For the second time in recent months, the civilian commission that oversees the LAPD has overruled Chief Jim McDonnell in a police shooting, concluding that officers were in the wrong when they shot at Jillian Lauren, an author and the estranged wife of Weezer bass player Scott Shriner.
McDonnell wrote in a report made public Thursday that two officers were justified in using deadly force against Lauren, 52, who pointed a gun and fired at officers during a standoff in the backyard of her Eagle Rock home last April.
But the Police Commission took the rare step of going against McDonnell’s recommendation, finding fault with the shooting and concluding that the officers made serious tactical mistakes.
Although the five-member panel is the final authority on whether a police shooting is in or out of policy, the chief has final say on officer discipline. Such decisions are rarely made public because of state police privacy laws.
The incident began at about 5:20 p.m. on April 8, 2025, when police responded to a request for help from the California Highway Patrol in tracking down three suspects wanted in a hit-and-run crash. Officers Joshua Wolak and Dorian Zhou joined in the search, along with several others from the nearby Northeast patrol station.
Body-worn camera footage released by the department showed Wolak, Zhou and a CHP officer standing on a retaining wall next to a fence that separated a neighbor’s home from Lauren’s property. The LAPD video shows Lauren, wearing a purple Weezer T-shirt and black tights, walk around the yard with a black handgun, looking around as though she were on high alert.
Police said that officers yelled at Lauren to drop her gun for several minutes, before she shot a round in their direction. Wolak then fired seven rounds, while Zhou shot five from a distance of roughly 50 feet.
Lauren was not connected to the hit-and-run incident, authorities said. Audio from a 911 call by one of Lauren’s neighbors indicated that Lauren believed she was being fired at by armed suspects, who had been spotted running through neighboring properties.
After the shooting, Lauren retreated into her home, where she stayed for about an hour until an officer called her personal assistant, who was also inside. She was later taken to an area hospital with a gunshot wound to her left arm, police said.
During his interview with internal investigators, Zhou said he saw Lauren raise the handgun at a 45-degree angle, “rack” the slide to chamber a round and fire at officers. In response, he said, he fired five rounds, aiming at her center mass.
He responded that he stopped firing “because I lost sight of her.”
The commission voted unanimously to rule the officers’ decision to shoot out of policy. Officials typically do not publicly discuss the rationale for reaching certain decisions.
Both the commission and the chief were critical of the command decisions of Sgt. Albert Hoang at the scene, noting his failure to ensure that the officers involved were interviewed and the fact that he didn’t notify his higher-ups about the shooting until three hours after it occurred.
The civilian panel also diverged from McDonnell in assessing the tactical mistakes made by Hoang and the two officers. In his report, McDonnell found that the differing tactics used by CHP and LAPD only contributed to the confusion in what was already a fraught situation.
McDonnell wrote that he wants to develop protocols to ensure that if a similar incident were to arise “the other agency should be directed to disengage from the tactical portion of the incident or, as practicable, placed in a position and role that minimizes the co- mingling of tactics.”
In a 4-1 vote, the commission also decided that the officers’ decision to draw their weapons did not comply with LAPD policies — another rare finding.
Lauren was initially arrested on suspicion of attempted murder of a peace officer, a charge that carries a lengthy prison sentence, then later charged with assault and negligent discharge of a firearm. In December, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge granted her diversion due to mental health issues, sparing her potential jail time.
The bestselling author of “Everything You Ever Wanted,” she filed for divorce from her husband in December in Los Angeles County Superior Court. In her petition, she cited “irreconcilable differences” but did not list an official date of separation. The two married in November 2005 and share two teenage sons.
Before the confrontation with police, Lauren had been recovering from cancer treatment and a hysterectomy in March.
Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.
Tom Junod has devoted his long and distinguished career to writing about other people. He won two National Magazine Awards as a star feature writer for Esquire, GQ and ESPN: The Magazine, covering everything from athletes and movie stars to the victims of 9/11 with his elegant prose style. However, it took Junod years before he could tackle the toughest subject of all: His father, Lou, a decorated World War II veteran who fashioned himself as a kind of suburban Sinatra.
He was a hard-drinking philanderer who carried with him a complicated legacy that Junod untangles in his memoir “In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man.” I spoke with Junod about fathers and sons, and the difficulty of excavating his family’s fraught history.
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✍️ Author Chat
You pondered this book for years. Was there a moment when you finally said, “Right, time to write this now”?
