BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Find Local//findlocal.community//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT DTSTART:19700308T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 TZNAME:PST DTSTART:19701101T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:78bf8f6f-9ca7-4b2c-ad1a-03d06a55bd01@findlocal.community DTSTAMP:20260911T153538Z DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261015T180000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261015T200000 SUMMARY:John Freeman CALIFORNIA REWRITTEN DESCRIPTION:John Freeman in conversation with Steph Cha at Bart’s Books F or a state that has projected its studio-lot image across the globe\, Ca lifornia has remained largely undersung in the world of letters\, too of ten left to languish in the shadow of the East Coast’s literary hegemony . To rectify this peculiar imbalance\, Knopf Editor John Freeman offers a thoroughgoing survey of the major voices and modern-day classics burge oning out of the West Coast in his latest collection California Rewritte n: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature . “Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people— at the highest level—has been coming out of California and from Californ ians for decades now\,” says Freeman. In the last ten years alone\, Cali fornians have won more Pulitzers in literature than writers from any oth er region of the United States\, he points out. Moreover\, readers have a real appetite for these perspectives: Freeman\, in his role as host fo r Alta Journal ’s California Book Club\, commands an audience of 20\,000 members and counting\, and California authors like Amy Tan and Tommy Or ange perch on the New York Times bestseller lists for weeks and sometime s months on end. In California Rewritten Freeman offers probing critical engagement with the writers whose works are defining this new West Coas t sensibility. Across 50 essays collected from his writings for Alta \, he features 49 authors and one keystone literary powerhouse that togethe r comprise a 21st-century California canon. He spotlights the poets—Ada Limón\, Claudia Rankine\, Gary Snyder—whose voices defy the boundaries o f the genre. He delves into the watershed works of the novelists—Perciva l Everett\, Rachel Khong\, Viet Thanh Nguyen—at the vanguard of a new fi rmament of American classics. And he explores the memoirists—Deborah Mir anda\, Javier Zamora\, Maxine Hong Kingston—whose worlds offer a grippin g\, if sobering mirror\, for our society. Collectively these works addre ss pressing concerns for our era: What is the meaning of a place\, and h ow do we belong to it? How does the past imprison our present? What fear s hobble our imaginations\, and what kind of tomorrow could we possibly build if we liberated them? In short\, Freeman\, in this savvy and perce ptive volume\, s why Californians deserve to be read the world over. Joh n Freeman has hosted Alta‘s California Book Club since its founding in 2 020 and is the author\, most recently\, of California Rewritten: A Journ ey Through the Golden State’s New Literature . He is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf\, and he edited Freeman’s (2015–2023)\, a literary a nnual of new writing. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dicti onary of the Undoing \, as well as the anthologies Tales of Two Americas \, Tales of Two Planets \, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Shor t Story \, and Sacramento Noir . He is also the author of three poetry c ollections\, Maps \, The Park \, and Wind\, Trees . His work is translat ed into more than twenty languages\, and has appeared in T he New Yorker \, The Paris Review \, and The New York Times . The former editor of Gr anta \, he lives in New York. Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay \, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Bo ok Award\, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s a critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times\, USA Today \, and the Los Angele s Review of Books \, where she served as noir editor\, and is the curren t series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology. A nat ive of the San Fernando Valley\, she lives in Los Angeles with her famil y. Praise for California Rewritten “In California Rewritten \, Freeman w rites with singular precision and intelligence about new California lite rature\, animating that mysterious relationship that unfolds when a writ er’s imagination engages with place. In Freeman’s hands\, California is a literary mecca\, and each essay a revelation.” — INGRID ROJAS CONTRERA S \, author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds “John Freeman’s crisp\, inc isive essays cast a wonderfully sensitive eye on a wide-ranging collecti on of people who’ve written about this state in novels\, reportage\, mem oir\, history\, and more. Step aside\, New York\; the center of the Amer ican literary universe has moved here.” — ADAM HOCHSCHILD \, author of A merican Midnight “Here is vindication of all that I have argued the last fifty years—that California has had and currently has the richest\, the most literary tradition in the country\, the most recent of which is so beautifully chronicled in this book. I know I’m not the only California writer to say\, Thank you\, John Freeman .” — GREG SARRIS \, author of The Forgetters and Grand Avenue\n\nMore info: https://bartsbooksojai.com /courtyardevents/yln6r8xb5s9p94s7k7hfijr6ikyhvg\n\nhttps://findlocal.com munity/event/78bf8f6f-9ca7-4b2c-ad1a-03d06a55bd01 LOCATION:Bart's Books\, 306 W. Matilija\, Ojai\, CA URL:https://findlocal.community/event/78bf8f6f-9ca7-4b2c-ad1a-03d06a55bd0 1 STATUS:CONFIRMED SEQUENCE:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR