Performance edition featuring Gregory Tower & Kristen Leigh Schwarz
Gregory Tower
Kristen Leigh Schwarz
May 23, 2023. This week on Bibliocracy Radio, a special “performance edition” of the show in which I present readings by two contributors to the most recent issue of the West Coast journal I edit, the Santa Monica Review. The spring 2023 issue includes fiction and nonfiction, and I’ll play readings by the authors of two short stories taped recently at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Foundation in Venice, CA. Gregory Tower and Kristen Leigh Schwarz are both heartbreakingly, sardonically, vividly smart and funny writers. Gregory Tower reads in full his “Riding in Cars with Joy,” a meaningfully wry adventure tale involving the real-life writer Joy Williams. Gregory Tower has worked as an LA bookseller and earned his MFA from UC Riverside Palm Desert. Then, an excerpt from “Breaking Ground” by Kristen Leigh Schwarz, about the 1994 Northridge earthquake, returning home, and abandoned love, with plenty of self-conscious if painful humor. Kristen Leigh Schwarz earned an MFA from UC Irvine with previous work in One Story, The American Literary Review and Collateral. Here she reads from the beginning of “Broken Ground.” Special thanks to Eric Ahlberg for recording. Copies of the latest issue of the Santa Monica Review are available at Southern California area bookstores or online at the SMR website. Tune in next week for more celebration of the literary arts on Bibliocracy. Listen live on the radio at KPFK Pacifica Radio 90.7 FM in Southern California, streamed live at KPFK.org or via the station’s Audio Archives. Available as a podcast wherever you download your podcasts. And archived here.
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