There was definitely a moment, when my brother Michael had lunch with a woman named Muntu Law, who was one of my father’s lovers. It was the late summer of 2015. She told him, “Of course, you know your Dad and I had an affair for 11 years.” And he didn’t know that. He called me immediately after and asked me if I knew about the affair and I said yes. He asked me why I hadn’t told him, and I responded that I both knew and didn’t know. I knew it the moment Muntu stood up at my father’s funeral.
You intuited it?
Yes. There was a split there that I needed to reconcile and explore. There was too much unresolved stuff.
Your father’s story is shot through with a lot of tragedy. What is the writing process like for you? Was it an unburdening, a catharsis or something else?
When you unburden yourself, what you wind up doing is taking up much heavier burdens, which is what the book was. But it’s very interesting, because now I’m talking about my father with people in my family, and some of these discussions are difficult, but at least I’m talking about him with them. It was mostly pain, writing the book. Exposing your secrets isn’t particularly a relief, but it allows you to carry on your life without the necessity of being silent.
Tom Junod untangles his father’s complicated legacy in his memoir “In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man.”
(Lee Crum)
Your Dad is emblematic of this kind of postwar American male that served in the war and came home flush with triumph and a kind of male privilege. Would you agree?
To the absolute max. My dad was an extreme character, and I think what the war did for a lot of men was it allowed them to reinvent themselves and create themselves. I look at my dad as a completely self-created phenomenon.
He clearly carried himself like a star.
There’s a line in the book where I say that Dad was the only celebrity I’ve ever known.
What’s remarkable is that you broke the cycle. You write about your marriage to your wife, Janet, in the book, whom you met in college. You have been together for over 40 years.
I think a lot of people are surprised by that when they read the book. People just thought I had it, you know — that I was successful and I was able to handle difficult situations. Back in the summer, I gave a copy to my friend, Lisa Hanselman, who I worked with at Esquire and GQ for a long time. And she called me up one morning and just said, “I didn’t know.” And that meant a lot to me. In my mind, it’s one of those things that justifies the effort it took to write the book.
(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
📰 The Week(s) in Books
In “AlphaPussy,” Gina Gershon’s real-life stories deal with “themes of manipulation, survival, and moving around and being able to stand on your own two feet.”
(Evelyn Freja / For The Times)
Mark Athitakis is agog over Lauren Groff’s new story collection “Brawler,” a book that “blends the depth of the long view and the drama of the pivotal moment.”
Acclaimed nonfiction writer Daniel Okrent has written “Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy,” a short, sharp biography of Stephen Sondheim for Yale’s “Jewish Lives” series, and Julia M. Klein approves. “[Okrent] seeks to liberate Sondheim’s reputation from the encrustation of myth and to demystify his relationships, while offering a succinct analysis of his achievements,” she writes.
Actor Gina Gershon has written a freewheeling memoir called “AlphaPussy,” which looks back on her San Fernando Valley childhood as a proving ground for dealing with male toxicity as a woman in Hollywood. “I’m not that tough,” Gershon tells Cat Woods. “But I’d learned how to maneuver a lot just from growing up in the Valley, and it was a crazy time to be living there. So I thought about the stories that led me to be able to steer myself through toxicity.”
Finally, Yvonne Villarreal sat with Christina Applegate to discuss her new memoir, “You With the Sad Eyes.” “This book is not cathartic for me — let’s just go there,” Applegate says. “I just needed to dump this s— out somewhere.”
📖 Bookstore Faves
Casita Bookstore in Long Beach prioritizes stories from unrepresented and marginalized voices, says owner Antonette Franceschi-Chavez.
(Antonette Franceschi-Chavez)
An inviting literary haven in Long Beach, Casita Bookstore prioritizes stories from underrepresented and marginalized voices from the BIPOC, immigrant, LGBTQ+ communities and what store owner Antonette Franceschi‑Chavez calls “other historically silenced communities.” I spoke with Franceschi‑Chavez about what readers are excited about now.
What kind of clientele do you get in the store, typically?
Our clientele is wonderfully diverse, but they share a common desire for stories, knowledge and community that center voices often underrepresented in mainstream spaces. We see a strong mix of local community members, educators, families and young readers, along with writers, activists and creatives who are drawn to our focus on books by [underrepresented and marginalized writers].
What’s selling right now?
