Jennifer Lee and LeUyen Pham discuss and sign As I Dream of You tonight, joined by Eisner-winning collaborator Gene Luen Yang

LeUyen Pham arrived in Pasadena decades ago as a young art student from Southern California, a scholarship winner at Art Center College of Design with 140 published books still ahead of her. Tonight she returns to the city where her career began — this time alongside the woman who wrote Frozen.

Pham and Jennifer Lee, the Academy Award-winning writer and director of Disney’s Frozen and Frozen 2, will discuss and sign their new young adult graphic novel, As I Dream of You, at Vroman’s Bookstore at 7 p.m. The conversation will be moderated by Gene Luen Yang, the MacArthur Fellow and National Book Award finalist who previously collaborated with Pham on the three-time Eisner Award-winning Lunar New Year Love Story.

The book, published May 5 by First Second Books, marks Lee’s first graphic novel. It tells the story of two teenagers, Franny and Sam, whose love is tested when a shocking accident blurs the boundary between life and death. Through lucid dreaming, the couple tries to hold on to each other — but the dream world carries its own costs.

Lee, who served as chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios from 2018 to 2024, has called the story her most personal work. “It is the most personal story I’ve written, inspired by my own experience as a young woman when the power of love and the shock of loss intertwined,” she said in a statement to People magazine. “I wanted the journey of As I Dream of You to be as visceral and real as every moment felt.”

Pham, who was born in Vietnam and fled with her family during the final days of the Vietnam War, grew up in Southern California before attending UCLA and then Art Center in Pasadena. She has illustrated more than 140 books for children and teens, including the Caldecott Honor book Bear Came Along. She described the project in a statement as defying easy categorization. “When the script for As I Dream of You showed up on my desk, I hadn’t known what to expect,” she said. “A romance? A supernatural thriller? A coming-of-age story? A heartbreaker? All of this — all of this and more.”

The book has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and The Horn Book Magazine. Kirkus called it a striking and affecting exploration of love, loss, and the willingness to let go, according to the review.

Yang, who was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, brings his own deep connection to the graphic novel form and to Pham’s work. His American Born Chinese was the first graphic novel to win the American Library Association’s Printz Award. He and Pham won three Eisner Awards in 2025 for Lunar New Year Love Story, including Best Graphic Album—New and Best Publication for Teens. All three creators publish with First Second Books, an imprint of Macmillan.

The event is open to the public with RSVP at vromansbookstore.com. The hardcover edition of As I Dream of You is $27.99, and the paperback is $19.99. A purchase of the book from Vroman’s supports the store’s events programming, according to the event listing.

Vroman’s Bookstore, founded in 1894, is the oldest and largest independent bookstore in Southern California and hosts more than 400 free community events a year, according to the store. The bookstore is located at 695 E. Colorado Blvd. For information, call (626) 449-5320.

Pham’s last visit to a Pasadena stage carried different stakes — a scholarship interview that changed the course of her life. Tonight, the stakes are a story about what love costs and what it means to let go. The art she learned to make in this city is the art that tells it.

Monet Bagneris [photo credit: Lineage Performing Arts Center]

A Pasadena singer whose voice was temporarily silenced after exposure to toxic wildfire ash is returning to the stage this month with a comeback concert organizers describe as a celebration of healing, resilience and renewal.

“From Silence to Song” is scheduled for May 23 and will feature Pasadena vocalist Monet Bagneris in a performance organizers describe as both a concert and a personal comeback story.

For nearly two months early last year, Bagneris lost her ability to speak after inhaling toxic wildfire ash that spread across the region following the fire. The singer said her throat went into shock from the exposure, leaving her unable to communicate except through a dry-erase board.

“I’m so grateful to God that I have my voice again,” Bagneris said in a December interview after releasing her holiday single “Can’t Wait for Santa.”

The event is being promoted alongside sponsorship opportunities for local businesses and supporters, including advertising space in a souvenir program book and event sponsorship packages.

Program book advertisements range from $50 for a business card placement to $500 for the back cover. Concert sponsorships begin at $100 and include recognition on event screens and lanyards, while a $200 premiere sponsorship also includes a signed CD from Bagneris.

