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 man with a white beard doffs his hat at the viewer. Beside him is a table laden with dead game from the hunt. A goose, a stag, a hare, a boar, and many more animals lie with their mouths open.

I Get So Hungry When You Say You Love Me: Feminist Cannibalism

TWO UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS about Mimi Cave’s 2022 horror-romance Fresh: One, the meatball of human flesh, resting heavy and crimson atop a bed of pasta, is mouthwatering. Two, Sebastian Stan, playing an entrepreneur and chef specializing in human flesh, is hotter than...

I Call My Hound Rage and He Moves

He walks backward on command, thick fur teeming with grays reversing back to flat.After he’s fed I see him swimming the Pacific in jagged loops and gulp-frantic swirls.He holds my salt in his mouth a red rubber ball. He gnaws at the tides.He moves when I move. When I...

A crowd of onlookers watch the flames consume the structure.

The Execution

The Execution “The Burning of the Mansion House, Queen Square” (1831-32), William James Müller. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was the twenty-fourth of December and my firm had given us the day off. I thought I would spend the day at home,...

Four green Petri dishes with dark industrial silhouettes.

Kari Varner Porfolio

Kari Varner Porfolio Artist Statement The echoes of industry and human presence are inscribed upon the landscape. This body of work explores these traces, along with the ecological and economic value we assign to altered environments. I employ processes that range...

An elderly couple stands side by side in front of a wooden house. The man wears a dark suit and hat, while the woman wears a long black dress and white head covering.

Iconography—Holy Mothers

Consider the work of God;who can make straight what he has made crooked?—Eccles. 7:13 (NRSV)Her name was Elizabeth Kauffman.This is the only picture I have of her, my great-great-grandmother, and she is old. Diminutive. Covered neck to dull boots in plain black...

Yeon Jin Kim Mixed media drawing. This is a world where things seem to assemble themselves and interact within a logic yet to be discovered.

Maybe is the Most Beautiful Word in the World

Aleatoric: Solely dependent on the throw of a dice or on chance; random. There’s something barreling towards me. Hulking. I can feel it closing in. It’s starting to envelop my future body, which will be my now-body, which will be the body I might want to live in one...

A still life of a skull with some papers, a glass, and a quill pen.

Writing Herself Into the Frame: Jenna Ortega and the Aesthetics of Latina Self-Authorship

"Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill," (1628), Pieter Claesz. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.IN THE NETFLIX series Wednesday (2022–), writing is not just a habit—it’s a means of survival. For the titular character, it serves as both a narrative...

Abstract black ink painting featuring fluid, organic forms and circular splashes that resemble cells, spores, or cosmic matter, with dripping textures and dynamic motion against a white background.

Is Your Outfit Saying More than You Are?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK. Manhattan. The Fashion District. Wednesday, February 15, 2023. Breaths hang heavy in the winter evening air as the final day of New York Fashion Week draws to a close. The streets buzz with the residual energy of runway shows and after-parties. The...