That’s a difficult question, because we get a wide range of reader personalities. I can say that one of the top-selling trends in adult reading right now is dystopian fiction. Some of the top sellers in our bookstore are “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler, “Chicano Frankenstein” by Daniel Olivas and Agustina Bazterrica’s “Tender Is the Flesh.”
Is there still a place for bookstores as community builders?
Of course! Indie bookstores are vital community hubs. Even in the digital age, bookstores provide physical spaces for connection, conversation and shared experience. You can’t replicate that type of connection online. We’re also living in a time when voices are being silenced or punished for speaking out about social justice, oppressive actions and, overall, what’s right. Bookstores are here to lend their spaces, share those stories and bring attention to needed causes. I’ve seen many bookstores, including ours, function as fundraising and donation hubs, protest art spaces, open-mic venues to allow for communities to unite in shared social causes.
If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, the author of “Dangerous Liaisons,” is often credited with “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Given our aggrieved times, it’s not surprising how many of this year’s new mysteries explore revenge, but these four recent releases are especially notable.
Author Jose Ando
(Yuka Fujisawa)
Jackson Alone By Jose Ando Soho Press; 160 pages; $29
While English translations of Japanese crime novels have increased in the last 20 years, most still focus on a culturally homogeneous, straight, Japanese society. Now comes Jose Ando’s “Jackson Alone,” published in Japan in 2022 andtranslated into English by Kalau Almony, which centers on a mysterious African Japanese massage therapist whose life is upended after his clients and colleagues at a fictional sports conglomerate discover a violent revenge porn featuring someone who looks like him. Despite having no memory of the incident, Jackson joins three other outraged, queer men like him in switching identities to seek out and confront their abusers, who can’t seem to tell them apart.
As the quartet’s scheme plays out, this slim novel becomes less a revenge thriller and more a satiric unmasking of Japanese racism and homophobia which spurs “the four Jacksons” to claim their right to exist authentically without the judgment and stereotyping of the hetero, “pure Japanese” gaze. This bold debut earned “Jackson Alone” wide praise and Japan’s Bungei Prize, awarded to first-time novelists, and makes Ando, now in his early 30s, a writer to watch. (The author’s answers to the following questions were translated by Almony.)
Why was it important for you to tell the stories of queer African Japanese men in your novel?
The primary reason was that those characters never really showed up in Japanese literature, and even when they did, they’d be reshaped into something that was easily digestible for the majority. Before I became an author, I would get irritated whenever I encountered that sort of representation. I wrote “Jackson Alone” to submit to a competition for new writers. In my head, it felt like Jackson and the other characters were there the whole time hollering, “Hurry up and get us out there!”
While there are some frank sex scenes in the novel, what shocked me was how dehumanizing encounters with many “pure Japanese” were for Jackson and his friends. Why were those scenes important to the story?
Living as a minority, you often get questions along the lines of, “What kind of painful things have you experienced?” Right? When you’re asked something like that, don’t you always want to shoot back, “Before you ask me about my experience, why don’t you tell me what you’ve done?” Victimization doesn’t just happen because a person from a minority group is standing around, there’s almost always a perpetrator. The different kinds of dehumanization I wrote about in this book are based on the sorts of things I experience almost every day.
In terms of novels I’ve read, there’s “Out”by Natsuo Kirino and the works ofMieko Kawakami. My direct inspiration though comes mostly from my own life.
Author Caroline Glenn
(William Morrow)
Cruelty Free By Caroline Glenn William Morrow; 320 pages; $30
In Glenn’s fiction debut, Lila Devlin, once one of the most famous actresses on the planet, returns to Los Angeles 10 years after the kidnapping and death of her daughter, Josie. The kidnapping caused a media frenzy, which precipitated Devlin’s meme-worthy downward spiral and the end of her marriage to a rising young Hollywood actor. After an “Eat Pray Love” retreat from the spotlight, Devlin is back with Glob, a line of ethical skincare products with a higher purpose: “A way for Josie to live on by applying the principles of self-actualization and inner peace that she learned in India. She wanted to help people heal just as she had.”
But Hollywood has a short memory and most of the people who benefited from Devlin’s meteoric rise and the kidnapping can’t be bothered to help her now. After a meeting with one of them goes horribly wrong, Devlin and her publicist Sylvie, another a victim of Hollywood’s censure, find revenge offers a unique albeit gruesome ingredient for Glob’s products. Although the novel’s flashbacks seem to digress at times, it all clicks into place once Lila starts exacting her increasingly unhinged revenge. “Cruelty-Free” is an edgy journey with razor-sharp observations about fame and revenge. Readers will be looking forward to what comes next for this talented creator.
