Talks

, ,

Heroes, Villains, Jedi

0 969

The Photographer’s Eye is a free lecture series presented by Photo Friends of the LAPL. It is a lunchtime series featuring photographers talking about their work. Our Aug. 15 presenter is KEVIN KNIGHT who shows and talks about his fan convention portraits. This promises to be a really fun presentation.

Feel free to bring your lunch.

Parking is available at 524 S. Flower St. Garage (show your LAPL library card at the Central Library’s information desk to receive a validation for reduced rates). Handicap accessibility available.

Formed in 1990, Photo Friends is a nonprofit organization that supports the Los Angeles Public Library’s Photograph Collection and History & Genealogy Department. Our mission is to improve access to the collections and promote them through public programs, projects, and exhibits. Become a member! The Photographer’s Eye series for 2012 is generously sponsored by Christy & Steve McAvoy

, , ,

Barbara Kraft reads from her new e-book “Anais Nin: The Last Days”

0 1.2k

“I have chosen to reveal the intimacies of Anaïs Nin’s last days as I witnessed them so that the story of her death is not lost. Everything comes back in the mind’s eye. Everything comes back in the crucible of the heart. She remains in my psyche all these years later as the most refined and rarified human being I have ever encountered.”

Thus begins Barbara Kraft’s memoir, Anaïs Nin: The Last Days. With her sometimes loving and sometimes raw prose, Kraft has captured the humanity, mortality, and essence of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated and yet mysterious literary figures.

As Noel Riley Fitch, author of Anaïs:The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin, writes of Kraft’s book: “An intimate and beautiful portrayal of the final years and painful death of Anaïs Nin … This compelling memoir is honest, critical, and full of perceptive insights into the relationships between Nin and her men.”Of all the young women I’ve worked with you are the one most like me,” Nin told Kraft as she lay dying.”

Alias Books East, the host of the event, was given “The Best Of L.A. 2010” thumbs up by L.A. Weekly.  Alias Books East is located in Atwater Village.  www.aliasbookseast.com

CCAC Downtown Community Town Hall
, , , ,

CCAC Downtown Community Town Hall

0 1.2k

Creating Community Awareness Coalition (CCAC), United Methodist Church, residents, artists, patrons, workers, small business owners, and community organizers of Downtown L.A. will commence a peaceful community dialogue in the neighborhood of Downtown L.A. by listening to the concerns and suggestions for moving forward of those affected by the LAPD Chalk incidents at the July 12, 2012 Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, and to come up with community-based solutions to shared problems.

RSVP or Questions:

Email DTLA Town Hall Meeting

NEW COALITION ORGANIZES DOWNTOWN COMMUNITY TOWN HALL AFTER CHALK WALK

Some Chalk Walk Organizers Prepare to Listen to Residents, Artists, Workers & Small Business Owners

Some participants of the July 12 Chalk Walk protest at Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk are helping organize a Community Town Hall meeting to provide space for sharing ideas, concerns, and suggestions for moving forward together as members of the community of Downtown Los Angeles.

“The goal of the Town Hall meeting is to listen to each other,” said one organizer, adding “This community was traumatized by police violence and already struggles with other concerns.”

At last Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk (July 12), LAPD officers in riot gear shut down the streets, closed galleries and businesses and injured half a dozen bystanders in response to a small group of people writing and drawing with washable children’s sidewalk chalk on sidewalks, streets, and buildings.

The small group of Chalk Walk participants has come together with other community members to form the “Creating Community Awareness Coalition” (CCAC) in response to a desire to build bridges between the diverse communities that live, work, organize, and play in downtown Los Angeles.

In the days after the July 12 Art Walk fiasco, a small group of Chalk Walk participants began reaching out the local community. Through their outreach, they came across some community members who support their efforts at creating consensus and have helped them organize this first of what are planned as a series of Town Hall meetings, and to network with more members of the community.

Downtown historians and founding board members of the Art Walk non-profit Richard Schave and Kim Cooper have supported the organizers of the Downtown Community Town Hall meeting.

“Downtown has needed something like this for a long time: a place without an agenda where the community can come together to work through its issues, form connections and address problems before they get out of control,” said Richard Schave, founding Director of the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk.

