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An Evening with Jane Smiley
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
8:00pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)
An Evening with Jane Smiley
in conversation with David Francis
discussing the writing life and her novel, Some Luck
Moss Theatre
New Roads School
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission
$30 Reserved Seats
$43 Includes Smiley’s book + Reserved Seats
$95 includes reserved seating + pre-event reception + Smiley’s book
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as well as four works of nonfiction. In 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature in 2006. She lives in Northern California.
We love Jane at Live Talks Los Angeles. She was part of our first event, where she interviewed Dave Barry (see the video), and she returned earlier this year to interview Gary Shteyngart (see the video). We are excited to to be featuring her for her upcoming novel, Some Luck.
On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different yet equally remarkable children: Frank, the brilliant, stubborn first-born; Joe, whose love of animals makes him the natural heir to his family’s land; Lillian, an angelic child who enters a fairy-tale marriage with a man only she will fully know; Henry, the bookworm who’s not afraid to be different; and Claire, who earns the highest place in her father’s heart. Moving from post-World War I America through the early 1950s, Some Luck gives us an intimate look at this family’s triumphs and tragedies, zooming in on the realities of farm life, while casting-as the children grow up and scatter to New York, California, and everywhere in between-a panoramic eye on the monumental changes that marked the first half of the twentieth century. Rich with humor and wisdom, twists and surprises, Some Luck takes us through deeply emotional cycles of births and deaths, passions, and betrayals, displaying Smiley’s dazzling virtuosity, compassion, and understanding of human nature and the nature of history, never discounting the role of fate and chance. This potent conjuring of many lives across generations is a stunning tour de force.
David Francis‘ first novel Agapanthus Tango was published internationally in seven languages and then in the United States as The Great Island Sea. His second novel, Stray Dog Winter, was named Book of the Year in The Advocate, Novel of the Year in the Australian Literature Review, was a 2009 LAMBDA fiction award finalist and won the 2010 American Library Association Barbara Gittings Stonewall Prize for Literature. His short fiction has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, Wet Ink, The Southern California Review, Best Australian Stories 2010 and 2012, Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Harvard Review and The Ratting Wall. His book reviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books. For more information go to visit his website.
Chef Marcus Samuelsson with Jonathan Gold
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
8:00pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)
Marcus Samuelsson
in conversation with Jonathan Gold
Marcus Off Duty:
The Recipes I Cook at Home
All Saints Church
504 N. Camden
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
PURCHASE TICKETS
online sales end at 5pm, tix available at the door
$20 General Admission
$30 Reserved Seats
$50 Includes Samuelsson’s Marcus Off Duty + Reserved Seats
$95 includes reserved seating + pre-event reception + book
The reception includes selections chosen from the cookbook Marcus Off Duty!
Marcus Samuelsson is owner of Red Rooster restaurant in Harlem and former Executive Chef and co-owner of New York’s Restaurant Aquavit, AQ Cafe at Scandinavia House, and Riingo. The youngest chef ever to receive two three-star ratings from The New York Times, he starred on Discovery Home Channel’s Inner Chef. His cookbooks include Aquavit and the New Scandinavian Cuisine, The Soul of a New Cuisine, which won the 2007 James Beard Foundation Award for best international cookbook, and New American Table. He is winner of Top Chef Masters, and a judge on Chopped. In 2009, he was chosen by President Obama to cook the first state dinner. Samuelsson appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles in conversation with David Burtka of E! in 2012 to discuss his memoir, Yes! Chef. See the video.
In his latest cook book, Marcus Off Duty, Marcus Samuelsson shows how he cooks at home for family and friends. For two decades, he has captivated food lovers with his brilliant culinary interpretations. Born in Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, and trained in European kitchens, he is a world citizen turned American success story. The recipes blend a rainbow of the flavors he experienced in his travels—Ethiopian, Swedish, Mexican, Caribbean, Italian, and Southern soul. His eclectic, casual food includes dill-spiced salmon; coconut-lime curried chicken; mac, cheese, and greens; chocolate pie spiced with Indian garam masala; and for kids, peanut noodles with slaw.
Jonathan Gold is the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. He won the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2007 and was a finalist again in 2011. A Los Angeles native, he began writing the Counter Intelligence column for the L.A. Weekly in 1986, wrote about death metal and gangsta rap for Rolling Stone and Spin among other places, and is delighted that he has managed to forge a career out of the professional eating of tacos.
