Angel City Press Celebrates 15 Years
By Bridget Kinsella -- Publishers Weekly, 12/4/2007 6:37:00 AM
All this week at the Central Library Store—a non-profit bookstore within the main branch of the Los Angeles Central Library—Angel City Press will be celebrating its 15 years of publishing with lunch-time readings at the library store to feature a total of 15 of its authors.
Christine Romero, director of retail services at the Central Library Store, said the store features a special section on L.A. writers and books, and ACP has been a great resource to stock those shelves.
ACP is known for its illustrated books that highlight the city, such as Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles by Eric Lynxwiler, published in 2005, which shows the variety of architecture along one of the major roads through the sprawled-out city. “There are a lot of art deco buildings on Wilshire—some that have been torn down—and people don’t really think of architecture when they think of L.A.,” said Romero.
ACP publisher Paddy Calistro said that she and her husband started the press with two other L.A.-based journalists, but the partners have since moved on. With four employees now, ACP publishes about 10 titles per year and its mission has remained the same: to publish books about Southern California cultural or social history and/or by Southern California writers. But ACP is not afraid to expand beyond SoCal to the rest of the state. Its bestselling title, My California, is an anthology of California writers from all over the state (including Michael Chabon, T. Jefferson Parker, Aimee Liu) who volunteered essays to raise money for the California Arts Council. Published in collaboration with Californiaauthors.com, My California sold 20,000 copies, raising over $100,000 for the arts council.
In 2005, ACP began publishing more scholarly biography/autobiography with the publication of the paperback reprint of Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante by Stephen Cooper. Fante was a novelist in the 1930s who made his living as a screenwriter, among other things, and whom Charles Bukowski credited with teaching him how to write. Since then the press has done more publishing in the category, including the recently published autobiography of political cartoonist Paul Conrad titled I, Con.
Conrad is one of the ACP authors featured in this week’s celebration at the Central Library Store. Other authors on hand this week include: Charles Phoenix, Americana the Beautiful: Southern California in the ‘50s; Greg LaVoi, Barbie Loves L.A.: America’s Favorite Doll Sees the Sites; and Betty Goodwin, Hollywood du Jour: Lost Recipes of Legendary Hollywood Haunts.
Of course after Saturday’s big game—that determined the USC would go to the Rose Bowl over rival UCLA—no doubt Lonnie White author of ACP’s UCLA vs. USC: 75 Years of the Greatest Rivalry in Sports will be a popular author at the Central Library event on Thursday. “We do focus on social topics,” explained Calistro, but she said ACP wants to balance the historical with the fun—often mixing the two together.