“This moment means everything to me … thank you for being part of it,” Bagneris said in promotional materials for the concert.

Bagneris, who has performed at civic and community events throughout Pasadena, has continued recording and performing while also managing the Grammy Award-winning group A Taste of Honey.

The concert comes months after Bagneris recovered from a health ordeal connected to the Eaton Fire in Altadena.

The song marked her return to recording following months of recovery.

“I am at my core, an encourager,” Bagneris said at the time. “My mission is to be a source of hope for people who may feel like it’s a hopeless situation — to remind them that, hey, they’re seen, they’re heard, and they are valuable.”

Organizers said sponsorship information for the concert is available through Brand New Day Entertainment.

To reserve a seat email events@brandnewdayent.com.

The UC Santa Barbara historian who collected the oral history brings his book to Vroman’s Friday night

It took Mario T. García 30 years and 50 hours of recorded conversation to get the full story of Rupert García, one of the most consequential Chicano artists in American history. No one had told it before.

The result, “Rupert García: The Making of an American Artist, a Testimonio,” published in January by Rutgers University Press, is the first comprehensive text on the life and art of the 84-year-old painter, printmaker, and activist whose work hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art. García discusses the book and signs copies at 7 p.m. Friday at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd.

The book uses a form called the testimonio — a Latin American literary genre in which a scholar interviews an activist and structures the narrative. “A testimonio is a Latin American genre involving an academic or a journalist and a political activist,” García said in an interview with UC Santa Barbara’s The Current. “The technique is oral history.” In a testimonio, the subject is rarely in control of the narrative — a distinction from autobiography, in which the writer controls the narrative.

García, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chicano/a studies and history at UC Santa Barbara, said he did not approach the project as an art critic. “I approached this testimonio not as an art historian but as a historian of Chicano history,” he said. “I wanted to know not only Rupert, the artist, but Rupert, the person.”

Rupert García was born in French Camp, California, and raised in Stockton, the son of a working-class Mexican American family in California’s Central Valley. He served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War before enrolling at San Francisco State College, where he joined the 1968 student strike led by the Third World Liberation Front. That experience pushed him from easel painting to political poster-making, and he spent the late 1960s and early 1970s producing silkscreen images that addressed racism, poverty, capitalism, and the war.

He went on to earn three degrees — a bachelor’s in painting and drawing and a master’s in printmaking from San Francisco State, and a second master’s in art history from UC Berkeley. In 1993, the San Francisco Art Institute awarded him an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts. He taught for 20 years at San Jose State University, retiring as professor emeritus of art in 2011. In 1970, he co-founded the Galería de la Raza in San Francisco’s Mission District, and in 1992, the College Art Association honored him with its Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The book traces that full arc, from French Camp to the nation’s most prominent museum collections, accompanied by 57 color and 28 black-and-white images of his work — from revolutionary silkscreen posters to monumental pastels to portraits of figures like Frida Kahlo, Che Guevara, and Dolores Huerta.

Mario T. García, who has published more than 20 books on Chicano history and is a Guggenheim Fellow, began the interviews in the mid-1990s. “Rupert García is one of the most significant American artists of the last 50 years,” he said, according to a UC Santa Barbara press release.

The signing takes place at Vroman’s Bookstore, Southern California’s oldest and largest independent bookstore, at 695 E. Colorado Blvd. The event begins at 7 p.m. Friday. For information, call (626) 449-5320 or visit vromansbookstore.com.

Fifty hours of tape. Thirty years of patience. And now, 315 pages that give a working-class kid from the Central Valley his place in the American story.

Julia Child [File photo]

The 102-year-old French language and cultural nonprofit marks 65 years since “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” with a Thursday evening fundraiser at Sauté Culinary Academy.

Julia Child was born in Pasadena. Sixty-five years ago this fall, she published “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and changed the way Americans approached their own kitchens. On Thursday, May 7 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Alliance Française de Pasadena will honor her with a “Tribute to Julia Child” cooking class and fundraiser at the Sauté
Culinary Academy.

