Join us on Tuesday, May 15 at 7 pm, when the focus will be on the memoir. The authors will talk about their memoirs, and about the process of writing memoir -- from coming up with the focus of your story, to the process of writing, and onto the publication. There will be a Q&A session, and we will have their books for sale so you can have them signed.
  

Claire Bidwell Smith lives in Los Angeles. She is a therapist specializing in grief and is the author of the memoir The Rules of Inheritance. Claire has a Bachelor's degree from The New School University in Manhattan and a Master's degree in clinical psychology from Antioch University in Los Angeles. She has written for many publications including Time Out New York, Yoga Journal, BlackBook Magazine, The Huffington Post and Chicago Public Radio. She has also worked for nonprofits, such as Dave Eggers' literacy center 826LA and most recently as a bereavement counselor for a hospice in Chicago.

James Brown is the author of several novels, including Lucky Town and Final Performance, and the memoirs, The Los Angeles Diaries and This River. His work has appeared in GQ, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Orange Coast Magazine, Ploughshares and numerous other magazines. The Los Angeles Diaries was chosen as Best Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Independent on Sunday in the U.K., and is currently under option for a film by producer Jude Prest.

Brown, a recovering alcoholic, has been a representative for Partnership for a Drug-Free America, and frequently speaks at drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities, as well as inmates incarcerated for drug and alcohol related offenses. He is also co-editor, along with writer Diana Raab, of the anthology Writers On the Edge: 22 Writers Speak About Addiction and Dependency. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Nelson Algren Award in Short Fiction, Brown lives in Lake Arrowhead, and holds an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from U.C. Irvine.

Dinah Lenney wrote Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir, published in Tobias Wolff's American Lives Series at the University of Nebraska Press, and co-authored Acting for Young Actors. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Ploughshares, Agni, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, and elsewhere, and she received special mention in the Pushcart Anthology, 2010, for an essay published in the Water Stone Review. Dinah serves as core faculty in the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California, as well as in the Rainier Writing Workshop, and the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Los Angeles, just over the hill from Dodger Stadium.

$20.00 includes nibbles, sips, and sometimes cake. Advance tickets are required to guarantee a seat. Walk-ins are discouraged as seating is limited. Tickets are available through the Pen on Fire website.

If the conscious mind -- the part you consider to be you -- is just the tip of the iceberg, what is the rest doing?

In his provocative book, the renowned neuroscientist navigates the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate surprising mysteries: Why can your foot move halfway to the brake pedal before you become consciously aware of danger ahead? Why do you hear your name being mentioned in a conversation that you didn't think you were listening to? What do Ulysses and the credit crunch have in common? Why did Thomas Edison electrocute an elephant in 1916? Why are people whose names begin with J more likely to marry other people whose names begin with J? Why is it so difficult to keep a secret? And how is it possible to get angry at yourself -- who, exactly, is mad at whom?

Taking in brain damage, plane spotting, dating, drugs, beauty, infidelity, synesthesia, criminal law, artificial intelligence, and visual illusions, Incognito is a thrilling subsurface exploration of the mind and all its contradictions.

Photo credit: Sharon Steinmann

  What happens when Jimmy Deane, a half-white, half-black infant, born amidst simmering racial tension on Chicago's south side in 1969, is adopted by Carter and Susie Deane, a well-meaning South Florida couple who orphan Jimmy yet again before he even sets foot in kindergarten? This quintessential orphan tale tracks Jimmy's trajectory from the wintry night of his inauspicious birth in Chicago, through the trials of a lonely biracial youth in South Florida, to his eventual touchdown in the City of Angels.

With a large dose of humor and warmth, Orfan lets the reader in on the loss, grief, trauma, and isolation that children experience when the foundation of a loving parent is pulled out from under them, and they are placed in homes where they are not loved or appreciated, or even safe. While Orfan has a fantastical side that allows us to reach in and enjoy the story of Jimmy, it also illustrates the searing pain of aloneness and how important it is that our communities support all our "orfans" to have stable, permanent lifelong families. As we see with Orfan, families can appear in all shapes and colors and from the most unlikely places. Orfan is an old-fashioned page-turner with real heart and an insight into love and how people authentically come together as family.

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, and raised on Chicago's south side, Corie Skolnick has lived her entire adult life in Southern California. She is a California licensed marriage and family therapist and a "sometimes" psychology instructor at California State University, Northridge and Moorpark College. Among the many courses she has taught at both colleges, her very favorite is The Psychological Aspects of Parenthood. She has two grown children, both of them in the arts, and she is married to the social psychologist, Paul Skolnick. Orfan is her first novel.