Events
Josh Brolin with Kaia Gerber
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Kaia Gerber
discussing his memoir,
From Under the Truck
JAMS Performing Arts Center
1630 Pearl Street
(Parking available at the venue)
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TICKETS:
$55 General Admission + signed book
$80 Two General Admission tickets + one signed book
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Tuesday, November 26, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$50 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on November 26 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days after it airs. Books ship a week after the virtual event.
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A funny, uncanny, unforgettable and un-celebrity memoir from Josh Brolin
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Josh Brolin was born in 1968 and raised on a ranch in Paso Robles, California. He is a producer, director, writer, and Academy Award-nominated actor. The proud father of four children, he lives with his wife and two youngest in California.
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Since the age of 10, Kaia Gerber has worked with the world’s top luxury brands, appearing on numerous international and US magazine covers. In recent years, she’s acted on the big screen and small, including appearances in Laura Dern’s “Palm Royale,” Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night” and the upcoming “Outcome “from Jonah Hill. Gerber recently launched her online literature platform, Library Science, which grew out of her platform on Instagram. She splits her time between NYC and LA, which gives her ample time to indulge in her other passion, reading.
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“Josh Brolin’s out to catch his breath between the slant-eyed suggestions and irrefutable evidence of his past. He hears voices, and he listens, reminding us with brutal honesty that our surroundings were never there to be carried, rather woven into the fabric of the freedom to be who we are.” — Matthew McConaughey
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Weaving a latticework of different strands, moving back and forth through time, Josh Brolin captures a life marked by curiosity, pain, devotion, kindness, humor. He recounts an unconventional childhood far from Hollywood. Raised on a ranch in Paso Robles, California, he was surrounded as a child by the wolves, cougars, and other wild animals gathered by his fearless and explosive mother, Jane Agee Brolin. Her tragic, early death haunts this book, and the force of her unforgettable personality is felt throughout. Brolin also brings to life his career in the film industry—from his breakout role in The Goonies to the set of No Country for Old Men—and the professional and personal ups and downs in between and since. With unflinching honesty but also great humor, he shares insights into relationships, addiction, love, and fatherhood, while letting the white space in between words speak for itself. Grappling with the mysteries of life and death in a way that will catch readers by surprise, From Under the Truck is an audacious and riveting memoir from a born writer.
Tim Matheson with Scott Mantz
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
discussing his memoir,
Damn Glad to Meet You: My Seven Decades in the Hollywood Trenches
. Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
at New Roads School
3131 Olympic Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90404
(Free Parking available at the venue)
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TICKETS:
$50 Reserved Section + signed book
$25 General Admission
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$46 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on November 19 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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A fun and revealing memoir from acclaimed Hollywood actor Tim Matheson
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Tim Matheson has appeared on television and film screens for more than six decades, from early roles in Leave it to Beaver, Jonny Quest and Bonanza, to his unforgettable comedic turn as Rush Chair Eric “Otter” Stratton in Animal House, who was always “damn glad to meet you!” Matheson was twice nominated for a Primetime Emmy for his work as Vice President John Hoynes on The West Wing, and he is currently filming the sixth season of Netflix fan favorite Virgin River. From the director’s chair, he’s worked on episodes of Virgin River, The Twilight Zone, Cold Case, Psych, Criminal Minds, Suits, Burn Notice, Third Watch, Without a Trace, and Hart of Dixie among many others, as well as multiple pilots including the acclaimed pilot for Covert Affairs.
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“Tim was a cast, crew, and audience favorite on The West Wing. He’s been at the center of some of America’s most iconic film and television. Damn Glad to Meet You is a fascinating, hilarious, and often very moving inside look at an extraordinary career.”―Aaron Sorkin
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“A really enjoyable read covering Tim’s remarkable screen career—and some juicy tidbits about what actually goes on behind the scenes on a Hollywood set!”―Mel Brooks
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As much as this book is about Matheson’s own career, it’s equally about the larger-than-life characters he’s encountered, including Chris Farley, Chevy Chase, Lucille Ball, Dick Van Dyke, Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope, Ryan Reynolds, John Candy, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, John Belushi, Clint Eastwood, Kurt Russell, Henry Fonda, Kevin Bacon, Michael Landon, Jane Seymour, Anne Bancroft, Steven Spielberg, Aaron Sorkin, Penny Marshall, Sally Field and more.
Filled with riveting stories of the entertainment industry, Matheson also offers illuminating insight in his film school boot camp sidebars.
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Scott Mantz is a longtime host, entertainment journalist, film critic and Emmy-nominated producer. He is currently an entertainment reporter for KTLA-TV in Los Angeles, and his additional credits include Access Hollywood, The TODAY Show, CNN, Headline News and The Official Live Golden Globes Red Carpet Preshow. He is recipient of the ICG Publicists Guild Press Award (honoring outstanding entertainment journalism), and a member of the Producers Guild of America, SAG-AFTRA and the Critic’s Choice Association.
Bethany Joy Lenz with Ramani Durvasula (virtual)
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Ramani Durvasula
discussing her memoir,
Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Saturday, November 2, 2024, 3pm PT/6pm ET
TICKETS:
$45 Virtual Admission + signed book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on November 2 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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A deliciously witty and inspiring memoir by One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz about her decade in a cult and her quest to break free.
