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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
8:00pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)

An Evening with Will Self
discussing novel, Umbrella
in conversation with Anthony Miller 

William Turner Gallery
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90404

PURCHASE TICKETS
$20 General Admission
$35 Includes Self’s book + Reserved seat

Will Self is an English author, journalist and television personality. Self is the author of nine novels; five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and five collections of non-fiction writing (Umbrella; Walking to Hollywood; The Quantity Theory of Insanity; My Idea of Fun; Cock & Bull; Great Apes and others). His work has won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction. His work has been translated into 22 languages, and his novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. 

Self is a regular contributor to publications including Playboy, The Guardian, Harpers, The New York Times and the London Review of Books. He currently writes two fortnightly columns for New Statesman, and over the years he has been a columnist for The Observer, The Times and the Evening Standard. His columns for Building Design on the built environment, and for the Independent Magazine on the psychology of place brought him to prominence as a thinker concerned with the politics of urbanity.  Self is also a regular contributor on British television (Have I Got News For You and Shooting Stars, Newsnight, Question Time). He is also a frequent contributor to BBC Radio 4.

UMBRELLA is peppered with Self ’s trademark wit, dark humor, and stylistic idiosyncrasies. As the New York Times Book Review noted, “Self belongs in the company of Nabokov, Pynchon, William Gaddis, and Don DeLillo,” and with this novel, he stakes his claim.

In Umbrella, it is 1971, and Zachary Busner is a maverick psychiatrist who has just begun working at a mental hospital in suburban north London. As he tours the hospital’s wards, Busner notes that some of the patients are exhibiting a very peculiar type of physical tic: rapid, precise movements that they repeat over and over. These patients do not react to outside stimuli and are trapped inside an internal world. The patient that most draws Busner’s interest is a certain Audrey Dearth, an elderly woman born in the slums of West London in 1890, who is completely withdrawn and catatonically tics with her hands, turning handles and spinning wheels in the air. Busner’s investigations into the condition of Audrey and the other patients alternate with sections told from Audrey’s point of view, a stream of memories of a bustling bygone Edwardian London where horse-drawn carts roamed the streets. In internal monologue, Audrey recounts her childhood, her work as a clerk in an umbrella shop, her time as a factory munitionette during World War I, and the very different fates of her two brothers. Busner’s attempts to break through to Audrey and the other patients lead to unexpected results, and, in Audrey’s case, discoveries about her family’s role in her illness that are shocking and tragic.

Anthony Miller is a writer, critic, night owl, and editor-at-large of the literary journal Black Clock. The former book critic for Los Angeles CityBeat, where he won a Los Angeles Press Club Award, he has also written for Bookforum, LA Weekly, East Bay Express, the Los Angeles Times, and Poets & Writers. He is a regular contributor to the website HiLobrow and Los Angeles magazine. He studied literature at the University of Chicago and Trinity College, Dublin, but it was a seventh-grade teacher who said of his interpretive process: “Sometimes Anthony makes more of a concept than is actually there.” He is at work on a novel and a not-so-secret history of secret histories.

Sunday, November 17, 2013
4:00pm

An Afternoon with Mitch Albom
in conversation with Bradley Whitford
discussing new novel, The First Phone Call from Heaven

Wilshire Boulevard Temple -Irmas Campus
11661 W. Olympic Boulevard
Los Angeles CA 90064

PURCHASE TICKETS 
$20 General Admission
$40 Includes Albom’s book + Reserved seat

Mitch Albom is a best-selling author, screenwriter, playwright and nationally-syndicated columnist. The author of five consecutive No.1 New York Times bestsellers, his books have collectively sold more than 33 million copies in forty-two languages worldwide. Tuesdays with Morrie, spent four straight years atop the New York Times list. Four of Albom’s books, including Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, For One More Day and Have A Little Faith, have been made into TV movies for ABC. Oprah Winfrey produced Tuesdays with Morrie, which claimed four Emmy awards including a best actor nod for Jack Lemmon in the lead role. Albom’s most recent novel is The Time Keeper.

In collaboration with Jeffrey Hatcher, Albom adapted Tuesdays with Morrie into a hit play that opened off-Broadway in late 2002 and has since seen hundreds of versions produced across the US and Canada. As a columnist for The Detroit Free Press, Albom has won more than 200 writing awards, including the Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement in sports writing. Albom also hosts a daily radio program and is a frequent presence on ESPN.  He has founded six charities in and around Detroit and also operates an orphanage in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, dedicated to the safety, education and spiritual development of impoverished children who were victims of the 2010 earthquake.

The First Phone Call from Heaven tells the story of a small town on Lake Michigan that gets worldwide attention when its citizens start receiving phone calls from the afterlife. Is it the greatest miracle ever or a massive hoax? Sully Harding, a grief-stricken single father, is determined to find out.  The novel is equal parts mystery, love story, and an allegory about the power of belief.

Bradley Whitford‘s credits in film, television and theater include work with some of the most noted writers, directors and playwrights in the arts, and constitute a career worthy of a Juilliard-trained actor — which he is.  He starred in NBC’s  political drama, The West Wing. Whitford had a starring role in the television adaptation of Mitch Albom’s Have A Little Faith.

