Los Angeles Times • 28th August 2025

Meet the L.A. sisters ushering in a new era of YA literature

Annabelle Chang recommends books for a living. If you were to ask which one she finds most “criminally underrated,” she’d tell you it’s Katie Henry’s “This Will Be Funny Someday.”“It is truly one of my favorite books I’ve ever read, not just my favorite YA books, just one of my favorite books that I think will really appeal to everyone,” Annabelle, 19, told The Times. “I read it at such an important time in my life. I was 16. The protagonist is also 16.”“Annabelle’s love for this book actually i...

Los Angeles Times • 6th August 2025

8 swoon-worthy L.A. spots to celebrate Bookstore Romance Day

In 2019, Oregon bookseller Billie Bloebaum saw an author raise a question on X she had heard many times before: “Why should I support independent bookstores when independent bookstores don’t support romance?”“For a long time, and still somewhat to this day, independent bookstores have had a reputation as being not as welcoming to romance readers and books as they could be,” Bloebaum told The Times. “There were a lot of booksellers that I knew who read romance, who championed romance, who had it...

Los Angeles Times • 4th August 2025

The Magic Castle's training program for kid magicians is like a real-life Hogwarts

Anja Steyn has three disparate loves: puzzles, horror movies and magic.And during her show at the Magic Castle two weeks ago, she not only predicted the horror film someone was thinking of — she produced an almost-finished puzzle of the movie poster, with the last piece in the unsuspecting audience member’s possession.“Some of you might think it’s fate. Some of you might think it’s chance,” Steyn said. “But either way, it’s magic.”Judging by her talent, one wouldn’t know that Steyn is only...

Los Angeles Times • 30th July 2025

'A state of emergency': How L.A. dance groups are pivoting amid steep funding cuts

Linda Yudin was sipping coffee with family and friends on May 3, the morning of her birthday, when they warned her not to check her emails.Later that afternoon, she learned why: Her dance company, Viver Brasil, had lost a $20,000 grant. It was among 30 Los Angeles arts organizations that received a grant termination letter from the National Endowment for the Arts the night before.“Was I mad? Yes, I was mad. I was really angry. We were all really angry because it slows our process down,” Yud...

San Francisco Chronicle • 13th September 2024

No one wants to splurge on concerts and festivals anymore. Are live music events dead?

This year was the first since 2012 that passes for the second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which draws more than 600,000 people annually to the desert city of Indio (Riverside County), didn’t sell out. Even resale tickets were popping up on third-party sites such as StubHub for less than face value ($499 to $1,269).

This year was the first since 2012 that passes for the second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which draws more than 600,000 peop...

San Francisco Chronicle • 1st September 2024

How Bay Area bookstores are building community and surviving in the digital age

“So you had these two books about love and gentleness during a time in which we kind of felt like, as a culture, we were lacking a lot of that,” Johnson told the Chronicle just weeks after the blaze that destroyed his storefront at 5433 College Ave., a space he took over in 2017 after more than two decades as the beloved Diesel bookstore.

San Francisco Chronicle • 27th August 2024

Fentanyl is contaminating S.F. club drugs. Here’s how the city’s nightlife is responding

Rude’s independent naloxone work at Oasis has become one of many grassroots initiatives working to address the fentanyl crisis in San Francisco as overdose rates remain at an all-time high. In July alone, the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner reported 39 accidental overdoses, 27 of which were caused by fentanyl. The synthetic opioid can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin and deadly even in small doses.

The San Francisco Chronicle • 19th August 2024

Who's brat in the Bay Area? Here's the definitive list

If 2024 is the summer of “brat,” anyone who’s older than Generation Z might be wondering what that means.But even if you already understand the slang term popularized by English singer-songwriter Charli XCX, the Chronicle wants to take it a step further by naming the Bay Area’s top brats.Elder millennials Tony Bravo and Lily Janiak stood in for the olds, asking Zoomers Lauren Harvey and Zara Irshad to explain what all the hip young kids are talking about. Then, the four of them, soliciting nomin...

Datebook | San Francisco Arts & Entertainment Guid • 6th August 2024

Caro De Robertis embraces new kind of mythmaking in ‘The Palace of Eros’

Caro De Robertis was disowned by their parents in their mid-20s, told they could never be both Uruguayan and queer. That experience prompted them to spend their first five books digging into Latin American history and literary tradition, carving out a space for their identity. But on a trip to southern Italy with their oldest child and now ex-wife, the Oakland author unexpectedly found familial acceptance among the descendants of their great-grandfather, who live in a small village called Prepez...

San Francisco Chronicle • 25th July 2024

S.F.’s Stern Grove Festival evolves for new audiences in its 87th year

The annual free concert series, which began in 1938, takes place at Sigmund Stern Recreation Grove, a natural amphitheater 14 stories below street level. For more than eight decades, music lovers have hiked through eucalyptus trees and picnicked on the grass to catch live performances by acts from San Jose classic rockers the Doobie Brothers and gospel singer Mavis Staples to funk band Kool & the Gang along with series regulars such as the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Ballet.

San Francisco Chronicle • 13th July 2024

Bay Area political reaction to Trump being shot: ‘Violence has no place in our democracy’

Former President Donald Trump was shot and wounded during a rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, dropping to the ground after gunshots interrupted his speech and grazed the side of his head. He later stood up, swarmed by Secret Service members, with a bleeding ear and streaks of blood on his face.

uDiscover Music • 21st June 2024

'I Sing The Body Electric': A Literary Guide To Lana Del Rey

If one artist speaks to the affinity between music and literature, it’s Lana Del Rey. Even before the release of her 2020 poetry collection Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass, she wove great works of poetry, prose, drama, and philosophy into her eclectic catalog. From Sylvia Plath to Walt Whitman, Lana’s lyrical library is vast, and close reading uncovers her complex concerns with time, being, and identity.To dig deeper into Lana’s literary interests, we’ve created a guide to the writers who i...