Posts by Live Talks LA

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A spirit-lifting memoir on how to turn pain into purpose, how to live always in gratitude, and how to face down tragedy and turn it into love.
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Nicole Avant is a philanthropist and filmmaker, as well as a former diplomat. After a career in entertainment and political fundraising, she served as the United States Ambassador to the Bahamas under President Obama. In 2019, she produced the critically acclaimed and award-winning documentary The Black Godfather, and in 2022, she produced Trees of Peace, a film about the Rwandan genocide. 

Avant grew up surrounded by some of the most extraordinary artists of our time: Bill Withers, Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, Sidney Poitier. Her parents—entertainment mogul, Clarence Avant, and legendary philanthropist, Jacqueline Avant—turned their home into a place of refuge and inspiration for a generation of geniuses. Nicole drew on that magical upbringing to create a stellar career in the music business, become the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas, and produce critically acclaimed award-winning films and documentaries. Then, an unthinkable tragedy struck: her mother was fatally shot in December 2021.
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In this searing and inspiring memoir, Nicole turns the pain of her family’s loss into the fuel that pushes her forward into an even more committed life of love and activism: “We can’t banish evil,” she writes. “We have to learn to swim through trauma and live for all of those who can’t.” Turning tragedy into inspiration, Think You’ll Be Happy—her mom’s last words to Nicole—provides a roadmap for anyone working to remain positive and anchored in hope. 
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“At some point in every life, we are faced with a challenge that we think we can’t overcome. This book should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand how to trust in the light even at the darkest times. Drawing on her own grit, grace and gratitude – not to mention a deep and abiding faith – Nicole Avant has gifted us a roadmap out of the darkness of her own profound loss and into a life filled with meaning, purpose and service.” — Jay Shetty, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Think Like A Monk.
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Rashida  Jones  is an actor, writer, producer, director and podcaster.  Her Film & TV credits include: Sunny, Silo, On the Rocks, #blackAF, Duncanville, Klaus, Spies in Disguise, The Social Network, Celeste and Jesse Forever, The Muppets and I Love You, Man. Additional credits include Angie Tribeca, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Boston Public, Freaks and Geeks, Chappelle Show and Portlandia.She  recently launched a podcast with Bill Gates, Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions with their premiere episode featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci.  Directing credits include Quincy, and the music video for Sara Bareilles’ Brave and episodic work on #blackAF, Angie Tribeca and Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On.

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The hotly anticipated book from “one of the all-time pop-culture greats” (New York magazine) that chronicles her shocking life and unyielding determination to not only survive but achieve her dreams.
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Julia Fox is a multidisciplinary artist. She’s had a fashion label, published art books, and held numerous exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles. She inspired the character in her break out role in the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems and has acted in numerous films since.  She’s a strong advocate for sustainability and a do-it-yourself attitude. She cohosts a podcast called Forbidden Fruits. She is a single mom and currently lives in New York City with her son Valentino.
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Joey Soloway is an award-winning writer, director, producer, and LGBT activist. Soloway is the creator of the groundbreaking Amazon original series Transparent. Over the course of its five-season run, Transparent” received 24 Emmy nominations and eight Emmy awards — including two for Solowayʼs directing – as well as two Golden Globes. Soloway launched their arts career in Chicago’s Off-Loop theatre movement in the 1990s, creating the underground hit The Real Live Brady Bunch. Other TV and film credits include: Six Feet Under, I Love Dick, Grey’s Anatomy, United States of Tara and  Afternoon Delight, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Soloway is co-writer and producer of stage play A Transparent Musical.  They are adapting the book The Ethical Slut, developing a comedic travel series called The Godyssey and The South Commons Experiment a personal documentary investigating what it meant to grow up in a “racial utopia”.  Soloway launched The Disruptors Fellowship, a program supporting emerging television writers of color who identify as transgender, non-binary, disabled, and/or undocumented/ formerly undocumented.
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Julia Fox is famous for many things: her captivating acting, such as her breakout role in the film Uncut Gems; her trendsetting style, including bleached eyebrows, exaggerated eyeshadow, and cutout dresses; her mastery of social media, where she entertains and educates her millions of followers. But all these share the trait for which she is most famous: unabashedly and unapologetically being herself.

This commitment to authenticity has never been more on display than in Down the Drain.  Fox recounts her turbulent path: her parents’ volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; her own near-lethal overdoses and the deaths of still more friends from drugs and suicide; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs “The Artist”; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son. Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Fox doesn’t just capture her improbable evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon, she captures her transition from girlhood to womanhood to motherhood. Family and friendship, sex and death, violence and love, money and power, innocence and experience—it’s all in her memoir, in raw, remarkable and riveting detail.

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The long-awaited next book from actress and New York Times bestselling author of The Rural Diaries, Hilarie Burton Morgan. Through memoir essays and magical practices, Grimoire Girl connects us to the enchantment that exists inside us all.
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Hilarie Burton Morgan is an actor, producer, farmer, candy dealer, kid chauffeur, and New York Times bestselling author. Known for her roles as Peyton on One Tree Hill, Sara Ellis on White Collar, her work as an MTV VJ, and her leading roles in popular Lifetime movies, she lives with her husband, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, in New York’s picturesque Hudson Valley with their son Gus, daughter George, and a whole menagerie of animals.
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Sophia Bush is an actress, producer, activist, and entrepreneur. Some of her television and film projects include False Positive, Good Sam,  Hard Luck Love Song , John Tucker Must Die, Incredibles 2, One Tree Hill, Dick Chicago PD, This Is Us and Love, Victor. She made her West End debut in2023 in 2:22 a Ghost Story the Olivier-nominated thriller play written by Danny Robbins. She hosts a podcast, Work in Progress, as well as co-hosts the iHeartRadio podcast Drama Queens alongside Hilarie Burton Morgan and Bethany Joy Lenz, during which they relive and reclaim nine seasons of CW drama, One Tree Hill. Sophia devotes her free time to bettering girl’s education and the environment. She also General Partner at Union Heritage Ventures, a majority African-American and women-owned venture capital firm.
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Since childhood, Hilarie Burton Morgan has felt the call to record, keep, and catalogue life in all its strange wonder. It was a whimsical habit, with no clear goal. And then, when she became a mother, the importance of all that collecting snapped into focus.  In an effort to patchwork together an anthology of traditions, curiosity, and magical thinking that she could pass down, Burton Morgan realized she was crafting a grimoire. 
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In her most intimate book yet, Burton Morgan shares how she’s creating an inheritance of mischief and magic that will outlive her. What’s more, she shows readers how they too can look at the elements of their lives and collect the pieces into a tangible collection of a lifetime of learning. Because in its purest form, a grimoire was a guide to keep you alive.
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Like the grimoires of old, full of life-saving wisdom, these pages record the people, places, ideas and habits that have kept Burton Morgan alive, in her signature voice that is at once honest, witty, and charming. Accompanied by whimsical two-color illustrations by Olivia Faust, the book also includes Simple Spells, which are ways to bring magic into your daily life such as: create an altar that delights and inspires; practice candle magic and poetry spells; make an oracle deck; channel your inner kitchen witch with recipes and potions
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So begin creating your own inheritance, take a long look inward and decide…
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What wisdom will be written on the pages of your Grimoire?

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TICKETS (virtual event only, Oct 22, 3pm)
$40 Virtual Admission + signed copy of Zilot 
(includes shipping to US addresses)
*Event airs on Oct 22 at 3pm PT/6pm ET
and is available on video-on-demand for five days after it airs, thru Sep. 28
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