LA-Lit interviews Mark von Schlegell
Sunday, April 15 at 3pm
At Betalevel

We’d like to invite you to a live radio recording, reading & conversation this coming Sunday April 15 at 3 p.m. at Betalevel in Chinatown. Mark von Schlegell will be the featured writer on LA-lit, a radio show co-curated by Mathew Timmons & Stephanie Rioux. The show (& hence the recording) lasts a little over an hour and will be about 30 minutes of reading & about 30 minutes of questions & answers/further questions – alternating between the two modes in hopes of creating a space for dynamic conversation.

For information about attending the recording go here.

Mark von Schlegell’s novel Venusia, first volume of System/Series, was issued in late 2005 by M.I.T./Semiotext(e). The book gained controversial notice and the tour led to his being invited to 2006’s World Science Fiction Conference, where he appeared on 13 panels. Mark’s short science fiction has been included in the anthologies Juncture (Soft Skull Press) and Futureways (Arsenal Pulp) and appears regularly in the international art underground. He has published cultural criticism in Art/Text, Flash Art, NYFA Quarterly, X-tra and Art on Paper. Mark holds a PhD in English from NYU and has taught at NYU, CalArts, The San Francisco Art Institute, L.A. City College and City College, New York. He’s lectured on SF at Harvard, the Newton Correctional Facility near Jasper, Iowa and the Palais Tokyo in Paris. He’s also worked as a cartographer, plumber’s assistant, security guard, archivist and librarian. He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Cologne, writing and teaching. Recent projects include editing the final issue of insurrectionist L.A. newsletter The Rambler, “You Are Leila Waddell” — world’s first-ever WhoreTML document, and http://highwichita.com — an expanding mini-verse based on his 2006 novelette “High Wichita.” Mercury Station, the 2nd volume of System/Series, is nearing completion.

LA-Lit interviewed Sawako Nakayasu on Sunday, December 10th at 5pm.

Sawako Nakayasu is currently writing about, through, on, around and with ants and other insects, but mostly ants. She was born in Yokohama, Japan, and has lived mostly in the US since the age of six. Her books include Insect Country, (A)Nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she, (Quale Press), So we have been given time Or, (Verse Press), and Clutch (Tinfish chapbook, 2002). She is currently working on an insect-based collaborative project featuring ants, while editing the journal Factorial, which often features contemporary Japanese poetry in English translation. In 2006 she received a Witter Bynner Foundation poetry translator residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute and a PEN Translation Fund Grant for translations of Chika Sagawa and Takashi Hiraide, respectively. Her own writing has been translated into Japanese and Swedish, and Arabic.