We are the official annual publication of the LA Review of Books Publishing Workshop, an immersive, collaborative summer program designed for students and innovators interested in publishing.

a textured yellow background

Theory of Care

“yellow textile on brown wooden table” (2020), Noah Morgan. Courtesy of Unsplash. Magnolia trees that open their flowerslike doves coming to wingspan. Freshsoup dumplings, hot gelatin runningdown my face before I flick a napkinacross the downpour. Husking...

Revis[it]ing the Slave Narrative: The Past and Future of Octavia Butler’s Kindred

Octavia Butler’s groundbreaking 1979 novel Kindred follows the main character Dana, a contemporary Black writer in Los Angeles, as she is pulled across time and space to the Maryland slave plantation where her ancestors lived. Through Dana’s story, Butler uses the...

Challenging the Peripheral: Reading Assam in Reema Rajbanshi’s Sugar, Smoke, Song

 Growing up in the capital city of Guwahati, Assam, life was marked by recurring floods and occasional violence, shaping a unique resilience in middle-class girls like us. We were taught two critical lessons with utmost seriousness: never to venture out...
Marble bust

Fragment 52: I do not expect to touch the sky

i do not expect to touch the sky—SapphoIAphrodite,my once-was friend.your gift seems no blessing.you pull bodies togetherunmindful of the priceto be paid.you showed me a world called We:a universe made just for two. andtrusting, i jumped in completely.only to...
Staircase

Countercultural Chronotopes of Thomas Pynchon

The 1950s in the United States, marked by the post-World War II economic boom, were characterized by pressures to conform, Cold War fears, and increasing government surveillance. By the 1960s, the United States was primed for a revolution in thought and expression. As...
Black-and-white photograph of a blurred female dancer spinning in a thin silk dress.

Elizabeth Stoddard’s Unruly Girlhood

Weird girls are having a literary moment. A search for “weird girl books” on TikTok confirms this, yielding hundreds of videos celebrating the genre. Authors like Mona Awad, Sayaka Murata, and Ottessa Moshfegh feature heavily. These books vary widely in content but...
Photograph of a kid in a bus corridor.

The Bus Years (2003-2006)

The days along the bus route blur together, traveling to and from her trailer home, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, an hour each way. She is the first kid on the bus and the last kid off. The days along the bus route blur together, traveling to and from her...
plaque

Cemetery: A Colonial Time Portal

All India is full of neglected graves that date from the beginning of the eighteenth century—tombs of forgotten colonels of corps long since disbanded; mates of East India men who went on shooting expeditions and never came back; factors, agents, writers, and ensigns...