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

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 sepia photo of a woman's feet with pink shattered glass sprinkled on top.

Broad Feet

Nazuk loved the chappal store. The summer brought slippers, open-toed sandals, kolhapuris, and hawai chappals that made even the fatties buoyant. In the winter, ladies loved pumps, court heels, comfort moccasins for the grannies or the closeted lesbians, and the...

Digital collage, banana tree layered over lush forest, at center, a black woman is blended into the landscape as her gaze follows the observer.

Saida Blair Portfolio

“Untitled (Jamaica 1)” (2023). Digital collage. Copyright Saida Blair (2026)Blair's work starts with photography; nevertheless, this medium is not a containing frame. Astute and careful, her multimedial assemblages navigate the intersection of form and the oral...

An oil painting of eight abstract disembodied faces in colours of pinks, reds, blues, yellows, whites, and browns.

Maya Sibul Portfolio

Maya Sibul Portfolio “Vestiges” (2019). Oil pastel and pen on paper. 18 x 24. Copyright Maya Sibul, 2026. This collection by Maya Sibul functions as both retrospective and prospective, guiding us through its evolution from past to present. Rather than acting as a...

A ghostly portrait of Anne Boleyn by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Anne Boleyn in the Manosphere: What Ava Pickett’s hot new period piece can teach us about misogyny’s past and present

On April 26, 2025, just over one week before Ava Pickett’s 1536 premiered for its sold-out run at the Almeida Theatre in London, 38-year-old Owen Lawrence attacked the popular Otley Run pub crawl in Leeds, England, seriously injuring two women. In January of that...

Unfinished sketch of a woman staring into the distance while sitting at a table with a cup, saucer, and pitcher.

Self-improvement

Self-improvement “Tea” (c. 1890), Mary Cassatt. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art. It was one of those clear, sunny October days: crisp, bright mornings; intense, red afternoons; chilly, slow evenings. It was Sunday, so at 5 p.m. she went to yoga...

Overlapping shadows of hands that form an enigmatic figure over a blue background.

Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?

There were maybe three reasons this might not work. First, he hadn’t been fasting like each book strictly recommended. That day, Jason had a large breakfast and lunch, all without any worry. Second, it wasn’t midnight. It was three in the afternoon, the sun was out...

A nineteenth-century stereograph of two side-by-side identical prints. Both are a photograph of a bride and groom during their wedding march, with their wedding party following behind. The image is largely black and white, excepting the pink bridesmaids' dresses and blue-green palm fronds surrounding the group.

Monogamy is Dead, Long Live Monogamy!

When I was a teenager, my mother died. A few years later, my father remarried. I now have the language to describe grief as an encounter with what could have been and cannot be, one in which we negotiate with imagined futures after loss. At that time, however, I found...

Three women dressed in bright colors sit together on a couch and stare into the camera.

Amara Higuera Portfolio

Amara Higuera Portfolio Amara Higuera is a Mexican-American artist based in Los Angeles that experiments with the lens and its limitations to approach an identity that falls into the cracks between categories and the complex web of connections that shape it. Ranging...