Take Fountain: A Night of Nonfiction Readings

LARB presents Take Fountain, a night of readings celebrating Los Angeles’s hidden gems and oddities. Much like the writing it produces, L.A. is a city unlike any other—its peculiar geography, its infamous highways, the shared and fragmented realities sprawl begets.

Here, throngs of eastbound traffic spill into vast mountainous expanses; going westward, thick smog disappears into misty ocean vapor. This is a city that bears witness to the glamorous and the mundane, and which sits atop a fault line. How strange, how remarkable!

The evening will have readings of nonfiction works from L.A. writers Nikki Darling, Jordan Guevara, Tejal Rao, Greg Ruben, and Oliver Wang. Tickets are $15.

Nikki Darling is a writer, artist, and high school teacher who serves on the MFA writing faculty at Antioch University. She is the author of the novel Fade into You (Feminist Press, 2018) and the forthcoming The Call Is Coming from Inside the House. She is currently completing her third novel, Supercali/Fragilistic. Her poem “A Street Called Dolores Huerta” was adapted into a song by Alice Bag and inspired the creation of Dolores Huerta Square in Boyle Heights, an achievement for which she received a certificate of recognition from the City of Los Angeles. She lives in L.A. with her cat, Panzone, and her dog, Raspberry Beret Darling.

Jordan Guevara is a native Angeleno, born and raised in Historic Filipinotown. He recently earned his MFA from Antioch University. He is the winner of Lunch Ticket’s Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Nonfiction, and his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere. When not writing, Jordan spends his time getting to know the residents at his local cat sanctuary. Jordan currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two rescue cats.

Tejal Rao is a chief restaurant critic for The New York Times. She has won two James Beard Awards for restaurant criticism and a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise. She was previously a restaurant critic at The Village Voice and later at Bloomberg News. Before that, she worked as a translator, copyeditor, and cook. Tejal lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and two extremely food-motivated dogs.

Greg Ruben is a native Angeleno who makes short documentaries and video essays about Los Angeles—its history, landscape, architecture, culture, and people. Through investigations of unsung communities, forgotten places, and everyday Angelenos, his videos explore how the city’s past shapes its present. He’s built an audience of over 150,000 across Instagram and TikTok.

Oliver Wang is a professor of sociology at California State University, Long Beach, and the author of Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews in the San Francisco Bay Area (2015) and Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles (2025). In 2025, he curated the exhibition Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community for the Japanese American National Museum. Wang writes on music, arts, and culture for outlets including NPR, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, and KCET. He has co-hosted podcasts including Pop Rocket and Heat Rocks and is currently developing a project on songs of Asian America.

About YesterdayLA

This July, the Philosophical Research Society celebrates our beloved city’s rich and diverse past with YesterdayLA, a monthlong exploration of unique stories and works of art that have become part of the fabric of Los Angeles history. The landscape of our city is changing faster than ever before. By examining the L.A. of yesterday, we invite Angelenos to gather together to look not only back but also forward to the possibilities of our great city’s tomorrow.

Throughout its 90+ year history, the Philosophical Research Society has stood as a sanctuary for those seeking truth and enlightenment, with its doors open to Angelenos who have created great works of art and innovation, political movements, and spiritual evolutions across the eras. YesterdayLA will explore the fascinating stories of our city’s past with the continued spirit of curiosity that has stood as the pillar of PRS’s mission.