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Bethany Joy Lenz starred in the hit TV series One Tree Hill. Her other acting credits include Guiding Light, Grey’s Anatomy, Charmed, Felicity, Suits, Dexter, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. She is also a recording artist who has released several albums. Lenz currently cohosts the podcast Drama Queens and is the founder/editor-in-chief of the broadsheet newspaper Modern Vintage News.
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In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on the hit drama One Tree Hill. Her career was about to take off, but her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel. What none of the show’s millions of fans knew, hidden even from her costars, was her secret double life in a cult.
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An only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong, Lenz found the safe haven she’d been searching for in a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives. However, the group soon morphed into something more sinister—a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family. Piece by piece, Lenz began to give away her autonomy, ultimately relocating to the Family’s Pacific Northwest compound, overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge. Family “minders” assigned to her on set, “Maoist struggle session”–inspired meetings in the basement of a filthy house, and regular counseling with “Leadership” were just part of the tactics used to keep her loyal.
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Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith.
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Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.
Ramani Durvasula, Ph.D. (Dr. Ramani) is a licensed clinical psychologist in California and the New York Times Bestselling Author of It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. Her other books include Don’t You Know Who I Am?: How to Stay Sane in the Era of Narcissism, Entitlement and Incivility and Should I Stay or Should I Go: Surviving a Relationship With a Narcissist. She has lectured and trained therapists around the world on best practices on working with clients experiencing narcissistic abuse and hosts a popular YouTube channel.
Ta-Nehisi Coates with Sam Fragoso (virtual)
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Sam Fragoso
discussing his book,
The Message
This event was taped with an audience on October 27.
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Friday, November 1, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$50 Virtual Admission + book (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on November 1 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer and Between the World and Me, for which he won the National Book Award in 2015. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, he is currently the Sterling Brown endowed chair in English at Howard University.”
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“[Coates] is intellectually fearless . . . unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.”—The New Yorker.
Just as Between the World and Me took the form of a letter to his son, The Message is crafted as a letter to his writing students. He bears an urgent message for them: their “task is nothing less than doing their part to save the world.”
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Coates’s call to action is in fact a diagnosis of the political and social polarization currently sweeping the globe: the world is riven by stories. He comes to this realization not as a geopolitical wonk or a statesman, but as a journalist who has seen firsthand how stories are more powerful tools of persuasion than the assemblage of interconnected facts.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.
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Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, The Message is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.
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In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Next, he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning. In the book’s longest section, he travels to Palestine, where he sees the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.
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Sam Fragoso is the host of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, a weekly series of conversations with artists, writers, and politicians. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, and NPR. After conducting interviews with Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, and Noam Chomsky, he founded Talk Easy in 2016. The program is currently distributed by Pushkin Industries.
Alex Van Halen with Ariel Levy (virtual)
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Ariel Levy
discussing his memoir,
Brothers
This event was taped with an audience October 24.
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Tuesday, October 29, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$50 Virtual Admission + signed book* (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on October 29 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
*book has a signed book plate
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Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music and brotherly love.
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Alex Van Halen is the co-founder of the rock band Van Halen and its original drummer. Born in Amsterdam and trained as a classical pianist, he graduated from Pasadena High School.
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Ariel Levy was Alex Van Halen’s collaborator on Brothers, and is the author of her own New York Times bestselling memoir The Rules Do Not Apply. Levy has received a National Magazine Award for her work at The New Yorker, where she has been a staff writer since 2008. She is the host and co-creator of the podcast The Just Enough Family.
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Alex Van Halen wrote Brothers, a love letter to his younger brother, while still mourning Eddie‘s untimely death.
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He recounts their childhood in an 800-square foot house in Pasadena, with an itinerant musician father and proper Indonesian-born mother—how they arrived in the US from the Netherlands and struggled to fit in. He also shares stories of musical politics, infighting and bad-boy behavior. The book includes never-before-seen photos from the author’s private archives, as he sets the record straight on his brother’s life and death in the first-ever accurate account of his family and the band.
Richard Powers with Steph Cha (virtual)
Live Talks Los Angeles event:
in conversation with Steph Cha
discussing the writing life and his new novel,
Playground
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This event was taped with an audience on Oct 23.
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VIRTUAL EVENT TICKETS (click here)
Monday, October 28, 2024, 6pm PT/9pm ET
TICKETS:
$46 Virtual Admission + book with signed book plate (includes shipping to US addresses only). Includes access to watch the event on October 28 at 6pm PT/9pm ET and on video-on-demand for five days.
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A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.
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Richard Powers is the author of fourteen novels, including The Overstory, Bewilderment, and Orfeo. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award. He lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
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“A characterful, capacious and engaging novel, distilling subjects as diverse as oceanography, climate change, the legacies of colonialism and the arc of a lifelong friendship into an exhilaratingly entangled narrative in which Powers’ unparalleled gifts for revealing the magic and mystery of the natural world are on full display.”― The 2024 Booker Prize Judges
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Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.
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They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.
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Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.
Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s a critic whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as noir editor, and is the current series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology.