Straight Talk on Gay Marriage. The religious leader at the forefront of the gay rights movement in a frank discussion of the critical civil rights issue of our time. He is the first openly gay person to be elected bishop in the Episcopal church.

Penny Marshall (Big, A League of Their Own) shares her funny and intimate memoir taking us from the stage of The Jackie Gleason Show in 1955 to Hollywood’s star-studded sets, offering up some hilarious detours along the way — marriages, her friendships, her breakout role on The Odd Couple, and more…

The inimitable and acclaimed writer returns to Live Talks Los Angele with his newest and fourteenth novel, San Miguel — a soaring historical narrative about two families trying to start new lives on a windswept, near-desolate island just off the coast of southern California.

The multi-platinum musician, producer and actor talks candidly about his life as an immigrant and the inside story of the Fugees. We are excited that this major voice in the music scene won’t just talk–expect to be regaled with some new acoustic sounds.

Author, social critic, and political activist Naomi Wolf raises awareness of the pervasive inequities that exist in society and politics. In her new book, Vagina: A New Biography, she reveals scientific evidence of the direct link between a woman’s experience of her vagina, and her very sense of self.

Film, television and Broadway star Ringwald’s debut fiction “sizzles with rare insight about the reverberations of betrayal and of love.” Her collection of linked stories mines the complexities of modern relationships. She follows a Los Angeles family and their friends and neighbors as they negotiate the hazardous terrain of everyday life — revealing the deceptions, heartbreak, and vulnerability familiar to us all.

Kurt Andersen is host and co-creator of the Peabody Award-winning public radio program Studio 360 and New York Times bestselling author. As an editor, he co-founded Spy, Inside.com, and Very Short List and served as editorial director of Colors and editor-in-chief of New York. He has been a cultural columnist for The New Yorker and Time, as well as Time’s architecture and design critic. He comes to Live Talks Los Angeles to discuss his new novel, True Believers with Lawrence O’Donnell.

Internationally acclaimed Chef Marcus Samuelsson won the second season of Top Chef Masters on Bravo. He is the youngest chef to ever achieve two three-star reviews from The New York Times and he has been honored by the James Beard Foundation on multiple occasion. He is the author of several award-winning cookbooks and the forthcoming memoir, Yes! Chef.

“A few years ago, Bruce Springsteen told us we weren’t bad, but not to try to get any better otherwise we’d just be another lousy band. After 20 years, we still meet his stringent requirements. For instance, while we all know what ‘stringent’ means, none of us have yet mastered an F chord.” — Stephen King

On Irving’s upcoming novel….“This tender exploration of nascent desire, of love and loss, manages to be sweeping, brilliant, political, provocative, tragic, and funny—it is precisely the kind of astonishing alchemy we associate with a John Irving novel. .. It is Irving at his most daring, at his most ambitious. It is America and American writing, both at their very best.”
—Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone and My Own Country