Launch Party for What Books Press

By Wronsky: So Quick Bright Things; A Giant Claw (foreword) By Rosenthal: Coyote O'Donohughe's History of Texas By Partnoy: So Quick Bright Things (translator), A Giant Claw (translator) By Garcia: Other Countries By Gronk: A Giant Claw

(All books published by What Books Press)

A launch party for four new titles from What Books Press' fall list! Gail Wronsky, Chuck Rosenthal, Alicia Partnoy, Ramon Garcia, and Gronk will all read from and discuss their recent publications. Gail Wronsky is the author of Poems for Infidels (Red Hen Press); Dying for Beauty (Copper Canyon), a finalist for the Western Arts Federation Poetry Award; The Love-talkers (Hollyridge Press); Again the Gemini are in the Orchard (New Poets Series); and Dogland (Alderman Press, University of Virginia). Her translation of Alicia Partnoy's poems Volando Bajito has been published by Red Hen, and she is the coauthor with Molly Bendall of two books of "cowgirl" poetry: Calamity and Belle, A Cowgirl Correspondence and Dear Calamity, Love Belle. Blue Shadow Behind Everything Dazzling, a chapbook of poems about India where she lived for several months in 2006, has been published recently by Hollyridge Press. She is Director of Creative Writing and Syntext (Synthesizing Textualities) at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She lives in Topanga, California. Chuck Rosenthal was born in Erie, Pennsylvania and has lived in the western U.S. since 1979. He's the author of seven published novels and a memoir. The novels: Loop's Progress, Experiments with Life and Deaf, Loop's End (the Loop Trilogy), Elena of the Stars, Avatar Angel: The Last Novel of Jack Kerouac, My Mistress Humanity, and The Heart of Mars. The memoir: Never Let Me Go. His work has been nominated for The National Book Award, The PEN West Award for Fiction, the PEN International Award for Fiction, the Critics Book Circle Award for Fiction, the American Library Association Most Notable Book Award, and for Best American Creative Non-fiction. He is a three time winner of the Utah Arts Council Award for Fiction. Rosenthal recently lived for four months in the Himalayas of northeast India, the setting for his new book: Are We Not There Yet? Travels in Nepal, North India, and Bhutan. He lives in Topanga Canyon, California, where he owns a horse and rides daily. He teaches at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Alicia Partnoy is a survivor from the secret detention camps where about 30,000 people "disappeared" in her country, Argentina. She is best known as the author of The Little School. Tales of Disappearance and Survival. A poet, translator, and scholar, Alicia Partnoy has published the poetry collection Little Low Flying/Volando bajito, translated by Gail Wronsky and illustrated by Raquel Partnoy. Poems from her Revenge of the Apple/Venganza de la manzana rode the metro in New York, Dallas, and Washington D.C., and have been set to music by Sweet Honey in the Rock. Partnoy edited You Can't Drown the Fire: Latin American Women Writing in Exile, and from 2003 to 2006, she was the co-editor of Chicana/Latina Studies: the journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Her work has been twice a Pushcart Foundation Writer's Choice Selection (Tobias Wolff and Bobbie Ann Mason). Partnoy served on the boards of directors of PEN, Roadwork, and Amnesty International U.S.A. She is an associate professor at Loyola Marymount University. Ramón García was born in Colima and grew up in Modesto, California. He has a B.A. in Spanish Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Master's and Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts residency fellowship from the MacDowell Colony and fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Ragdale Foundation. He is a recipient of a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and pre-doctoral fellowships from the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine, and The Getty Center in Los Angeles. Ramón García is an associate professor in the Chicana/o Studies Department at the California State University at Northridge. He lives in downtown Los Angeles. Chicano painter, printmaker, and performance artist Gronk contributes the cover art for What Books Press. Known for his murals, Gronk also has created stage design for the Latino Theater Company, the East West Players, the LA Opera, and the Santa Fe Opera. He's also collaborated on music composed for the Kronos Quartet. He has exhibited at or curated work for many museums, include the UCLA Hammer, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, the San Francisco Mexican Museum, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, and the San Jose Museum of Art. He was given a career retrospective at the University of New Mexico, where he was in residence. He was a founding member of ASCO, a multimedia arts collective in the 1970s. Born in East Los Angeles, he now makes his home in downtown LA. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS OCTOBER 15, 2010.