United Methodist Church has agreed to sponsor the Town Hall meeting and Reverend Sandie Richards, also a founding board member of the Art Walk non-profit, has agreed to help organize and facilitate the format of the town hall meeting.

“We want to bridge the gaps in this diverse community,” said Rev. Richards, “one way to do that is to listen to each other.”

Rev. Richards has structured the meeting so that everyone will get a chance to talk to a partner and everyone will get a chance to listen to their partner as well.

Following the July 12 police incidents at Art Walk, a few Chalk Walk participants began going door-to-door to speak with the affected small businesses owners and workers, and have passed out fliers in the neighborhood. Among the materials shared are a copy of the original Chalk Walk press release and a briefing statement that the Chalk Walk organizers prepared before the July 12 Art Walk.

The Creating Community Awareness Coalition (CCAC) invites anyone affected or concerned by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) violence at July’s Downtown LA Art Walk to join them at the Community Town Hall meeting, including residents, artists, workers, patrons, owners of small businesses, and community organizers.

All community members are welcome, and are encouraged to spread the word.

The Town Hall will take place in a rehearsal room in the Los Angeles Theatre Center on Thursday, August 2, 2012, starting at 6:30pm and going until about 8:30pm. The organizers will provide light refreshments

The organizers ask that no uniformed police officers attend with guns or other law enforcement weapons, in light of the police violence recently experienced by the community.

“We want to create a safe space where people can communicate without having traumatic triggers in the room,” said another organizer.

Also, the organizers encourage city officials and public employee to attend as community members, without pushing a political agenda.

#####

PLEASE NOTE: This was written by an individual participant in Occupy LA but it is not an official statement. All official statements have to have consensus from Occupy LA’s general assembly.

, , ,

SOLD OUT! The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank — That Side of Paradise: Dorothy Parker & F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Garden of Allah

0 1.8k

WHAT: The third of the quarterly LAVA Salons at Musso & Frank, featuring Adrienne Crew & David Kipen.

WHERE: Musso & Frank Grill, 6667 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028.

WHEN: Monday, July 23, 2012 from 6-11pm. COST: $100 per person, ticket price includes 3-course prix fixe dinner prepared by Musso & Frank chefs, Salon presentations and dessert service. Cocktails not included.

TO PURCHASE TICKETS: Sorry, this event is now fully booked. Subscribe to the LAVA newsletter to stay informed about future literary Salons at Musso & Frank. /subscribe

FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE EVENT: Send an email through the LAVA contact page /contact or call Kim Cooper or Richard Schave at 213-373-1947.

On Monday, July 23, you are invited to join writers Adrienne Crew and David Kipen for a lively, informative and sometimes heartbreaking inquiry into the experiences of Dorothy Parker and F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood, as they searched for that elusive thing: a means by which a gifted writer could work in the remunerative field of motion pictures while not completely squandering their talent or losing their mind. The focus of Ms. Crew’s talk will be the nexus of writers, directors, actors and professional wits who made the residential hotel The Garden of Allah their Hollywood home, with particular focus on Dorothy Parker and her conflicted relationship with this city. Mr. Kipen’s talk will explore the last few years of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life, particularly the Hollywood-themed Pat Hobby stories which he was working on at the time of his death. Martin Turnbull will discuss and read from The Garden on Sunset, the first novel in his 9-book series “The Garden of Allah Novels,” a fictional celebration of the culture of this legendary establishment. The series follows three naive hopefuls as they leap and lurch, win and lose their way though Hollywood’s golden years, with the Garden of Allah as the backdrop to their triumphs and failures.