What inspired your novel?
I love Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd.” So much. And the core of that story, a man falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit and eventually driving him insane, is unfortunately pretty evergreen. Other inspirations: the Lindbergh baby, how much I hate true crime media, NYC publicist Lizzie Grubman, cash grab celebrity beauty brands, rich white women going on “Eat Pray Love” trips to Asia, the city of Los Angeles (go Dodgers).
Lila Devlin makes a journey from being a grieving mother to being a villain. How do you keep the reader’s sympathies?
I don’t think the reader’s sympathies are supposed to necessarily stay with Lila. The core of this book, stripping away the weird digressions, is about how society makes monsters. Lila’s career, her body, her entire life was consumed by the world until she was left with nothing, and now she’s holding a mirror back up to it. You can understand where she’s coming from, but after a certain point … she’s gonna hit diminishing returns.
In your thinking, is revenge ever justified?
The point isn’t whether or not it’s justified. It’s whether or not it’ll make you feel better. And it can’t, it’s hollow. Nothing will ever undo the original sin, and devoting your life to ruining someone else’s is a loss for both of you.
Author Leodora Darlington
(YellowBelly Photo)
The Exes By Leodora Darlington William Morrow; 384 pages; $29
This UK fiction editor’s debut centers on Natalie, driven into therapy to get to the root of her blackouts and the murderous impulses toward former boyfriends they may be hiding. But then Natalie meets “the one” — James, her boyishly handsome boss at a London start-up — and becomes even more terrified that the monster inside her may strike again.
In carefully interwoven flashbacks and letters to her exes, readers learn why: Natalie’s disastrous dating histories — and the deaths of her abusive boyfriends — are detailed as well as her early relationship with James and the family trauma she and her younger sister suffered at the hands of a father who they saw abuse, and almost kill, their mother.
But, empathy aside, does any amount of family or romantic trauma justify revenge, even murder? By the time Darlington builds her case for and against Natalie, James and the other characters in this tightly drawn circle, readers will be taken through a number of sometimes shocking reveals that suggest that the family ties that bind can also cut off opportunities for forgiveness. Darlington has crafted a dark, edgy thriller whose engaging protagonist and intriguing psychological insights linger in the mind long after the memory of that last, jaw-dropping twist fades away.
What inspired your novel? “The Exes” began with a title that just popped into my head: “To All the Boys I Killed Before.” I adore the romance genre — I’m a huge fan of tropes, from enemies-to-lovers to fake dating. But that love for romance exists alongside a growing frustration with the rollback of women’s rights globally. That convergence of feelings made me wonder: What kind of girl would write letters to former flames, not out of love, but out of despair?
For much of the novel, readers can’t be sure whether Natalie has murdered her exes in a fit of rage or if something else is at play. How did you draw on this uncertainty to build the reader’s sympathies for the character?
What felt important in drawing readers close to Natalie was letting them see through a window into her past and why she is the way she is. Understanding her as a vulnerable child or anxious teen feels crucial to making sure we’re invested in all of the twists that slam through the second half of the novel. I really do think a great twist requires deep character empathy as much as it does clever plotting.
In your thinking, is revenge ever justified? Yes. Ha! Well, in all seriousness, quite a few characters in this story are pursuing their own revenge plots. I do think it is possible to justify revenge to a jury, but never to oneself. Not in a soul-deep way. The pursuit of revenge takes a spiritual tax on a person that can sometimes cost more than they’ve bargained for, and we see the unraveling effects of that in “The Exes.”
Author W. M. Akers
(Gianna Smorto)
To Kill a Cook By W.M. Akers G.P. Putnam’s Sons; 384 pages; $30
After so much revenge, W.M. Akers has just the palate cleanser in “To Kill a Cook”, a homage to 1970s Manhattan and its fine dining temples. Bernice Black, a sharp-tongued restaurant critic for the Sentinel, a struggling newspaper, is meeting chef Laurent Tirel, her culinary mentor and friend, at his restaurant to plan her fiancé’s birthday party. But Tirel, once lauded as “King of the Butter Boys,” is struggling too. Caviar and truffle prices are skyrocketing, forcing Tirel to cut corners while clinging to his restaurant’s former glory. When Bernie finds the restaurant empty and a veal stock reduced to the consistency of “cold blood,” she thinks Tirel is making an aspic for the party. Instead, she finds Tirel’s head in the refrigerator, suspended in the aspic along with the decorative veggies.
