Another City: Writing from Los Angeles

by David L. Ulin (Editor)

Stories, chronicles, and poems by both well-established and up-and-coming young writers about how it was to come to LA or what it was like to grow up there, about the ocean and the desert, the entertainment industry and earthquakes, riots and racism, fires and freaks.

Contributors include: Jervey Tervalon, Aimee Bender, Benjamin Weissman, Sesshu Foster, Richard Rayner, Jeffrey McDaniel, Amy Uyematsu, Russell Leong, Aleida Rodríguez, Luis Alfaro, Bia Lowe, Amy Gerstler, and others.

David Ulin has lived in Los Angeles since 1991. From 1993-6 he was the book editor of the LA Weekly. He is currently on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, and writes regularly for the LA Weekly, Chicago Tribune, Newsday, and the Los Angeles Times.

Genres: Short Stories, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

About the author

David L. Ulin is book critic, and former book editor, of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, Labyrinth, and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, selected as a best book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle.

He is also the editor of three anthologies: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles, Cape Cod Noir, and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Black Clock, Columbia Journalism Review, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Ulin teaches at USC, and in the low residency MFA in creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside’s Palm Desert Graduate Center. In 2010, he was awarded a Southern California Independent Booksellers Association/Glenn Goldman Book Award for his work on Los Angeles: Portrait of a City.

Reviews

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/4 stars

[Hillary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like all essay collections, some hits and some misses. i picked it up for some inspiration for the ESL group (that my senior librarian would like to rename "Culture Club" of all things) i'm helping to lead at the library. but also found some essays that spoke to my need to understand myself as an Angeleno or in some current context. some of the essays that stood out include: Judith Lewis's "Interesting Times", Luis Alfaro's "Minnie Ripertson SAved My Life", Erik Himmelsbach's "Fried Chicken", Richard Rayner's account of the 1992 L.A. Riots "Los Angeles" and one poem, Gerald Locklin's awesome "Fascist Island" about that consumer mecca in Orange County, Fashion Island.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Almost) everything I know about Los Angeles, I learned from David Ulin's anthology, Another City: Writing from Los Angeles. Highly recommend this collection of essays, short stories and poems by familiar and not-so-familar writers.

David Ulin, book critic, and former book editor of the Los Angeles Times, and a New York transplant like myself, must have come to understand as well as come to terms with this side of the country by putting this extraordinary compilation of works together. The pieces cover every aspect of Los Angeles life from the 1800s to the present from ocean to desert, show-biz, race riots, souped up cars, The Beach Boys, earthquakes, and everyplace in between.
Highly recommend!

[Austin Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

like most compilations, some of this is very good, and the rest could have been written by anyone in their first college composition course.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great anthology by a bunch of great LA writers, and I don't just say that because I'm one of them!