Also appearing at the Salon is Howard Prouty (Acquisitions Archivist at The Academy Foundation/Margaret Herrick Library and proprietor of ReadInk) presenting on a famous Los Angeles book seller, the third in his ongoing Salon series. This time, this takes the form of a conversation between Howard Prouty and Michael Dawson, focusing on the history of Dawson’s Bookshop, an important part of L.A.’s cultural landscape since its founding by Michael’s grandfather Ernest Dawson in 1905. And before and after the formal dinner and Salon presentations, guests will mingle with Hollywood historian Philip Mershon (proprietor of The Felix in Hollywood Tour Company) and actress Kasey Wilson, appearing in the character of Miss Dorothy Parker. The day before the Salon, you are invited to register for a free walking tour of Fitzgerald’s Hollywood, hosted by Ms. Crew. /fitzgeraldwalk2

THE BACK STORY: For much of the mid-20th Century, to rub shoulders with America’s greatest novelists and screenwriters, one needed merely to go to the corner of Cherokee Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. Here, within the tight triangle of the Writer’s Guild offices, Musso & Frank Grill and the Stanley Rose Bookshop, flowed the commercial and social sap that nourished the tree of American letters. The famous minds who congregated still inspire awe: William Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, John Fante, Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, William Saroyan, John O’Hara, Dorothy Parker, Nathanael West and many more.

And at the center of it all was the famed “Back Room” of Musso & Frank, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. Beginning in 1936, in response to the restaurant’s growing popularity, Musso’s expanded its operations into a small room tucked behind the Vogue Theater. A door was punched through the west wall of the dining room, and a haughty door man installed. His instructions were simple: the back room was to be the exclusive domain of Hollywood’s literary lions, their friends and romantic partners. It was called, informally, The Cocktail Room or The Round Table or the Algonquin West.

The party raged on, six nights a week, for twenty glorious years.

In 1955, Musso & Frank expanded to the east, and the contents of the “Back Room”—the long bar, chairs, light fixtures, coat racks—were moved wholesale into the “New Room.” The “New Room” was no longer the exclusive retreat of literary Los Angeles, but the writers kept coming. Today, Musso & Frank’s clientele still includes celebrated novelists, screenwriters, poets and songwriters, all of whom cherish the old world hospitality, traditional Continental cuisine and opportunity to soak up the same rarified air that nourished the greats.

In honor of this ongoing writerly tradition, LAVA (The Los Angeles Visionaries Association) is delighted to announce the January 2012 launch of The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank, a quarterly literary salon and prix fixe dinner celebrating the great writers and personalities who have frequented the establishment.

The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank is the brainchild of Kim Cooper & Richard Schave, proprietors of literary tour company Esotouric—Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, James M. Cain’s Southern California Nightmare, Charles Bukowski’s Haunts of a Dirty Old Man, John Fante’s Dreams from Bunker Hill—who for the past twenty months have been hosting a free cultural Salon on the last Sunday of the month at Clifton’s Cafeteria (recently moved to the Los Angeles Athletic Club). With this new Salon series, LAVA expands its congenial, intelligent and unpredictable cultural programming into Hollywood with a quarterly literary Salon event held in Musso & Frank on a night when the restaurant is closed to the general public. Seating is extremely limited, and this intimate gathering is sure to sell out quickly.

LAVA co-founder Richard Schave, the Salon host and co-curator, says “I would argue that along the bar in the old Cocktail Room, somewhere between the drinking, bragging, fighting and general hell-raising, the better half of the Hard-Boiled School of American Letters was hashed out and put down on paper. The purpose of the Salon is two fold. First, to set the record straight on some basic milestones: the rise and fall of the original Cocktail Room and its reincarnation as the “New Room” and the symbiotic relationship Musso & Frank shared with the legendary bookshop next door, Stanley Rose’s. Secondly, a more ephemeral aim: in these hallowed rooms, that still bear the nicotine stains from Raymond Chandler’s pipe and Charles Bukowski’s cigarettes, we want to seek out and amplify the spark which all those great souls have left behind. Musso & Frank is just bricks and mortar, but incredible ideas and connections were forged here, and we believe that spark is waiting to be reignited and make its impression felt in Los Angeles again.”

Each Musso’s Salon evening will focus on different aspects of Hollywood’s literary lore, feature fascinating speakers and special guest historians, and be hosted by LAVA co-founder Richard Schave.

