On the last Sunday of each month, LAVA welcomes interested individuals to gather in downtown Los Angeles, for a structured Salon featuring formal presentations and opportunities to meet and connect with one another. If you’re interested in joining LAVA as a creative contributor or an attendee, we recommend Salon attendance as an introduction to this growing community.

At the April 2015 LAVA Sunday Salon,  Joan Jobe Smith presented on her new memoir, Tales of An Ancient Go-Go Girl and on her long creative friendship with Charles Bukowski.

Tales of An Ancient Go-Go Girl by long-time Long Beach, California resident Joan Jobe Smith, is a picaresque True Tale, a 50-year Glotessey spanning the 1965 Los Angeles Watts Riots, near death at the hands of a homicidal ex-husband, the counter-culture go-go swinging let-it-all-hang-out 1960s-‘70s, single Motherhood and Feminism. Rarely does a natural poet and historian such as Joan Jobe Smith endure such ordeals and challenges and survive to tell the tale. It is a Tale written with go-going panache and patois, and heart, courage and humor to make our lives richer and wiser. The event took the form of a series of short Q&As with LAVA’s Richard Schave on milestones from the memoir and Joan’s relationship with the writer Charles Bukowski, punctuated by Joan reading poetry selections which span her career.

For more on Joan Jobe Smith, visit https://www.pearlmag.com