the weapon of choice. Author Joyce Maynard (To Die For, At Home in the World) will give a traditional reading of her work, while...

MOPLA reception at MorYork in Highland Park tonight. | 'Pull Over' by Sylvia Sukop. Besides celebrating poetry and National Garden Month, April is a month for MOPLA (Month of Photography Los Angeles), dedicated to celebrating the art of photography, including the commercial, fine art and photojournalism genres. It began last year, conceived and is organized by individuals who founded The Focus on Aids Photography Auction, The Lucie Foundation and the Lucie Awards. The organizers...

V.C. Andrews gets discussed at Skylight tonight. LIT Skylight Books presents the Lit Thing Book Bash tonight at 7:30 pm. It’s time for writers to rant or rave about the book they love--or the book they love to hate. On the program tonight are: Cylin Busby talking about Flowers in the Attic; Liza Palmer presenting Hope for the Flowers, Antoine Wilson covering A Spell for Chameleon, Cecil Castellucci talking about Tintin; and former LAist...

T.S. Eliot might not have been a big fan of April, as you can see from those lines in his great modernist poem, The Waste Land, but the Academy of American Poets went ahead and picked it anyway to celebrate National Poetry Month...

Street feast at the Americana at Brand. | Photo by Alberto Cueto via LAist's flickr pool. PERFORMANCE Project 35, a program of single-channel videos coordinated by the Independent Curators International (ICI), makes a screening stop at LAXART on La Cienega tonight at 7 pm. For the screening, 35 international curators were invited to each choose one work from an artist that they think is important for audiences around the world to experience today. With...

The Moth: Fear | Photo by Lord Jim via LAist's flickr pool. PERFORMANCE* Satsang Lounge is a modern-day cabaret series that presents new work by LA’s up-and-coming bands, performers and filmmakers. Tonight is the sixth installment and features bands Wet & Reckless, Bandito Royale and Family of the Year; the short film Carl's Lament,; and Touch the Lightning, a stop motion animation music video directed by Emily Wilder for a song by Lemon Sun....

Tomorrow's media summit at Occidental College focuses on preserving democracy. And other things American. | Photo by Joits via LAist's flickr pool. Mainstream media as we know it is changing. Has been for a long time. With bastions of old media like ABC news and the Los Angeles Times trimming their budgets and staff, people have to look elsewhere for fair and balanced news. The public still needs to make informed decisions--especially after the...

Moby co-edited Gristle. Moby the musician has become Moby the food policy advocate with the release of the book Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (Thinking Twice about the Meat We Eat). He edited the book along with food policy activist Miyun Park, and the two stop by the Skirball Center tomorrow evening for discussion, Q&A and book signing. Following along the same veins of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Gristle makes people...

Reading at Book Soup tonight. FILM TALK The film series Reel Talk with Stephen Farber presents the new Atom Egoyan film Chloe tonight at 7 pm in the Wadsworth Theatre. The film is a psychological thriller with Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried. Guest speakers tonight include screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson. Tickets $20. $10 student rush tickets available one hour before the show. TALK Tonight the Reprise Theatre Company presents an evening with...

Today at noon, the Farmlab Public Salon welcomes Van Zan Frater, the person behind the Jesus is My Homeboy image that graces a number of t-shirts these days. The inspiration for the image came from Frater’s terrifying brush with gang violence -- and it's not about cashing in on a kitschy image. In 2007, Frater started the Jesus is My Homeboy Foundation in LA, which provides assistance with burial expenses and grief counseling for...