The hands-on evening blends a working cooking lesson with a celebration of Child’s legacy: the Pasadena native who taught her countrymen and -women how to roast a chicken without fear, then earned the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian honor, for her work in introducing French cuisine and culture to America. The event doubles
as a fundraiser for the Alliance Française, the local nonprofit that has been promoting French language and Francophone cultures in Pasadena since 1924, making it one of the oldest cultural institutions in the region.

The host venue, Sauté Culinary Academy, is a recreational cooking school at 150 E. Colorado Blvd. in Monrovia. Most Sauté classes run roughly three hours and are entirely hands-on, with students preparing an appetizer, main and dessert. Tribute attendees can expect the same format, scaled to the Julia Child theme.

The Alliance Française is part of the worldwide Alliance Française network, the largest of its kind for French language and culture. Locally, it offers small-group classes for children, teens and adults, the only DELF-DALF certification testing in Southern California, and a year-round calendar of cultural events. Tribute proceeds support all of those programs.

“Tribute to Julia Child” cooking class and fundraiser will run on Thursday, May 7 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sauté Culinary Academy, 150 E. Colorado Blvd., Monrovia. For more information and to purchase tickets, call (833) 386-3911 or visit afdepasadena.org.

[photo credit: Pasadena Tournament of Roses]

The Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association resumes its summer tradition with weekly Thursday afternoon tours of the historic Italian Renaissance mansion.

For most of the year, Tournament House on South Orange Grove Boulevard hums with closed-door work — Grand Marshal announcements, Rose Queen briefings, Rose Bowl Game logistics. On Thursday, May 7 at 2 p.m., the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association opens those doors to the public for the first of a summer’s worth of free guided tours of the historic Wrigley Mansion.

The 90-minute tours, led by volunteer members of the Tournament’s Heritage Committee, run every Thursday at 2 p.m. through Aug. 27 and take visitors through the residence that has served since 1958 as headquarters for the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game. The Italian Renaissance-style mansion was once the winter home of chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. and his wife Ada, whose family donated the property to the city of Pasadena with the request that it become the Tournament’s permanent home.

Designed by architect George Lawrence Stimson and completed in 1914, the home is filled with details that volunteer guides relish pointing out: a 400-pound Honduran mahogany front door original to the house, hand-painted foiled wallpaper by the Gracie company, Romanian Circassian walnut paneling, and ornate plasterwork ceilings throughout. Surrounding the mansion are the 4.5-acre Wrigley Gardens, home to more than 1,500 varieties of roses, camellias and seasonal blooms, including the disease-resistant pink Tournament of Roses Rose, bred for the parade’s centennial.

Tours are free, but reservations are required and can be made through the Tournament of Roses website. Each tour is limited to about 80 visitors. Guests are asked to arrive 10 minutes early. Picnicking on the grounds is welcomed.

Tournament House public tours will run on Thursday, May 7 at 2 p.m. and every Thursday at 2 p.m. through Aug. 27. Wrigley Mansion (Tournament House), 391 S. Orange Grove Blvd., Pasadena. For more information and reservations, call (626) 449-4100 or visit tournamentofroses.com/house-tours. Admission is free. Reservations required.

[photo credit: Fraternal Order of Eagles 719 Altadena]

Five nights of sold-out stand-up shows and an open-air vendor market aim to support Eaton Fire recovery, with half of all tickets going directly to fire victims

For five nights this week, the parking lot of the Fraternal Order of Eagles 719 will become an open-air marketplace of Black-owned businesses, food vendors, and live music — free to anyone who walks in.

The marketplace is the public face of “Comedy for the Community: Supporting Altadena Eaton Fire Relief,” a series of nightly comedy shows running Monday, May 4, through Friday, May 8, at the Eagles hall at 455 E. Woodbury Road as part of the 2026 Netflix Is A Joke Fest, the week-long comedy festival taking over venues across Los Angeles from May 4 through May 10. The indoor shows, hosted by comedian and actor Deon Cole and featuring surprise lineups, are sold out, according to the festival’s website.

But residents don’t need a ticket to take part. A free outdoor marketplace will operate in the Eagles parking lot each evening from 6:00 to 10:30 p.m. at the corner of Woodbury and Santa Rosa Avenue. The marketplace, according to event organizers at the Eagles hall, will feature local vendors, food, drinks, and live music.

