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 woman faces away from the viewer, gazing into an oval mirror. The reflection is that of a Nahua woman.

I See You

I see you, Malitzen, the betrayer and the victim. You did what you did out of fear and out of smarts. They named you “She who speaks lively.” And you spoke. You spoke all the tongues available to you to make a living, to keep alive. I see your dark eyes like dark...

Layered digital collage of three pixelated figures standing in front of a Buchla machine.

Echoes of the Fourth Person: A Dilemma of Sociality in Electronic Music

ONE PERSON is never enough. Buzzing away on my bassoon in a practice room or listening to The Strokes through a dime-sized speaker lodged in my ear are not typically lauded as the pinnacle of musical experience. One of the platitudes of music is that sound is social:...

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...

Cyanotype collage featuring varied fabrics, snake skin, plants, and some chains.

Home Made Wild

In spring, we count snakes in the garden. The raised beds are built over what used to be an in-ground swimming pool. The walkway that once surrounded the pool is still in place; beneath the concrete slabs, snakes poke their heads out to reach the sun. They camouflage...

An illustration of two women dressed in evening-wear, looking up at the Milky Way in the night sky.

If You Give a Poet an Invitation to the Cosmos Club

She’ll bring a tote to collect weeds & wildflowers. Situated on Embassy Row, liesa club of brains & business cards. Everyone is an expert in everything, especially gettingto their table early & moving their name tent to a new chair: a routine so...

A Black and white image of a man walking down the street with a motion blur effect

Enter the Pyrocene…Through Sebald: How W. G. Sebald Anticipated a World Full of Fire

IN TROUBLED TIMES, works of fiction blaze a path between bygone eras and the present. The best stand the test of time and offer a cogent perspective on our present world. Readers looking for insight into our twenty-first-century world and some of its foremost...