Chef Yotam Ottolenghi
Thursday, October 23, 2014
8:00pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)
An Evening with Chef Yotam Ottolenghi
in conversation with Russ Parsons
Plenty More:
Vibrant Vegetable Cooking from London’s Ottolenghi
All Saints Church
504 N. Camden
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
ONLINE SALES HAVE ENDED
A few tickets avail at the door
$20 General Admission
$30 Reserved Seats
$50 Includes Ottolenghi’s Plenty More + Reserved Seats
$95 includes reserved seating + pre-event reception + Plenty More
The reception includes selections chosen from the cookbook Plenty More!
Yotam Ottolenghi owns an eponymous group of four restaurants, plus the high-end restaurant, Nopi, in London. His previous cookbooks—Plenty, Jerusalem, and Ottolenghi—have all been on the New York Times bestseller list. He writes for The Guardian, and appears on BBC. He lives in London.
Plenty More is the much anticipated follow-up to Ottolenghi’s bestselling and award-winning cookbook Plenty, featuring 120 vegetarian dishes organized by cooking method. Plenty influenced the way people cook and eat vegetables. Its focus on flavorful, vegetable-centric dishes that emphasize spices and fresh ingredients caused a produce-cooking craze in the UK, the US, and the world over. Plenty More continues in the spirit of Plenty, with dazzling dishes, prepared raw, grilled, baked, simmered, cracked, or braised. It features recipes for main dishes, sides, salads, and sweets including Membrillo and Stilton Quiche, Buttermilk-Crusted Okra, Candy Beets with Lentils, Roasted Rhubarb with Sweet Labneh, and Quince Poached in Pomegranate Juice.
Russ Parsons is the food editor and columnist of the Los Angeles Times. He has been writing about food for more than 25 years, including more than 20 years at The Times. He has won many food journalism awards, including those from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the Association of Food Journalists and the James Beard Foundation and in 2008 he was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage, the hall of fame of American cooking. He is the author of the cookbooks How to Read a French Fry, which was a finalist for two Julia Child cookbook awards, and How to Pick a Peach, which was named one of the best 100 books of the year by both Publisher’s Weekly and Amazon. – See more at: http://livetalksla.org/blog/2013/11/20/january-29-chef-suzanne-goin-in-conversation-with-russ-parsons/#sthash.wRa78CqO.dpuf
An Evening with George Clinton
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
8:00pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)
An Evening with George Clinton
discussing his memoir
Brothas Be, Yo Like George,
Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You?
Moss Theatre
New Roads School
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission
$30 Reserved Seats
$43 Includes Clinton’s memoir + Reserved Seats
$95 includes reserved seating + pre-event reception + Clinton’s memoir
George Clinton revolutionized R&B during the ’70s, twisting soul music into funk by adding influences from several late-’60s acid heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Sly Stone. He was the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s and early 1980s, and launched a solo career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost innovators of funk music, along with James Brown and Sly Stone. The Parliament/Funkadelic machine ruled black music during the ’70s, capturing more than forty R&B hit singles (including three at #1) and recording three platinum albums. Clinton was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic.
George Clinton began his musical career in New Jersey, where his obsession with doo-wop and R&B led to a barbershop quartet—literally, as Clinton and his friends also styled hair in the local shop—the way kids often got their musical start in the ’50s. But how many kids like that ended up playing to tens of thousands of rabid fans alongside a diaper-clad guitarist? How many of them commissioned a spaceship and landed it onstage during concerts? How many put their stamp on four decades of pop music, from the mind-expanding sixties to the hip-hop-dominated nineties and beyond? One of them. George Clinton.
How George Clinton got from barbershop quartet to funk music megastar is a story for the ages. As a high school student he traveled to New York City, where he absorbed all the trends in pop music, from traditional rhythm and blues to Motown, the Beatles, the Stones, and psychedelic rock, not to mention the formative funk of James Brown and Sly Stone. By the dawn of the seventies, he had emerged as the leader of a wildly creative musical movement composed mainly of two bands—Parliament and Funkadelic. And by the bicentennial, Clinton and his P-Funk empire were dominating the soul charts as well as the pop charts. He was an artistic visionary, visual icon, merry prankster, absurdist philosopher, and savvy businessmen, all rolled into one. He was like no one else in pop music, before or since.
