Gary Phillips and Michael Harris

The Underbelly by Phillips; The Chieu Hoi Saloon by Harris (both published by PM Press)

Two writers on PM Press's hardboiled fiction imprint Switchblade will read from and sign their new novels.  Gary Phillips (The Jook) returns with The Underbelly, and Michael Harris presents his debut novel, The Chieu Hoi Saloon. A noirish good time! Gary Phillips writes tales of mayhem and menace. In other pursuits he's been a union rep, run a nonprofit begun as a response to the '92 L.A. riots, taught incarcerated youth, was a community organizer in South Central Los Angeles where he was born and raised, toiled as a printer, worked for one of those shadowy 527s, and delivered dog cages. Michael Harris grew up in a little railroad town in Northern California, in the loom of Mt. Shasta, whose mystic influence shadowed him from the University of Oregon to Harvard to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. An Army veteran of Vietnam, he has worked as a Forest Service aide, a janitor and an English conversation teacher in Tokyo. For 30 years, he was a reporter, editor and book reviewer for West Coast newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. Like his alter ego, Harry Hudson, he stutters and is a gloomy cuss. He lives with his wife in Long Beach; they have a grown son. The Chieu Hoi Saloon is his first novel. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS NOVEMBER 5, 2010.