15th Anniversary, Anthology Launch Party

Celebrate 15 years of LARB with the launch of our latest LARB Quarterly, 15th Anniversary Anthology! Years in the making, the anthology highlights work which has defined LARB as a publication, both online and in print. We hope you’ll join us as we toast to 15 years of platforming criticism and accessibility in the literary arts. The celebrations will include readings from Melissa Chadburn, Kate Durbin, and Michelle Tea, with a special activation from the Altadena Seed Library and Nina Raj and art installations from Tacita Dean. The event is free and open to the public.

We’ve combed through the archive to bring you something truly special. With countless staff meetings, group texts, email chains, and late-night conversations, the making of this anthology necessitated both rigor and reflection, collaboration and curiosity. The result? A page-turning, no-skip collection of some of the very best work LARB has published over the past 15 years.

Now, we can’t wait to celebrate with the literary community which has supported us through it all. The launch party will be an evening of readings and drinks, bringing readers, contributors, and community members all under one roof.

Join us on April 11 at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Hollywood for the special anniversary celebration. In addition to the evening's programming, the gallery's current shows will be on view with works by Tacita Dean on display.

The event is free and open to the public. RSVP here!

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Melissa Chadburn’s debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, was published with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in April 2022 and was long-listed for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. She’s done extensive reporting on the child welfare system and appears in the Netflix docuseries The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez. She earned her PhD from USC’s creative writing program. Melissa is a worker lover and through her own work and literary citizenship strives to upend economic violence. Her mother taught her how to sharpen a pencil with a knife and she’s basically been doing that ever since.

Kate Durbin is a writer and artist from Los Angeles whose work resists and blurs categories and genres. She often reworks nonfictional source material and pop cultural debris. Kate is the author of five books: Hoarders, E! Entertainment, The Ravenous Audience, ABRA, and Noughties, a radical reissue of E! Entertainment forthcoming from Wave Books with all new drawings, revisions, and reimaginings of the original poems and stories.

Michelle Tea is the author of over a dozen books of memoir, fiction, poetry and children's lit — including her latest, Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)Fertility. Her memoir Valencia won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction, even though it was obviously all true. In addition to her writing, Michelle has instigated many cultural interventions aimed at increasing access and visibility for queer writers and artists. She is the founder of RADAR Productions, and worked as executive director for over a decade, running a monthly reading series at the San Francisco Public Library; organizing a free, queer literary retreat in the Yucatán; operating an annual poetry chapbook contest; and many other events.

Nina Raj is the founder of Altadena Seed Library, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rewilding urban spaces, community-stewarded conservation seed banking, native plant education, and seed-based mutual aid. Through a partnership with L.A. County, Nina is working to bring to life her concept for a decentralized seed bank at nature centers across the region. Join her in the garden space at the gallery, designed by Terremoto, among the native plants of Los Angeles, to learn more about how we can rebuild together after the fires.