Thus begins an intense romp through New York’s finest restaurants when Bernice — who realizes the NYPD doesn’t know their aspics from a hole in the ground — decides to get the scoop of the decade by finding Tirel’s killer herself. Akers nails 1970s New York’s glitz and grime as Bernie interviews an assortment of renowned chefs, fellow critics, criminals as well as Tirel’s business associates and son, Henri, who also happens to be an old flame. But the pièce de résistance of this delectable mystery is Bernice herself — a bold, brash feminist who’s trying to figure out her sexuality while being honest with the ones she loves. Here’s Bernice replying to an NYPD detective’s accusation that she’s not a lady: “I guess that was supposed to hurt my feelings, but I quit trying to be ladylike sometime around the first grade.” “To Kill a Cook” is a decadent treat, with enough loose ends in Bernice Black’s life and career to leave readers hungry for more.
Why did you decide to set your novel in 1970s Manhattan?
1972 was a key turning point in the history of American fine dining. It’s the moment when old-school French — think white tablecloths, heavy sauces and snooty maitre’d’s — faded into the background, allowing nouvelle cuisine and what we now call New American to take its place. It’s also a moment when exceptional, modern cooking would share a menu with “parsleyed ham in aspic” or something else that today’s diners would consider repulsive. That tension between old and new, and the question of what fine dining would become, drives a lot of the conflict in the book.
How did you research the restaurants you describe so well in the book? Did any of those chefs/restaurateurs inspire Laurent Tirel, the murder victim?
I have a big pile of old cookbooks that inspired a lot of the specific dishes in the book, but the best resource was the New York magazine archives, particularly Gael Greene’s old columns. Bernice Black’s name is a little nod to Greene. And Tirel is very much inspired by Henri Soulé, whose Le Pavillon was the definitive New York restaurant for a generation, and whom Greene wrote about beautifully.
Bernice spends a lot of time trying to perfect a Charlotte Russe for her fiancé. Why that particular dish?
The Charlotte Russe is a specialty of my mother, a former caterer who helped run New York’s Hard Rock Café in the ’70s. It’s the kind of lavish, creamy, boozy party dessert that you don’t see often anymore, and it’s involved enough to offer Bernice a challenge. Julia Child’s got a good recipe in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” but I relied on my mom’s recipe, whichreaders can find on my Patreon, and which my mom once cooked for Jacques Pépin!
Woods is abook critic, editor and author of several anthologies and crime novels.
An acclaimed author and historian of the libertarian movement fell to his death last week, his employer confirmed.
The body of Brian Doherty, 57, senior editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, was found Thursday “after a fall” in the Battery Yates park portion of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the publication wrote.
The National Parks Service law enforcement agency confirmed it responded to an incident at Battery Yates on Thursday “involving a male visitor who reportedly fell from the cliffside into the water.”
“The individual was recovered and pronounced dead,” said Scott Carr, parks service spokesperson, in an email. “We do not have any further information to share at this time.”
The Golden Gate Bridge is seen from the Fort Baker Marina in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. Doherty was found in the Battery Yates park portion of the recreation area.
(Los Angeles Times)
Doherty was the author of several books, with Reason saying his most notable work was the 2007 study “Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.”
“Doherty has rescued libertarianism from its own obscurity,” the Wall Street Journal wrote of the work, “eloquently capturing the appeal of the ‘pure idea.’”
Libertarianism’s role in gun control and the courts was the subject of his works, and Doherty had no shortage of admirers.
Loren Dean, chair of the Libertarian Party of California, said it was Doherty’s work at Reason that brought him into the liberty movement.
“Brian Doherty was the best kind of libertarian: one who holds true to the principles of liberty as they are,” Dean said in an email. “He was a tireless champion of both gun rights and police reform who wrote books on both [former U.S. Rep.] Ron Paul and Burning Man; his work did not sit on either the ‘left’ or ‘right’ side of the authoritarian box, but delightfully outside that tired frame, where libertarian principles truly sing.”
“What I liked most about Brian was his abiding interest in things happening on the margins of American culture, politics, and thought, and his deep appreciation for the prodigious bounty that markets deliver reliably and without moralizing,” Gillespie wrote in his farewell to Doherty, who had many opinion pieces published in The Times.
