Siel Ju's Blog, page 5

If you’re here reading this, you’re likely a writer, and if you’re a writer, you’re likely really good at spending long swaths of time alone — because that’s basically what you need to do, to write.

For those times you need a little break from the isolation, here are seven big literary fetes where you can meet other people more comfortable in solitude:

Lit Crawl LA. The North Hollywood Arts District becomes the hub of Literary LA for one night each year, when irreverent readings and other fu...

Sometimes you mean to go to a reading series that sounds cool, but you put it off, and a year goes by, then two, then three and four, until finally, when you actually go because it’s the week between Christmas and New Years so you’ve got the time and even traffic in L.A. isn’t too bad, you walk into the event and there’s free champagne and mini cupcakes because it’s the reading series’ eighth anniversary.

Which is to say: Hitched has been around the L.A. literary scene long enough to become...

One great way to find a writing community: Becoming a regular at a local reading series.

To help you do that, I’ve put together a list of my favorite reading series. Just to be clear, many more readings happen in town. Indie bookstores, writing programs, and literary journals often host their own series. Plus, lots of one-off events happen everywhere from tiny coffee shops to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. And there are other reading series I haven’t included on this list, sometimes because t...

I used to post brief reviews of books I’d read on a monthly basis — until January this year, when I abruptly stopped for a hodgepodge of vague reasons ranging from getting a “regular job” to focusing on my novel to investing more in my relationships. But I couldn’t let 2018 go by without sharing books I loved that I think you might love too.

Here are my 11 favorite books of the year — along with photos of what I ate or drank while reading them. Why 11? I like the number better than 10, perhap...

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

Do you need distance and perspective to write about an experience honestly, meaningfully? Does writing about an experience provide closure — some sense of finality to memories and ideas you’ve been wrestling with?

Many writers say yes. Brittany Ackerman says no. And her new memoir-in-essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine, has that sometimes exhilaratingly freeing, sometimes out-of-control frightening sense of life continually...

Growing up, I wished I had an older brother — The cool, reckless kind that took me along on his crazy adventures and introduced me to new, adult things I didn’t yet know about — and also the protective kind that took me under his wing and made sure nothing bad happened to me.

Those idealized yet contradictory qualities — Is it possible to find both in one brother? Desirable? That’s what I thought about while reading Brittany Ackerman’s brief memoir-in-essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine.

Thi...

If you have a literary sweet tooth, come to Book Soup next Thursday for the launch of Tammy Lynne Stoner’s novel Sugar Land! I’ll be reading with her — as will Jillian Lauren, author of New York Times bestseller Some Girls: My Life in a Harem.

What: Tammy Lynne Stoner, with Jillian Lauren and Siel Ju (Facebook event page)
When: Thursday, October 25, 2018, 7 pm
Where: Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, Calif.

Sugar Land tells the story of Dara, a Southern girl in the 1920s who has...

Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

What comes first, the setting or the plot? I thought this was a good question for Anne-Marie Kinney, who with Sara Finnerty puts together the fantastic Griffith Park Storytelling Series. These readings are held in various beautiful settings in the park ranging from the bat caves to the shade of pretty trees — and  getting to, enjoying, and departing from each of them always makes for a fun plot to recount to friends —

Anne-M...

A thing about Los Angeles: Even after you’ve lived in this metropolis for decades, there are areas that will remain entirely foreign to you — even while they feel vaguely familiar because you’ve driven through them a bunch of times. I can conjure up an image and aesthetic and stereotypes of many L.A. neighborhoods without having any real clear sense of what it might be like to live there.

Which is to say — If you’re curious about what it might be like to live in the valley, pick up Anne-Marie...

This month’s giveaway is a little different! Instead of a novel, I’m giving away a copy of the latest issue of The Southern Review — a fantastic literary journal that just happens to have a short story of mine in it.

It’s called “Alone or Someone Else,” and is about a girl who gets pregnant after a one-night stand with an action film star. Here is what one person on Twitter said about it:

Can't stop thinking about @sielju's story "Alone or Someone Else" in @southern_review. Also, Owen McLeo...