Mark Echeverria, 4th generation General Manager/Proprietor of The Musso & Frank Grill, says “For 93 years The Musso & Frank Grill has been a keystone in Hollywood’s ever-evolving history. Some of the world’s greatest people have walked through our doors, sat at a booth or a bar stool, and dreamt the unimaginable. That is what makes Hollywood so unique: unimaginable things come true. Musso & Frank Grill has always been that inspiration in people’s lives to make the impossible, possible, and it is now time to tell the true story of the people who put Hollywood on the map, and the restaurant they did it in—The Musso & Frank Grill. We are extremely excited to work with LAVA to bring you living history in a setting where history continues to happen, even 93 years later. So please enjoy an authentic dinning experience you would have found in the early decades of last century, and bring yourselves back to the time era of the literary giants, and truly get a journey through the history of Hollywood, in the restaurant that Hollywood grew up around, The Musso & Frank Grill.”

Future Salons will focus on the life and works of Charles Bukowski, Jim Tully, Nathanael West and other fascinating characters who’ve contributed to nearly a century of literary culture at Musso & Frank.

, , , , , , ,

George Mann’s Lost Bunker Hill exhibition and history presentation

retro
0 2.0k

 

On Bunker Hill and the Los Angeles Visionaries Association are delighted to announce the debut Los Angeles gallery exhibition of the photographic work of the late George Mann (1905-1977).  Mann’s rediscovered color images of mid-century Los Angeles are astonishing, and a must see for anyone who loves the city and wants to know it better.

George Mann’s Lost Bunker Hill opens at Gary Leonard’s Take My Picture Gallery for the Downtown Art Walk on Thursday, July 12, followed by a book signing for Jim Dawson’s Los Angeles’s Bunker Hill: Pulp Fiction’s Mean Streets and Film Noir’s Ground Zero! (The History Press, 2012) on Saturday, July 14 (info). George Mann’s photos  of Bunker Hill will be on view at the gallery during regular hours and by appointment, and framed prints are available for $100/each. Call 213-622-2256 for more info. 

July 12 event: During the Downtown Art Walk (7-9pm), join On Bunker Hill bloggers Richard Schave and Nathan Marsak, and Bunker Hill native son Gordon Pattison, for an informal presentation and Q&A on the rise and fall of downtown’s most beguiling residential neighborhood, from the mansions of silver kings to the era of grand hotels, the rooming house years, the looming threat of redevelopment, the fight to save Angels Flight, the evictions (Bunker Hill is the largest eminent domain land grab in American history), the hill’s flattening, the slow process of redevelopment and how Bunker Hill still resonates in the imaginations of Angelenos almost fifty years later. On Bunker Hill blogger Kim Cooper will also be present to answer questions about George Mann’s 3-D photographic viewing machines and the rediscovery of his photographs. The presentation will begin at 7:30pm and again at 8:30pm. 

ABOUT BUNKER HILL AND GEORGE MANN

Bunker Hill is a ghost, and though you may today walk streets named Grand and Hope and imagine you stand where once were grand Victorian homes turned flophouses, you are in fact one hundred feet beneath the old roads, which the city shaved away to make a wider footprint for the high rise tenants that replaced them. Look up, ten stories up, and if you’re a dreamer you can almost see the big houses bobbing there between the towers, old men and women toddling out onto the porches and down the avenues, exchanging gossip, feeding the cats, collapsing under some junkie’s fists, boarding Sinai or Olivet for the ride down to Grand Central Market, pruning the roses, taking a nickel every time someone parks on their lawn, a taxi dancer and her mother hearing angels dictate a mystic book, pretty girl children rolling hoops, raucous longhaired boys sledding downhill and crashing into the side of Hazard’s Pavilion, John Fante dreaming of girls who won’t date him, carrier pigeons conveying messages from Avalon, phony mediums and real ones spewing ectoplasm in shadowy parlors, Kay Martin and Leo Politi painting the old houses just ahead of the wreckers, The Crockers and the Bradburys spinning in their ballrooms, landladies, bankers, writers and bums, all the possibilities of a great neighborhood as it is born, flourishes, fades and is demolished.

Enter George Mann.

Born in Santa Monica in 1905, by his early 20s he was a vaudeville star as the hilariously taller half of the comedy dance team Barto & Mann. Of their east coast debut, Zit’s Theatrical Newspaper raved “Ten minutes before they went on at the Palace last Monday afternoon nobody thought very much about Barto & Mann; ten minutes after they came off stage, the whole Broadway world was talking about them.” As Vaudeville faded, Barto & Mann joined the Broadway cast of Hellzapoppin’ with featured billing from 1938 through 1942. The team split up in December 1943.

