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.

Portrait of My Mother, Circa 2001

Lost in the leaves’ swing, I am trying to shake off their green, buttermilk yellow.The refrigerator hums and drums like a whining giant.This house song draws me to her, captured, hanging from a California magnet.Obsidian hair covers her shoulders, melts into her...

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...
Portrait of a young woman as a saint.

Joy Reyes Portfolio

Memories become larger than life in Joy Reyes’s mixed-media collection, embodying familial strength and love passed down through generations. In a vivid display of color and texture, the Dallas-based artist marries iconic imagery from her Mexican heritage with...
Two people with their elbow on the table, with their chin in their hand. Question mark and the word "secret" written in brackets.

Anel I. Flores Portfolio

This collection of paintings by San Antonio–based artist Anel I. Flores (they/she) intimately captures a lesbian subject’s journey from secrecy and shame to unabashed freedom. Flores pairs portraits of lesbian couples with the words “secret” and “amor prohibido”...
Black, white, and red face

An Eye on AI

What makes AI images a strange invention is their innate inscrutability. What we see in these pictures cannot be said to have existed. Unlike photographs, AI images do not result from light falling on material surfaces; they are functions of algorithms and databases,...
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...
Photograph of skin texture on collarbone

Skin

The sun hangs low in the sky like an overripe orange. You wish for a moment that you could reach up and pluck it, sink your teeth into it so you could taste something sweet, empty your mouth of the blood and dirt that has made a home there.You used to bite your lip...
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...