The vendor marketplace is curated by Black On The Block, a traveling marketplace for Black-owned businesses that was founded in Los Angeles in June 2021 by sisters Lanie and Char Edwards. What began as a Juneteenth pop-up event with 80 vendors and more than 1,500 attendees has grown into a traveling marketplace operating in multiple cities, including Dallas, Houston, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, according to the organization. In 2025, Black On The Block announced a nationwide expansion through a partnership with Live Nation Urban.

Vendors listed by event organizers include Rhythms of the Village, Pure Envy Candle Co., Third In Line Jewelry, Just 2 Nice, Octavia’s Bookshelf, April Blooms Boutique, BLK Crust, and Fair Oaks Burger, among others. Octavia’s Bookshelf is a Black-owned, woman-owned independent bookstore on North Hill Avenue in Pasadena, founded by Nikki High and named in honor of Pasadena native and science fiction author Octavia E. Butler. The bookstore served as a supply distribution hub for Pasadena and Altadena residents in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire.

The Altadena comedy series was conceived as a direct response to the January 2025 Eaton Fire, according to a May 1 press release published on Netflix’s corporate news site, About Netflix. The fire destroyed more than 9,000 buildings in Altadena and surrounding areas, killed at least 19 people, and burned 14,021 acres over 24 days before it was fully contained on January 31, 2025, according to Cal Fire. It was the second most destructive wildfire in California history.

Netflix stated in its press release that all five nights will take place at Altadena’s outpost of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which the company described as an international fraternal nonprofit dedicated to fellowship, charity, and community service. In addition to hosting the free comedy series, Netflix stated that the company paid to have the lodge painted and purchased new chairs and patio furniture for the venue.

The press release also stated that half of all tickets for the indoor comedy events go directly to fire victims through a partnership with the Greenline Housing Foundation. According to Netflix, the Greenline Housing Foundation connected the festival with local community organizations including the NAACP, the Eaton Fire Collaborative, Altadena Community Preservation Fund, Altadena for Accountability, and Friends In Deed.

The Greenline Housing Foundation is a Pasadena-based nonprofit, founded in 2020 by Jasmin Shupper, that works to close racial wealth gaps in housing. Since the Eaton Fire, the organization has provided rental assistance to displaced families and has purchased fire-affected properties in Altadena to prevent them from being acquired by outside developers — an initiative known as land banking. The Pasadena Community Foundation directed $500,000 from its Eaton Fire Relief & Recovery Fund to Greenline for its first post-fire land purchase, and the organization has since invested over $1.5 million in property acquisitions in the community, according to its website.

Cole, who is hosting all five Altadena shows, is a comedian, actor, writer, and producer known for his roles on ABC’s “Black-ish” and Freeform’s “Grown-ish,” for which he won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series three consecutive years — in 2020, 2021, and 2022 — at the NAACP Image Awards. He has also served as a writer for Conan O’Brien’s late-night programs. He most recently hosted the 57th NAACP Image Awards at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in February 2026. His Netflix credits include the stand-up specials “Cole Hearted” and “Charleen’s Boy,” and he appeared in the Netflix films “The Harder They Fall” and “You People.”

The 2026 Netflix Is A Joke Fest is the third edition of the biennial comedy festival, produced by Netflix in partnership with Live Nation. According to the festival’s website, this year’s edition encompasses more than 475 shows featuring more than 500 artists across more than 45 venues throughout Los Angeles, including the Hollywood Bowl, the Greek Theatre, the Intuit Dome, and the Comedy Store.

In a statement included in the festival’s January 2026 lineup announcement, Tracey Pakosta, Netflix Vice President of Comedy Series, said the festival is defined by its sense of community, calling it a rare moment where the comedy industry and fans come together. Robbie Praw, Netflix Vice President of Stand-up and Comedy Formats, said in the same announcement that in four years the festival has grown into what he described as the biggest celebration of comedy, bringing together established and rising comedians for events across Los Angeles.

Beyond Altadena, Netflix’s press release stated the company is also sponsoring 78 free pop-up comedy shows at venues across the city and county of Los Angeles, including diners, dive bars, breweries, bookstores, and private backyards, all hosted and curated by local comedians.