In his post-performance life, George Mann turned his imagination to entrepreneurial enterprise and professional photography, which brought him to Bunker Hill. In the late 1950s, when the neighborhood’s days were known to be numbered, he arrived atop the peak with his camera to document some representative scenes, returning in November 1962 for additional shots. These long forgotten color images of old Bunker Hill were originally displayed in 3-D viewers of Mann’s own design, which were leased to various Los Angeles restaurants, bars and doctor’s offices. Mann would swap out the photo selection every two weeks, so if these evocative scenes of Bunker Hill weren’t available, one might peep at Calico Ghost Town, Catalina Island, Descanso Gardens, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Pacific Ocean Park, Watts Towers or Palm Springs. 

In his Bunker Hill set, created to distract anxious patients and hungry tourists, George Mann captured a seldom seen side of this lost Los Angeles neighborhood: the gracious avenues and genteel decay, the old people, their cats and their gardens, abandoned newspapers, vacant lots, the shadows and the sunlight. We are in his debt.

George Mann died in 1977. We trust you will enjoy these rediscovered images of Los Angeles’ most beguiling lost neighborhood from the George Mann Archives, maintained by Mann’s daughter-in-law, Dianne Woods.

, , , , , ,

Stealing Time to Write: A Retreat for Women

0 1.3k

 LAVA Visionaries April Dammann and Adrienne Crew are alumnae of Hedgebrook, a writers retreat for women located on an island in the Puget Sound of Washington State. They are both involved with Hedgbrook’s Southern California Alumnae Council, which will be hosting a one-day retreat designed to give writers the space and time to just write in an unstructured, quiet environment on Saturday, July 2012 at the old Doheny mansion near USC in Los Angeles.

See details below or review the brochure here:

THE COUNTRY  IN THE CITY
One-Day Writers’ Retreat at  Downtown LA campus of Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles

JULY 7th, 2012
9AM – 5:30PM

Turn off your clocks, schedules, and expectations. This is a day to nurture body and soul, commune with your muse, and above all write. Women writers of all experience levels and interests are warmly welcomed.

Participants may join writing circles to inspire imagination and hone craft, write quietly in community with others, wander to the “farmhouse table” for talk about writing and group feedback, or simply sit under a tree and dream. In
the afternoon, industry professionals and Hedgebrook alumnae will be available for one-on-one mentoring. Feedback on work will always be given with the utmost respect for the writer’s vision. Participants should note, however, that
the Retreat is a day for rejuvenation, not for detailed manuscript review.

Enjoy a day inspired by Hedgebrook!

Click here for details or registration info.

, , , ,

Roar Shack, a reading series

0 1.2k

ROAR SHACK
A Partnership with
Portuguese Artists Colony
Presents: BLOOD NEVER LIES

Write what you know. Write what you don’t know. Write what you don’t want anyone to know. Write what you yourself don’t want to know.

Write what has to be.

You know it when you see it, hear it or read it. When you can detect the heartbeat behind something that someone created, when it’s clear to you why they did what they did – why they bled to make it and why they need to share it – it means something to you. Us too.

Roar Shack is a new collective of writers and artists, and over the coming months we’re going to bring you voices. Some of us come from fiction, some from memoir, some from poetry, and from music and performance and just about anything that leaves its own blood on the page. We want to bring you what you may not be getting much of. Won’t you join us?

Our first show is July 8, 2012 at Stories in Echo Park (https://www.storiesla.com/#hours-location-contact) from 5-7 p.m.. We dare you to miss this lineup:

Chiwan Choi: Chiwan Choi is the author of two poetry collections, The Flood and Abductions. He also runs Writ Large Press, a small literary press featuring some of the best Los Angeles writers. He has read with the original Colony in San Francisco and has been on tour for Abductions.

Jillian Lauren: Jillian Lauren is the author of the memoir Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and the novel Pretty. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, The New York Times, Los Angeles Magazine and Vanity Fair among others. She has performed at spoken word and storytelling events across the country and is co-host with comedian Melinda Hill of the new hit podcast Eat My Podcast. She recently debuted her one-woman show, Mother Tongue.

