My pal Alia Yunis has a reading at the LA Festival of Books this weekend. If you are nearby, please go and check it out. You will not be disappointed. She is an amazingly gifted writer. I wish I could go!

here are the details:

Emerging Voices Fellows Reading at LA Times Festival of Books

Sunday, April 24 @ 3:45
Etc. Stage
LA Times Festival of Books
UCLA campus
Los Angeles, CA
Free admission, open to the public

PEN USA’s 2005 Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellows will take the stage for their first public reading at the LA Times Festival of Books. Designed in 1995 for talented writers at the beginning stages of their careers, the Emerging Voices program pairs each Fellow with an established literary mentor, creating a unique and invaluable one-on-one relationship. This mentorship is augmented by courses at the Writers Program at UCLA Extension, PEN USA’s own writing workshops and master classes, and meetings with agents, publishers and authors.

“Over the years, Emerging Voices has produced published authors at a rate equal to or exceeding the most selective college MFA programs,” says Program Director Eitan Kadosh. “It’s a remarkably successful program.”

In addition to having seven books published, including critically acclaimed best-selling novels, EV alumni have been featured in scores of journals, newspapers, and anthologies nationwide and garnered a prestigious Stegner Fellowship, a Stonewall book award, and several Sundance Writing Fellowships.

This year’s Emerging Voices group is one of PEN’s most promising ever. Educator Cynthia Bond is editing her first novel, Ruby, which explores the effects of tyranny and racism in a Texas town. Juwanza Dumisani is Director of the Anansi Poetry Workshop at the World Stage and is working on his first novel, Nails, Flowers, Blood, and Stone, a tale set in the Motown of the 1960s. Robbie Frandsen, a community re-emntry specialist is writing, Loving Thin These Walls, the real-time memoir of her experience as the mother of a boy accused of murder. Teacher Qevin Oji is halfway through Moving Days, an Angel City coming of age. Lan Tran is a versatile performance artist whose tragic-comic Lone Stars explores the upbringing of a Vietnamese Texan girl. Screenwriter Alia Yunis’ book, The Key To My House, tells the remarkable story of an elderly Arab-American woman, her nightly visits by Scheherazade, and her efforts to determine who should get the family home when she passes away.

Emerging Voices is made possible by the generous support of the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation, the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program, and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.