The free outdoor marketplace at the Eagles hall is open to the public nightly through Friday. The indoor comedy shows are sold out. More information is available at netflixisajokefest.com.

Sixteen months after the Eaton Fire leveled their neighborhood, Altadena residents gathering at the Eagles lodge this week will find comedy inside and community outside — a parking lot full of vendors, music, and neighbors.

A free literary festival serving Pasadena and Altadena returns for its main public day with 100-plus authors

LitFest in the Dena, the extraordinary free literary festival serving Pasadena and Altadena, holds its full Saturday program today from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, with panels, workshops and readings built around the 2026 theme “Books That Changed the Public Narrative.”

The two-day festival, now in its 14th year, runs at 585 E. Colorado Blvd. The Saturday session carries the bulk of the schedule, which the festival lists as more than 35 panels, workshops and readings across the weekend, featuring more than 100 authors. Admission is free and no registration is required, according to organizers.

The festival is presented by Light Bringer Project, a Pasadena-based nonprofit founded in 1990, and the literary journal Locavore Lit LA. Festival materials list the 2026 theme as a focus on books that have shifted public conversations — citing works such as “Silent Spring,” “The Jungle,” “The New Jim Crow,” “On the Road,” “The Grapes of Wrath” and “The Second Sex” as examples of literature that organizers say became part of the national conversation.

Featured authors named in the festival’s promotional material include Daniel Olivas, Janet Fitch, Gary Phillips, Ryka Aoki and Francesca Lia Block. Olivas, who lives in Pasadena, is a senior attorney with the California Department of Justice and the author of 13 books, including the 2024 novel “Chicano Frankenstein,” according to his festival biography.

A 2:30 p.m. Saturday panel titled “Speaking Truth to Power: Humanizing Immigrant Communities in the Time of ICE” will feature Olivas alongside Lisa Alvarez, LAist arts reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez and speculative fiction writer Pedro Iniguez, with Thomas E. Backer, PhD, moderating, according to the festival’s press release as cited by Altadena Now.

Latine literary voices figure prominently elsewhere in Saturday’s schedule. Red Hen Press and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, are presenting a reading featuring Francisco Aragón, the founding director of Letras Latinas, the press release said. A separate panel, “Brilliant Bilinguals,” gathers Spanish-language diaspora poets and includes a round of lotería.

The schedule also lists a children’s-literature panel, “Between Childhood and the World,” with Dan McCauley, Ryane Granados, Elisa Parhad and Margaret Finnegan; and a young-adult panel, “Raising Teen Conscience,” with Christina Hoag, Tisha Reichle-Aguilera, Reverie Fey and Francesca Lia Block. A science-fiction-for-social-change session is led by Ciena Valenzuela-Peterson and Valentina Gomez of the Omega Sci-Fi Project, the festival said.

Saturday programming includes interactive stations: a zine-making table led by cartoonist Julie Fiveash, on-the-spot typewriter poems by Jeanelle Fu, and a community poetics table hosted by the San Gabriel Valley Phoenix Poets, according to the festival’s event-information page. A pop-up bookstore is operated on site by Flintridge Bookstore. El Jarocho Taco Stand will serve from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and light refreshments and coffee from Jameson Brown will be available from noon to 5 p.m.

LitFest was founded in 2012 and was previously held at Mountain View Mausoleum in Altadena. The festival relocated to Pasadena Presbyterian Church in 2025 after the January Eaton Fire led to the mausoleum site being used for Army Corps of Engineers recovery operations, according to the press release.

Sessions are spread across Fellowship Hall, South Hall and The Chapel on the ground floor and The Library and The Study on the second floor, with ushers and signage directing attendees. Ramp access is available at the Colorado Blvd. entrance, and an on-site elevator serves all event rooms.

The festival recommends that Saturday attendees not park on surrounding streets, which fall within one-hour daytime restrictions. The City-owned lot on S. Madison Ave. provides about 100 spaces, with discounted parking available to attendees who show their festival program. Public parking is also available at the Union/El Molino plaza near Playhouse Village Park. Metro bus lines 180, 181, 256 and 686 stop in front of the church.