Shilpa Agarwal: Shilpa Agarwal is the author of award-winning novel, Haunting Bombay, a story of love, mystery, and betrayal set in 1960’s India about a family who have buried the tragic history of a child’s drowning and the ghosts of the past who rise up to haunt them.

Live music from Scott Shriner, bassist for Weezer. Yeah, THAT Weezer. Listen to his new solo work.

Live Writing: a thrilling feat of writerly improvisation!

What is Live Writing? As you arrive, you get to vote on a prompt. The winning prompt will be revealed to four intrepid authors – two of us and two of you audience types, onstage for all to see! We’ll all write to that prompt while Scott plays – it’s going to be impossible not to listen to him, but no one said this was going to be easy. Then the Live Writers will each read their just-written words, and the audience gets to vote! The winner will develop the work into a finished piece to be read at the next show. The piece will also be featured on Roar Shack’s Facebook page and online.

Photo Finish: The Olympic Games in Los Angeles, 1932 and 1984

0 1.1k

Los Angeles hosted the Olympic Games twice, in 1932 and 1984. These successful, and controversial, Olympics will be remembered for the ways they changed Los Angeles, as well as for the athletic performances of Babe Didrikson, Eddie Tolan, Stella Walsh, Carl Lewis, Mary Lou Retton, and Michael Jordan. For this program, author David Davis has culled dozens of black-and-white images exclusively from the Photograph Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library.

David Davis is the author of Showdown at Shepherd’s Bush: The 1908 Olympic Marathon and the Three Runners Who Launched a Sporting Craze and Play by Play: Los Angeles Sports Photography 1889-1989 (images from the LAPL Photo Collection).

,

Barbara Kraft on Anaïs Nin

0 1.3k

With her sometimes loving and sometimes raw prose, Barbara Kraft captures the humanity and essence of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated literary figures, as she reads from her memoir Anais Nin: The Last Days.

“I have chosen to reveal the intimacies of Anaïs Nin’s last days as I witnessed them so that the story of her death is not lost. Everything comes back in the mind’s eye. Everything comes back in the crucible of the heart. She remains in my psyche all these years later as the most refined and rarified human being I have ever encountered.”

Thus begins Barbara Kraft’s memoir, Anaïs Nin: The Last Days. With her sometimes loving and sometimes raw prose, Kraft has captured the humanity, mortality, and essence of one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated and yet mysterious literary figures.

Anaïs Nin, noted for her diaries and erotica, was at the height of her fame when she took on Barbara Kraft as a writing student. Quickly, the two became intimate friends at the moment when both would encounter tragedy: Nin’s terminal cancer and Kraft’s impending difficult divorce.  The circumstances created an environment of interdependency: Nin, despite her failing health, supported Kraft’s writing and life decisions, and Kraft became a devoted and untiring part of Nin’s support system during her last two years of life.

As Noel Riley Fitch, author of Anaïs:The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin, writes of Kraft’s book: “An intimate and beautiful portrayal of the final years and painful death of Anaïs Nin … This compelling memoir is honest, critical, and full of perceptive insights into the relationships between Nin and her men.”Of all the young women I’ve worked with you are the one most like me,” Nin told Kraft as she lay dying.”

Kraft describes her initial meeting with Nin in February 1974, writing that Nin was poetry embodied and seemed to ‘glide’ over the rose-colored carpet of her Silver Lake home ‘like a swan skimming the surface of still waters.’ And in December of that year she begins what was to become a chronicle of Nin’s terrible two-year battle with cancer.

Because of the overwhelming reality of cancer, Anaïs Nin was stripped down to her bare essence, which Kraft captures expertly. She poignantly records not only Nin’s stubborn grip on life, but also the heroic efforts that Rupert Pole, Nin’s West Coast lover, made to shield her from the inevitable pain, agony, and humiliation associated with the disease. It is a monumental tribute to not only those fighting for their lives, but also the forgotten ones—the caregivers.

The very personal events in this book will resonate with anyone who has gone through terminal disease or knows someone who has. So, like Nin herself, the raw reality of Anaïs Nin: The Last Days becomes symbolic, mythical, and universally inspirational.

