West LA Times

Santa Monica College (SMC) is pleased to continue its Literary Talks & Readings(opens in new window) series featuring a noteworthy spectrum of writers reading from and discussing their works. The ongoing series opens its 2023 spring season on March 21.

All presentations in the series are free, and will be held online as live virtual events. A Zoom link to each talk will be posted with the listing on the SMC Events calendar at smc.edu/calendar shortly before the event begins. To attend the events, the Zoom software must be installed on the viewer’s computer. A free download is available at zoom.com.

The spring 2023 series lineup is:

• Tuesday, March 21: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: "A Reading by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah" at 11:15 a.m. Ghanaian American Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times–bestselling author of Friday Black (2018), a collection of edgy, yet charming tales. He was the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees. Adjei-Brenyah's work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads, and he recently completed his debut novel Chain-Gang All-Stars (Penguin Random House 2023). Part of the SMC Black History Series. Sponsored by the SMC Associates andSMC English Department. Zoom link on March 21 listing at smc.edu/calendar.
• Tuesday, April 4: Matt Stoller: "Monopoly Power, the Tech Goliaths, and Our Democracy" at 11:15 a.m.Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project, is the author of Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy (Simon and Schuster 2020). A former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, he also worked for a member of the Financial Services Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives during the financial crisis. Stoller's writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Fast Company, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Vice, The American Conservative, and The Baffler. He also writes Big, the monopoly-focused newsletter with tens of thousands of subscribers. Sponsored by the SMC Associates and SMC English Department. Zoom link on April 4 listing at smc.edu/calendar. 
• Friday, April 7: Tananarive Due: "Navigating Real-Life Horrors Through Writing Horror: A Reading by Tananarive Due" at 11:15 a.m. Award-winning author Tananarive Due,a leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. She is an executive producer on Shudder'sground breaking documentary "Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror." Projects with her husband and collaborator, Steven Barnes, include "A Small Town" for Season 2 of Jordan Peele’s "The Twilight Zone" on Paramount Plus and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film "Horror Noire." The duo also co-wrote the upcoming Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan, and they co-host the podcast "Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!" Part of the SMC Black History Series. Sponsored by the SMC Associates and SMC English Department. Zoom link on April 7 listing at smc.edu/calendar. 
• Tuesday, April 25: Karen Tei Yamashita: "A Reading by Karen Tei Yamashita" at 11:15 a.m. Karen Tei Yamashita, whose parents were survivors of the Topazinternment camp during World War II, is professor emerita of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of eight books, including the award-winning novel I Hotel. In 2021, Yamashita was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Lettersby the National Book Foundation. She is also the recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature and a U.S. Artists’ Ford Foundation Fellowship, as well as the California Book Award and the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, among others. Sponsored by the SMC Associates and SMC English Department. Zoom link on April 25 listing at smc.edu/calendar 
• Thursday, May 11: Douglas Macgregor: "The War in Ukraine and the U.S. Response" at 11:15 a.m.Douglas Macgregor is a decorated combat veteran, former Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, author of five books, and a defense and foreign policy consultant. Dr. Macgregor is widely known across Europe, Israel, Russia, China, andKorea for both his leadership in the Battle of 73 Easting, the U.S. Army’s largest tank battle since World War II, and for his groundbreaking books on military transformation: Breaking the Phalanx (Praeger 1997) and Transformation under Fire (Praeger 2003). His recommendations for change in Force Design have profoundly influenced force development in Israel, Russia, and China. Dr. Macgregor also wrote Margin of Victory: Five Battles that Changed the Face of Modern War (Naval Institute Press 2016). He has testified as an expert witness before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, and has appeared as a defense analyst on Fox News, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and public radio. Sponsored by the SMC Associates and SMC English Department. Zoom link on May 11 listing at smc.edu/calendar.

For more than two decades, the SMC Literary Series has brought to campus such acclaimed writers as Khaled Hosseini (author of the bestselling The Kite Runner), Steph Cha (writer of the popular ‘Juniper Song’ novels), Audrey Niffenegger (author of the bestselling Time Traveler’s Wife), Edward J. Larson (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion), and Viet Thanh Nguyen (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sympathizer).

Additional information is available by calling SMC’s Office of Public Programs at (310) 434-4100.

Original source can be found here.