I Went to the LA Times Festival of Books

and all I got was this lousy. . . No seriously folks, no t-shirts, just a lot of immersion into the world of writing and books on a perfect Los Angeles day. And Metro was FREE, cause, you know, it was also EARTH DAY.

The Festival was held at USC, and for me, it’s always a bit weird going back there, where I went to grad school in 81-82. Which was aborted, by myself, the reasons why don’t really make a great deal of sense but they seemed to then. All I’ll say is I regret not finishing the MFA, but USC is where a lot of my first impressions of Southern California come from and were formed. It’s a beautiful campus and good to go back on occasion – and it’s changed tremendously since the early 80s, so there’s that. Sigh

On to the fair. I went just on the Sunday (though the festival was both weekend days) for a few panels which interested me – wanting to pick up secrets on how to approach Memoir in a creative way – which I didn’t really get from this panel but it was interesting to find out about their process, their stories, and their books.

Also went to two Crime Fiction panels — one which I thought would probe the darker side, and one that was LA Crime-focused. The second of these – the Crime Fiction-City of Angels panel actually covered both topics well. The interesting thing about LA is that it’s so big and diverse, the books these writers wrote are versions of LA I am totally unaware of. So that by itself was a revelation. As to the darker side, well, both Ryan Gattis (in particular) and Joe Ide shared how they write and research violence, which I’d have to say was new territory for me. I found it all inspirational, and a good kick in the pants.

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