Wednesday, April 9 - Festival of Books preview

Tonight on Bibliocracy, 8 PM on KPFK:  DAVID ULIN and Los Angeles Times Festival of Books preview.  It’s springtime, and the line-up of literary events is a full one, not the least of them being the annual Festival of Books sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, April 12 & 13 on the campus of the University of Southern California.  KPFK will be there, broadcasting this show live at 10 a.m., and followed by onsite live broadcasts by Ian Masters (“Background Briefing”) and Maria Armoudian (“The Scholars’ Circle”).  The KPFK booth is number 210 so come by to watch live radio, buy books and station-related items or just to say hello to staff, programmers and volunteers in between visiting hundreds of other exhibitors and, best of all, attending panels and talks all weekend long.  Our Bibliocracy guide to all things Festival of Books is a friend of this program and a friend of readers and writers, and a terrific reviewer and writer himself, books editor for  the LA Times David Ulin.  He’ll talk with me tonight about the festival, the annual book prize nominations and his own work, too.  Ulin is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, a book knocked off bookstore shelves after our most recent earthquake, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, and also a long meditative book-length essay called The Lost Art of Reading, which begins with the startling confession from a professional bibliofella:  “Sometime late last year --- I don’t remember when, exactly --- I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read.” Then Ulin takes apart the many challenges to the interior life as against the virtual assault, and comes out swinging for books and reading and civic literacy.  Tonight he does the same, as in his smart reviews for the paper, and we preview this weekend’s books festival.  KPFK is a media sponsor of the festival, about which you can get information at  http://events.latimes.com/festivalofbooks/

Thanks for listening, and see you at the Festival of Books.