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 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...

A zoomed in picture of Georgia O'Keefe's neck.

On Body Horror

I WALK INTO a job interview with my mind divided between answering the questions and keeping my tics at bay. I tell my body to sit still and relax my face into a soft, hirable smile. In response, my knee bounces, my hands flex, and my brow furrows. I beg my mouth to...

A four-layered mixed-media collage piece, with a purple figure silhouette at the center.

Into Bits

It was barely 10 p.m., and Lane had just broken a Black Label all over the dance floor. It wasn’t her fault, really. She’d been pushing past a gaggle of glimmering twinks to get behind the DJ booth when one of their bony elbows jutted out and jabbed her right in the...

A close-up of several cyanotypes of a naked woman turning and ascending stairs, waving her hand, in a study of motion.

Switch Stance

All truths wait in all things—Walt WhitmanI envy surfers (coteries of loose joints) who design their lives around patterns and leave no trace.Rising with the sun (an income of energy), rushing to the edge of a flower-studded cliffwhere no words are needed. Views tell...

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...

A tunnel leading into Caracas, Venezuela, under colorful buildings and bordered by two line-drawn images of catalpa flowers.

Querida

Querida Emily Lauletta, “Caracas through Catalpa,” 2026, digital collage. Background photograph of El Paraíso tunnel and catalpa images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons. Marcello cursed through ground teeth at the backpack zipper as it caught for the fourth...

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...