Anaïs Nin: The Last Days is currently available on Amazon, on Smashwords and Google Books. It is also available directly from iPad (through the iTunes store), Nook, the Sony Reader, as well as other Kindle-friendly devises such as the iPhone and is available through nearly every credible device worldwide.

 

 

 

Cold A Long Time: Solving A 22-year-old Forensic Mystery
, ,

Cold A Long Time: Solving A 22-year-old Forensic Mystery

0 1.6k

To purchase a ticket for this special event, click here. If you’d like to be contacted when another crime lab tour and lecture are scheduled, subscribe to LAVA’s occasional Crime Lab Newsletter.

Visionary Professor Donald Johnson, in association with LAVA, Esotouric and the California Forensic Science Institute, invites you to participate in a special four-hour event at LA’s regional crime laboratory, on the campus of Cal State LA. Space is very limited and pre-reservation required for this rare opportunity to visit the Cal State LA School of Criminal Justice and Criminalistics at the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center. Learn from working forensic investigators, true crime authors, and educators.  Discover the real art and science of crime investigation.

Join acclaimed true crime author John Leake and trace evidence expert Lynne Herold, Senior Criminalist with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, for this special presentation based on John’s latest book Cold A Long Time: An Alpine Mystery, winner of the 2012 Independent Publisher Award—Bronze Medal, True Crime.

The Mystery:
In August 1989, Duncan MacPherson, a pro hockey player, disappeared in Europe. With no help from the police, his parents searched the Alps looking for him. They found his car near the gondola station at the Stubai Glacier, a popular ski resort near Innsbruck, Austria. The car had sat in the lot for six weeks without being reported. Fourteen years later, Duncan’s body was found at the resort.

What happened to Duncan MacPherson? In order to answer that question, true crime author John Leake sought the expertise of trace evidence examiner Lynne Herold, whom he knew had served as a key witness in the prosecution of international serial killer Jack Unterweger, the subject of John’s first book.

Join John and Lynne as they team up a second time to solve the 22-year-old forensic mystery of Duncan MacPherson’s disappearance. Through presentation of physical evidence recovered from the scene, eyewitness testimony, chronology of events, additional evidentiary research and peculiar gaps in the forensic records, crime lab attendees will follow John through the steps by which he discovered a shocking cover up and the answers for which Duncan MacPherson’s parents had been searching for more than a decade.

Also featured at this special crime lab seminar is a discussion of John Leake’s first book, Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer, about the Austrian criminal Jack Unterweger. Discover how Unterweger expanded his murderous activities from Europe to Los Angeles and put himself squarely in the crosshairs of trace evidence expert Lynne Herold. Of her testimony at Unterweger’s Austrian trial, his attorney stated ”[she] was the most impressive expert witness. When she started talking about the ligatures, I could see the jury looking at Unterweger in a darker light, and I knew then that we were in big trouble.” Join us as John and Lynne discuss the ligature evidence from Jack Unterweger’s last trial, and how an international team of forensic scientists finally put an end to a deadly career.

Biographies:

Born in Dallas, Texas, JOHN LEAKE went to Vienna, Austria on a graduate school scholarship and ended up living in the city for over a decade, working as a freelance writer and translator. His first book, Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer was a New York Times Sunday Book Review “Editors’ Choice,” a Men’s Vogue “Best Book of 2007,” and the inspiration of The Infernal Comedy, starring John Malkovich.

LYNNE HEROLD, Ph.D., is a Senior Criminalist in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Scientific Services Bureau. She received her B.S. in Biological Sciences from Kent State University in 1974, and her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Southern California in 1984. Dr. Herold has been involved in the analysis of trace evidence and testimony several “high profile” cases, as well as scores of murders, serial murders, rapes and child abuse cases over the past 30 years. In 2008, Dr. Herold was honored as the California Homicide Investigators’ Association Support Person of the Year for her years of work as a trace evidence examiner and the assistance it has provided in the investigation of felony cases.

A portion of the proceeds from this event supports the research of Criminalistics graduate students at Cal State Los Angeles. Please note that NO PHOTOGRAPHS OR VIDEOTAPING of the presentation will be permitted, and cell phones must be stowed away. The material presented is graphic and intense. No children will be admitted.

«< 9 10 11 12 13 >»