Some of Whitford’s most memorable performances include roles in such films as The Muse (1999) with Albert Brooks and Bicentennial Man (1999) with Robin Williams. He has also appeared in Scent of a Woman (1992), A Perfect World (1993), Philadelphia (1993), The Client (1994), My Life (1993/I), Red Corner (1997), Presumed Innocent (1990) and My Fellow Americans (1996).

Wednesday, November 6, 2013
7:30pm (Reception 6:00-7:00pm)

An Evening with Doris Kearns Goodwin
discussing her new book, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

All Saints Church, Pasadena
132 North Euclid Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91101

PURCHASE TICKETS 
$20 General Admission
$30 Reserved Seats
$50 Includes Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book + Reserved seat
$95 Includes Pre-event reception + the book + Reserved Seats

Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author of the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. She won the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II and is also the author of the bestsellers Wait Till Next Year, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. Visit her website.

After Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin wields her magic on another larger-than-life president, and another momentous and raucous American time period as she brings Theodore Roosevelt, the muckraking journalists, and the Progressive Era to life.

As she focused on the relationship between Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and Lincoln and his Team, Goodwin describes the broken friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and his chosen successor, William Howard Taft. With the help of the “muckraking” press—including legendary journalists Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, William Allen White, and editor Sam McClure—Roosevelt had wielded the Bully Pulpit to challenge and triumph over abusive monopolies, political bosses, and corrupting money brokers. Roosevelt led a revolution that he bequeathed to Taft only to see it compromised as Taft surrendered to money men and big business. The rupture between the two led Roosevelt to run against Taft for president, an ultimately futile race that resulted in the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the diminishment of Theodore Roosevelt’s progressive wing of the Republican Party.

Like Goodwin’s chronicles of the Civil War and the Great Depression, The Bully Pulpit describes a time in our history that enlightened and changed the country, ushered in the modern age, and produced some unforgettable men and women.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013
8:00pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)

Scott Turow in conversation with Brian Dennehy
discussing new book, Identical

The Aero Theatre
1328 Montana Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404

PURCHASE TICKETS 
$20 General Admission
$30 Reserved Seats
$40 Includes Turow’s book + Reserved seat
$95 Includes Pre-event reception + Turow’s book + Reserved Seats

We welcome Scott Turow back to Live Talks Los Angeles. He first appeared in 2010 when we featured him in conversation with Dustin Hoffman. Here’s the video.  A special welcome to Brian Dennehy, who played Prosecuting Attorney Raymond Horgan in the film adaptation of Turow’s first novel, Presumed Innocent.

Scott Turow is the author of nine best-selling works of fiction including Innocent, Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof, and two non-fiction books including One L, about his experience as a law student.  His books have been translated into more than 25 languages, sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, and have been adapted into film and television projects. He frequently contributes essays and op-ed pieces to publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Atlantic.

Over twenty years ago, Turow wrote Presumed Innocent – the #1 bestseller that revolutionized publishing and invented the legal thriller.  The novel remained on The New York Times bestseller list for 45 weeks, selling over 650,000 copies in hardcover and 6 million copies in paperback! That book not only launched Scott’s career, it also marked the beginning of one of the most successful categories in the suspense genre. As John Grisham said, “When Presumed Innocent was published in 1987, I was struggling to finish my first novel. Scott Turow re-energized the legal suspense genre with that book, and it inspired me to keep plugging along. Scott is still the best lawyer-novelist.”

Identical is loosely based on the myth of Castor and Pollux, the twin sons (one mortal and one immortal) of Zeus.  As the story goes, when Castor was killed, Pollux begged Zeus to share his immortality with his brother so that the twins could remain together – Zeus allowed it, and they were transformed into the constellation Gemini.  Identical tells the story of Paul and Cass Giannis, identical twins, whose future was bright until one fateful day in 1983 when Athena “Dita” Kronon—then-girlfriend of Cass Giannis—was murdered after her family’s summer party.

Identical  opens in 2008 as Paul Giannis is mid-way through what looks to be a successful run for mayor of Kindle County, and Cass is about to be released from prison after serving 25 years for Dita’s murder. Dita’s brother, Hal Kronon, is willing to do whatever he can to insure that Cass stays in prison and, using his vast resources, he gets a legal team and an ex-FBI agent—who is the head of security for the Kronon family business —to convince a judge to re-open the investigation into Dita’s murder.  The private investigator on retainer for the Kronons is a former homicide detective who headed the initial investigation.  Tim Brodie, now 81, has his doubts about the way the case unfolded all those years ago.  By the time he was brought in, the crime scene had been compromised several times over by Dita’s family and local police, and then Cass Giannis confessed before everything was fully investigated.  Now that the case is being reexamined, Tim feels personally motivated to get to the bottom of the complex web of murder, sex, and betrayal.

Veteran actor Brian Dennehy has received countless honors over his storied career on stage and screen: a Golden Globe, two Tonys, Emmy nominations, and the adoration of generations of fans.  His role in the 1997 film adapation of Presumed Innocent is what inspired Live Talks to invite him to lead this conversation.  This winter, Mr. Denehy will be in residence in Los Angeles as he appears at the Mark Taper Forum in as Thomas in the “Steward of Christendom.”