An Evening with Alan Cumming
Monday, October 20, 2014
8:00pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)
An Evening with Alan Cumming
in conversation with Sam Rubin, KTLA
discussing his memoir,
Not My Father’s Son
The Aero Theatre
1328 Montana Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404
ONLINE SALES HAVE ENDED.
Some tickets available at the door, and books available for sale at the event
$20 General Admission seats – Avail at the door
$30 Reserved Seats – SOLD OUT
$43 Alan Cumming’s memoir + reserved block of seats ENDED
$95 Pre-event reception (6:30-7:30pm) + Reserved seats + book- SOLD OUT
* a book signing follows the talk.
> Alan Cumming in USA Today, 9/3/14
Alan Cumming is currently starring as the Master of Ceremonies opposite Michelle Williams in Cabaret on Broadway, a performance which won him a Tony Award 1998. He recently completed the Broadway run of the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Macbeth. He recently wrapped season 5 of the CBS hit drama The Good Wife for which he has been nominated for multiple Emmy, SAG, Critics’ Choice and Satellite awards. He also stars as Austen Clarke opposite Lisa Kudrow in Showtime’s Web Therapy and is the host of Masterpiece Mystery on PBS.
He continues to be an activist for gay rights and education and has received many awards for his work including most recently honors from Bailey House, the Matthew Shephard Foundation, The LGBT Task Force, The Trevor Project and AmFAR . He was awarded an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) for his work in the arts and LGBT rights by the Queen in 2009 and has also received both the Great Scot and Icon of Scotland awards.
A beloved star of stage, television, and film, Alan Cumming is a successful artist whose diversity and fearlessness is unparalleled. His success masks a painful childhood growing up under the heavy rule of an emotionally and physically abusive father—a relationship that tormented him long into adulthood. In his memoir, Not My Father’s Son, he shares the emotional story of his complicated relationship with his father and the deeply buried family secrets that shaped his life and career.
When television producers in the UK approached him to appear on a popular celebrity genealogy show in 2010, Alan enthusiastically agreed. He hoped the show would solve a family mystery involving his maternal grandfather, a celebrated WWII hero who disappeared in the Far East. But as the truth of his family ancestors revealed itself, Alan learned far more than he bargained for about himself, his past, and his own father.
Sam Rubin is the entertainment reporter for the KTLA Morning News. Rubin hosts the Emmy-nominated “Live from the Academy Awards,” syndicated nationally by Tribune Entertainment, “Sneaks,” a series of movie preview shows produced in conjunction with the Los Angeles Times, as well as a show for the Reelz Channel. He is a recipient of a Golden Mike Award for Best Entertainment Reporter from the Radio & Television News Association and, as part of the KTLA Morning News team, earned an Associated Press Television-Radio Award for Best News Broadcast.
In addition to his activities at KTLA, he also reports for Tribune’s WGN-TV in Chicago. Nationally, Rubin provides reports for “On Air With Ryan Seacrest,” “Show Buzz,” and CNN. On the radio, Rubin reports for Los Angeles’ KNX-AM. Rubin was last at Live Talks Los Angeles interviewing Garry Marshall. See the video.
Nicholas Kristof, New York Times Columnist
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
8:00pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)
An Evening with Nicholas Kristof
Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, New York Times
A Path Appears:
Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity
All Saints Church
504 N. Camden
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Tickets available at the door
$20 General Admission
Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since November 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week.
With his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, he has coauthored three previous books: Half the Sky, Thunder from the East, and China Wakes. They were awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for their coverage of China and the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He was previously bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo and a correspondent in Los Angeles. He won his second Pulitzer in 2006 for his columns on Darfur. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to more than 150 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. Visit his bog at The New York Times. For more on the Half the Sky Movement, visit the site.
Equal in urgency and compassion to Half the Sky, the new book from the acclaimed husband-and-wife team is even more ambitious in scale: a deep examination of people who are making the world a better place, and the myriad ways we can support them, whether with a donation of five dollars or five million, an inkling to help or a useful skill to deploy. With scrupulous research and on-the-ground reporting, the authors assay the art and science of giving-determining the current most successful local and global aid initiatives (on issues from education to inner-city violence to disease prevention), evaluating the efficiency and impact of specific approaches and charities, as well as fund-raising. Most compellingly, perhaps, they show us how particular people have made a difference, and offer practical advice on how best each of us can give and what we can personally derive from doing so.