The Streetwise Cycle

Composer Bruce Bennett is currently working on a piece of music to accompany The Streetwise Cycle. I'm delighted that I'll be able to use a piece of his music at the party to accompany moving images and text associated with the book. 

Bruce is an active performer of improvised music, and as a composer, his works have been played by a wide range of groups and artists, including the Arditti String Quartet, the Avenue Winds, the Berkeley Symphony, Del Sol String Quartet, Earplay, Tom Dambly and Michael Zbyszynski.  

Bruce's interests and activities include compositions and improvisations for live, interactive, electroacoustic music; conducting; the free-atonal music of the Second Viennese School; the music of the post-World War II European avant-garde; contemporary American and European avant-garde; and the Frankfurt School, particularly Adorno's writings on aesthetics and mass culture. 

Listen to his work or read more at Bruce's website. 

Update #2: Don't worry if you missed the interview. You can hear it online right here.

Update! Indymedia On Air has been moved to 8:30 pm today. Listen in tonight! 

Here's a quick preview of my interview with author Terry Wolverton about independent literature. In this clip, she talks about how changes in the corporate structure of publishing has changed our literary culture. 
  

Listen to the full interview on Monday, March 14 at 2:30 pm on KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara, or online at kpfk.org. 

You'll also get to hear from Terry at the Streetwise book launch party. Hope to see you there! 

The Streetwise Cycle is a proud DIY, independent book by an independent author. It's also part of a larger "indie lit" movement of authors, publishers and booksellers who are doing an end-run around the big New York publishing houses to sell our books directly to our readers. 

I've invited author Terry Wolverton to the book launch party to talk a bit about indie lit: What it is, Why it matters, and How readers can get involved. 

When it comes to literature, Terry has just about done it all. She's the author of eight books, including poetry, novels, nonfiction and a novel-in-poems. Her new novel, Stealing Angel, will be published later this year. She's also edited 14 literary anthologies. Terry spent 13 years at the Woman's Building as an artist, student, teacher and Executive Director. She is the founder of Writers At Work, a creative writing center in LA, where she teaches fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. She also is an Associate Faculty Mentor in the MFA Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles. 

If you care about books, whether you're a writer or reader, you'll want to hear what Terry has to say. 

I didn't pick them because their band name is a punctuation mark - that's just a literary bonus. Ampersand will be busking live outside the Echo Park Film Center before the program begins. 

Ampersand is Rachel Garcia and Thu Tran. They met in the winter of 2006, as students at San Francisco State University, at an open mic night. Tran's songwriting is influenced by pop and folk. Garcia's vocal styles are based in jazz and the blues. It all comes together to create Ampersand’s cheerfully soulful "city folk" sound. 

Ampersand's music ranges across themes and styles, and they always strive to make good-hearted, positive music. Their music is a hybrid of different influences and inspirations, reflecting their diverse musical and cultural backgrounds. 

Get a preview of Ampersand's music on MySpace, follow them on Twitter and become their best friends on Facebook. 

Or come hear them at the party on March 26!  

I spent this weekend on the streets of LA with my handy H2 recorder, creating Streetwise Cycle audio clips for Broadcastr. 

It's a new social media site that allows you to post audio stories and pin them to a map. You might think of it as "place-based podcasting." 

On Saturday I drove to each location where a Streetwise story takes place and recorded a brief chat about that place and its story, then read an excerpt. That only took four and a half hours. 

For example, click here to listen to the story titled Shelter, recorded outside the Iglesia Roca de Salvacion in East LA.  

To explore Broadcastr, jump over to the site and zoom in on the map to anywhere in the world you're interested in. Well, it's still mostly the US right now. You can search topics, cities or author names. 

Broadcastr is still in beta, so the bells and whistles don't all fully work. Still, it's a fun site where you can listen and learn a little more about the places around you.