The full Saturday schedule is posted at litfestinthedena.org/schedule2026. General programming inquiries may be directed to Natalie Lydick at (626) 228-4220 or litfestinthedena@gmail.com.

The Friday-night opening session ran from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on May 1. Saturday’s program is the festival’s main public day, organizers said, and runs through 5:30 p.m.

LitFest in the Dena, Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 585 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Saturday, May 2, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. For more call (626) 228-4220 or visit litfestinthedena.org/schedule2026. Tickets: Free; no registration required.

The free Pasadena festival, born in Altadena and displaced by fire, returns for its 14th year

An immigration enforcement discussion panel will open LitFest in the Dena tonight at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, launching two days of readings, panels, and workshops built around the question of how books reshape the way a society thinks.

The free literary festival, now in its 14th year, brings approximately 200 authors to 585 E. Colorado Blvd. for programming themed “Books That Changed the Public Narrative,” according to a press release from the organizers. Founded in Altadena in 2012 and historically held at the Mountain View Mausoleum, the festival relocated to the Pasadena church after the January 2025 Eaton Fire led to the mausoleum site being used for Army Corps of Engineers recovery operations.

The opening panel, “Speaking Truth to Power: Humanizing Immigrant Communities in the Time of ICE,” features Daniel Olivas, a California Department of Justice attorney and speculative fiction author who lives in Pasadena; Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, an arts and general assignment reporter at LAist; fiction writer and essayist Lisa Alvarez; and speculative fiction writer Pedro Iniguez. Thomas E. Backer will moderate.

Latine literary voices run through the schedule. Red Hen Press and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, are presenting a reading that includes Francisco Aragón, the founding director of Letras Latinas. A separate panel, “Brilliant Bilinguals,” will feature Spanish-language diaspora poets, according to the press release. Gloria Arjona will blend music and cultural history in a session titled “La Lotería Against Time.”

Local ties are woven into the program. Pasadena Unified School District students will present in two sessions — “Pieces of Us” with the PUSD ThinkTank and “Diasporan Witness and Wonder: 8th Graders Respond.” Altadena Poets Laureate past and present, including Sehba Sarwar and Thelma Reyna, will read in a session titled “Celebrating Altadena.” Poet Carla Sameth, the 2022-2024 co-poet laureate for Altadena, is also on the program. Glendale Poet Laureate Raffi Wartanian will host a community poetry table tied to Eaton Fire recovery.

“There is this wonderful reflexive relationship between people and literature — we shape the character of the written word and then literature shapes us in kind,” Natalie Lydick, project developer at Light Bringer Project, said in a 2025 interview with Pasadena Now.

Light Bringer Project, a Pasadena-based nonprofit arts organization founded in 1990, produces the festival with the literary journal Locavore Lit LA. The festival was co-founded by novelist Jervey Tervalon and the late food critic Jonathan Gold.

Additional panels address crime fiction, fantasy writing, queer spirituality in speculative fiction, and young adult literature. Marcus Renner joins a session on community organizing called “Organizing for Good,” and Valentina Gomez of Light Bringer Project’s Omega Sci-Fi Project leads a workshop on science fiction for social change. A pop-up bookstore from Flintridge Bookstore, a taco stand from El Jarocho, and typewriter poetry from Jeanelle Fu round out the offerings.

The festival runs Friday from 6 to 9:30 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission is free and no registration is required. The church is accessible by Metro bus lines 180, 181, 256, and 686. The full schedule is at litfestinthedena.org.

The Los Angeles that Jordan Harper writes about is not the one on the postcards. It is a city of nightcrawlers and fixers, of billionaires without boundaries and crimes that never make the papers. On Thursday night, Harper brings that city to Pasadena.

Harper, the Edgar Award-winning crime novelist and television producer, will discuss and sign his new novel, “A Violent Masterpiece,” at Vroman’s Bookstore at 7 p.m. He will be joined in conversation by S.A. Cosby, the New York Times bestselling author of “King of Ashes” and “Razorblade Tears.” The ticketed event includes a copy of the book, published April 28 by Mulholland Books.

