Aloud @ Los Angeles Public Library

When a massive wildfire blazed across California in June 2008, five monks risked their lives to save Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Pyne-- wildfire expert and the country's pre-eminent fire historian-- and Busch-- author and longtime Zen student-- discuss the ways of wildfires in the West and what it means to meet a crisis with full presence of mind. Program one of four, co-presented with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West

Four veteran Los Angeles crime writers discuss the genre they love and the stories that keep them up at night. Paula L. Woods (Charlotte Justice mystery series) talks murder and mayhem with Haywood (Cemetery Road), Hirahara (Blood Hina), and Smith (Moist).

McMillen--part sculptor, installation artist, printmaker, cultural anthropologist and L.A. native-- has been creating environmental installations with architectural references that deal with themes of time, change, and illusion since the 1970s, and his work is the subject of a current retrospective at the Oakland Museum of Art. Join us for a glimpse into McMillen's creative process and current obsessions.

In this popular, long-running event, six talented Los Angeles poets present short readings of their work. Hosted by Suzanne Lummis, Los Angeles Poetry Festival, and Richard Modiano, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

The Hollywood home of Laura and Aldous Huxley, psychedelic pioneer and author of Brave New World, was a hotspot for the West Coast artistic avant-garde like Igor Stravinsky and Christopher Isherwood. Join us for a discussion of the Huxleys' influence on American culture, plus excerpts from Mary Ann Braubach's 2009 documentary, Huxley on Huxley.

In her wickedly bittersweet and hilarious novel You Must Go and Win, the Ukrainian-born, critically acclaimed singer traces her bizarre journey through the indie rock world, from disastrous Craigslist auditions with sketchy producers to catching fleas in a Williamsburg sublet. Simone performs songs from her newly released Make Your Own Danger album.

Are the media arts a sensitizing force? What is media art's capacity to respond to political conditions? Cultural practitioners and scholars explore the role artists play as innovators of media technology and instigators in the public and media art realms. Co-presented with Freewaves

HBO's Treme (from the creators of The Wire) is set in the aftermath of the greatest man-made disaster in American history. Join us for a discussion of New Orleans' music and its unique culture as reflected in one of episodic television's most powerful dramas.

Hochschild (King Leopold's Ghost), one of America's best narrative historians, examines one of the greatest and most puzzling examples of civilized evils in history and the now obscure civilians and soldiers who waged a bitter, often heroic, struggle against it.

In the eight years after her four children left home, Melissa Greene and her husband adopted five children from orphanages in Bulgaria and Ethiopia. She chronicles their adventures from the front lines of parenthood.

Join Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Snyder and friends for an evening of spoken word to celebrate the work of Beat poet Lew Welch, on the 40th anniversary of his disappearance.

In his monumental new novel, Sayles-the great indy filmmaker-travels from the Yukon gold fields, to New York's bustling Newspaper Row, to Wilmington's deadly racial coup of 1898, to the bitter triumphs at El Caney and San Juan Hill in Cuba, and to war zones in the Philippines.

Written in the aftermath of his wife's death, Goldman's tale weighs the unexpected gift of love against the blinding grief of loss.

Shteyngart, one of the New Yorker's "Best Under 40" novelists, offers a devilishly funny cyber-apocalyptic vision of an America future that seems eerily like the present.

Kincaid, former New Yorker staff writer and author of more than ten books, is known for her candid and emotionally-charged writing. She reads from her forthcoming novel about a family's life in a small Vermont town and discusses her creative process.

How did tribal order and society evolve into the political institutions of today? Drawing on a vast body of knowledge-- two celebrated scholars discuss the origins of democratic societies and raise essential questions about the nature of politics.

One of America's most celebrated classical dancers writes of his years with Balanchine, Robbins, LeClercq, and Farrell-the irresistible story of an exhilarating life in dance.

An intimate work by one of America's great writers chronicles the unexpected death of her husband of forty-eight years and its wrenching, surprising aftermath.

Skloot's stunning narrative about the use and misuse of medical authority delves into the life of a poor Southern tobacco farmer named Henrietta Lacks, whose cells-taken without her knowledge-became one of the most important tools in medicine.

What is literature? How might we restore it to the center of our lives? Garber, Harvard English professor and Ulin, book critic for the Los Angeles Times, explore how reading can be a \"revolutionary act\" in the digital age.