Celebrating CALIFORNIA REWRITTEN with John Freeman+ Venita Blackburn

Bel Canto Books is delighted to celebrate the book launch of CALIFORNIA REWRITTEN: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE GOLDEN STATE'S NEW LITERATURE by John Freeman, in conversation with Venita Blackburn (DEAD IN LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA).

Kindly RSVP so we can plan accordingly. Please stay home if you feel sick.

This event will be held indoors at KUBO LB (3976 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach CA).

EVENT SCHEDULE

4:45pm - Event check-in begins

5:00pm - Welcome & event start

5:15-6:00pm - Author reading, conversation, and Q&A

6:00pm-7:00pm - Book signing & shopping time

7:00pm - Event ends

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Freeman has hosted Alta‘s California Book Club since its founding in 2020. He is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, and he edited Freeman’s (2015–2023). His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well the poetry collections, Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees. His work is translated into more than twenty languages, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York.

ABOUT THE IN CONVERSATION PARTNER

Works by Venita Blackburn have appeared in the New Yorker, NY Times, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Story Magazine, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Paris Review, and others. Among various honors, she received the Prairie Schooner book prize for fiction, which resulted in the publication of her collected stories, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, in 2017. Blackburn’s second collection of stories is How to Wrestle a Girl, 2021, finalist for a Lambda Literary Prize and was a NYTimes editor’s choice. Her highly acclaimed debut novel, Dead in Long Beach, California, is about the mania of grief, all of human history and a lesbian assassin at the end of the world. She is the founder and president of Live, Write, an organization devoted to offering free creative writing workshops for communities lacking access to professional instruction: livewriteworkshop.com. Her home town is Compton, California, and she is an Associate Professor of creative writing at California State University, Fresno.

ABOUT BEL CANTO BOOKS

Founded by Jhoanna Belfer, a Filipina-American poet and former hospitality executive, Bel Canto Books offers a curated selection of fiction, nonfiction and children's books, organized around a theme of the month, in particular celebrating books by women and people of color. Learn more at belcantobooks.net.

ABOUT KUBO LB

KUBO LB is a creative community space for Filipinx, BIPOC, LGBTQ, and Women led small businesses. KUBO LB is a space to support and educate small businesses through retail, business workshops and more. Learn more at kubolb.com.

CALIFORNIA REWRITTEN: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE GOLDEN STATE'S NEW LITERATURE by John Freeman

Host or Publisher Bel Canto Books - Long Beach, CA