Literary events are comin' to town

Here are the best readings and book events in and around L.A. this season.

- MADDIE CONNORS

It’s a Friday night in Chinatown. In the Asian Center, storefronts are closed, their neon signs still buzzing in the rain. Upstairs, lively chatter echoes from the Bel Ami Gallery. Inside, under red lights, the monthly series This Friday hosts a reading. On each table, a spread of challah and wine glows in candlelight.

“Jane just needed to write something that felt like talking to a hot, crazy person very far away,” fiction writer Anna Dorn reads aloud.

The mischievous line prompts smirks from the audience.Her delivery is playful, sharp and wildly entertaining. For a brief moment, she is the “hot crazy person very far away.”

Hosted by Ruby Zuckerman and Evan Laffer, This Friday is touted as a “nondenominational Sabbath.” The literary event is secular, but centers on Jewish values. “Jewish tradition of art and culture isn’t about being Jewish — it’s about arts and culture,” Laffer says.

Zuckerman, a fiction writer, and Laffer, a poet and host of the Jokermen podcast, met on the literary reading circuit. This Friday was born when the friends “wanted to fill a hole in the ecosystem — something less stuffy than a bookstore reading, but still felt like a party,” Zuckerman says.

The series is one of many readings that have emerged across the city. The events often take place in unorthodox venues — bars, backyards, restaurants and art galleries — and are crowded with young, curious audience members, often with cigarettes in hand.

For many, readings have become the antidote to a nightlife scene weary of Hinge dating and heavy alcohol consumption. The scene offers community: space for readers and writers to mingle, listen and be absorbed by prose.

“I was interested in writing, loved reading and didn’t have any friends that had those things in common,” Zuckerman says. “I just started going to readings — at Stories Books, Casual Encountersz — and very quickly was able to find community in a way.”