“A Violent Masterpiece” follows three characters — a gonzo live-streaming nightcrawler, a street lawyer, and a young woman searching for a missing friend — as their paths converge around a serial killer and a web of crimes reaching into the highest levels of Los Angeles power. The New York Times called the 384-page novel “the noir novel for our times,” according to the publisher’s listing. Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Booklist, and Bookpage each gave the book starred reviews.

Harper, who was born in Missouri and now lives in Los Angeles, won the 2018 Edgar Award for Best First Novel for “She Rides Shotgun,” which has since been adapted into a major motion picture. He has also written and produced for television series including “The Mentalist,” “Gotham,” and “Hightown,” and is a co-showrunner on the Amazon series “Criminal.”

His conversant brings comparable credentials. Cosby, a New York Times bestselling author from southeastern Virginia, has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anthony Award, the ITW Thriller Award, and the Macavity Award, among others. His most recent novel, “King of Ashes,” was an instant New York Times bestseller. In a published blurb for “A Violent Masterpiece,” Cosby called Harper “not only the modern master of the unique neon noir of LA” but “one of the finest authors working today,” according to the publisher’s listing on Hachette Book Group’s website.

The event takes place at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Southern California’s oldest and largest independent bookstore. Founded in 1894, Vroman’s has hosted author events since 1939 and welcomes more than 400 community events a year.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite and include a copy of the book. A public book signing follows the conversation. For questions, contact Vroman’s at 626-449-5320 or email promo@vromansbookstore.com.

Fellow crime novelist Rob Hart perhaps put it most simply in his own published blurb for the novel: Harper, he wrote, “is a generational talent,” according to the publisher’s listing.

Aylee Rhodes, He Love Me. [photo credit: ArtCenter College of Design]

Free Pasadena exhibition draws on pop culture and fading technology to explore how yesterday shapes today

The 1970s motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel has found an unlikely second act at ArtCenter College of Design, reimagined in new work by graduating Master of Fine Arts student and artist Milan Aguirre as part of a group exhibition that treats the recent cultural past as raw material for the present.

“Days of Future Past,” the Pasadena college’s annual Graduate Art MFA thesis exhibition, opens May 1 at the South Campus on Raymond Avenue and runs through May 22. The free show features work by seven graduating artists whose pieces range from Aguirre’s reinterpretation of Knievel to Jessie Edelstein’s installations built from near-obsolete digital content, according to an ArtCenter press release.

The exhibition takes its name from the 2014 X-Men film in which characters rewrite the future by acting on the past. Curator Hyesoo Christina Valentine, ArtCenter’s associate director and curator of exhibitions, organized the show around what the press release describes as a loosely shared throughline: the artists examine the recent past not with nostalgia but with curiosity, aiming to redefine the present.

The press release frames their approach through philosopher Jacques Derrida’s concept of “hauntology,” the idea that the past persists in the present as a sense of loss for futures that never arrived. But the exhibition presents a twist on that framework, according to ArtCenter: rather than mourning what might have been, the seven artists mine their cultural inheritance to make something new.

Alongside Aguirre and Edelstein, the exhibition features work by Grace Eassa, Michael Montemayor, Velocity Parker, Aylee Rhodes, and Ryan Zhao. All seven are candidates for the Master of Fine Arts in Art from ArtCenter, which was founded in 1930 and has operated its South Campus in Pasadena since 2004.

The opening reception on May 1 runs from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and is open to the public with no RSVP required. The exhibition is part of ArtCenter’s Spring 2026 graduation events, which include the Spring Grad Show the following day, May 2, from noon to 5:00 p.m. at the Pasadena Convention Center, 300 East Green Street.

The exhibition will also be open during Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair, May 7 through 10, which takes place at the same South Campus location. The annual fair, organized by the New York-based nonprofit Printed Matter, brings together artists’ book publishers from around the world.

“Days of Future Past” is on view Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., at the Graduate Art Main Galleries, 950 South Raymond Avenue. Admission is free. Visitors should check in at the security desk upon arrival. For more information, contact ArtCenter Exhibitions at Exhibitions@artcenter.edu.

Evel Knievel as floorboard for the future. Edelstein’s dying formats as the ghosts in the machine. In “Days of Future Past,” the past is not a monument — it is a workshop.