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 heeled black leather shoe on a white pedestal.

The Women Historical Fiction Forgets

SOME WOMEN’S STORIES demand patience. I have learned this over the years through my research on food history and pouring over women’s letters, draft manuscripts, and clipped recipes. And not all of their stories are equally accessible. The papers of the most prominent...

The deconstruction bodies are sitting together in a garden.

mama sārah and me

facing my mother in her lavish living room, i blow a red balloon. my younger sister, mellow with hash, tosses a yellow one onto the carpet while my older sister fretfully adds cheese sambūsa, warag ʿanab, and sticky toffee pudding to the menu. a sign boasting the ages...

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 small concrete dam in a wooded area overgrown with moss and graffiti, with water cascading down its face and a cartoonish green face painted beneath the flow.

Disoriented with Time: Ruins in the Switchbacks

Artist Statement In this photography series, I highlight the architectural remnants in the Switchbacks located near Spokane, Washington. Reclaimed by graffiti artists and moss, these decaying foundations and dams now burst with vibrant color, life, and arcane...

Two hands gently hold a large weathered horse skull. The photo is in black and white.

Winter Blues

Maybe it was just the Winter, seeping through my bones into my heart, the grasp of its icy hands against my bare neck. But then I woke up in June, sunlight bathing me in...

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...

A grayscale drawing of three nude male figures in a dreamlike, symbolic landscape: one lies reclined in the foreground, another stands and reaches toward a spectral third figure emerging from a column of light, evoking themes of reflection, longing, and spiritual connection.

I Am Not Ready But It Is Time

I’m moving a black shadow. The gall sleeps top and toewith the somnambulist and leavesno dissonance.Every year is my last year. Every day is my only day. Every waiting room rotates its available seats. The contestants walk until the music stops, and find no eliminated...

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...