Far from just heady subjects, Doherty covered “both libertarian and whimsical” subcultures, according to the obituary, including New Hampshire’s Free State Project and the Seasteaders, a growing community of individuals dedicated to living on the seas.
The Seasteading Institute tweeted its condolences and noted the group had “appreciated his coverage of seasteading over the years.”
Doherty was a native of Queens, majored in journalism at the University of Florida and joined the college’s libertarian group in 1987, according to Reason’s obituary.
He moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s and joined a group known as the Cacophony Society, a gang who “inspired or created phenomenon ranging from the novel/movie Fight Club to urban exploration, billboard alteration, the Yes Men, flash mobs, and ‘Santa Rampages,’” according to the obituary.
One of those projects translated into the formation of the annual Burning Man festival, the obituary stated. Doherty later chronicled the famed artsy, hippie-like festival in his book “This Is Burning Man.”
“Libertarians talk a lot about freedom and responsibility. Brian embodied both,” Reason Editor-in-Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward said in his obituary. “His weird, colorful life — filled with comics and festivals and music and books — was a model of life lived freely and openly.”
The event will feature authors, poets, artists and podcasters across panels, book signings, cooking demonstrations and screenings. This year’s lineup includes comedian Larry David, actor and Booker Prize judge Sarah Jessica Parker, musician Lionel Richie, Beyoncé’s mother and multihyphenate Tina Knowles, bestselling author and social critic Roxane Gay and News & Documentary Emmy- and Peabody-nominated scholar Reza Aslan, among others.
Scheduled for April 18 and 19, the literary festival will feature more than 550 storytellers and nearly 100 panels across the University of Southern California’s campus.
Other notable personalities include: Pat Benatar, Blippi, Mark Harmon, David Duchovny, Susan Lucci, Jennie Garth, Hannah Brown, Anne Lamott, Chanel Miller, Lisa Rinna, Stephanie Garber, Jon Klassen, Mac Barnett, Meghan Quinn, Hayley Kiyoko, Megan McDonald, Elyse Myers, Eli Rallo, Raegan Revord and Molly Jong-Fast.
As part of the Ideas Exchange speaker series, Richie will sit down with Times Pop Music Critic Mikael Wood, to discuss “Truly,” Richie’s new memoir. The book explores the singer’s upbringing in Alabama and his rise to stardom, including performing with the Commodores.
This year’s event will debut the Audiobook and Podcast Stage presented by Spotify, hosting talent like “Crimes of The Times” host and Times writer Christopher Goffard and “Remarkably Bright Creatures” bestselling author Shelby Van Pelt. The festival will also screen a preview of the Hulu show “Rivals,” which will be followed by a discussion between producer and writer Dominic Treadwell-Collins and actor Nafessa Williams.
At the Times Food Stage, Cassandra Peterson, known for her work as Elvira, will be demoing from her book “Elvira’s Cookbook From Hell.” Culinary influencer Cassie Yeung will also be stopping by to discuss recipes from her new Asian takeout cookbook “Bad B*tch in the Kitch.”
The festival will kick off April 17 with The Times hosting the 46th annual L.A. Times Book Prizes at Bovard Auditorium. The ceremony will honor Amy Tan with the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, We Need Diverse Books with the Innovator’s Award and Adam Ross with the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose. The prizes recognize 61 works in 13 categories.
General admission to the festival is free. Friend of the Festival packages, which include panel reservations, parking and merchandise, are currently on sale.
In “Rooster,” a genial comedy premiering Sunday on HBO, Steve Carell, comfortable as an uncomfortable person, plays Greg Russo, the author of a best-selling series of books whose hero is named Rooster. He has come to leafy, fictional Ludlow College to give a reading, but also because it’s where his daughter, Katie (Charly Clive) teaches art history, and because it’s all over school that her husband, Archie (Phil Dunster), a history professor, has left her for Sunny (Lauren Tsai), a graduate student in neuroscience. He’s a concerned father.
“They are light; they are fun. The characters that you like have sex, the ones you don’t get shot in the face,” Greg tells poetry professor Dylan (Danielle Deadwyler) of the “beach read” books he writes, as she ushers him to an auditorium. Unlike his fictional alter ego, Greg is by his own account a self-conscious introvert, heightened by the fact that his ex-wife, Elizabeth (Connie Britton) — “a philanthropist, a pioneer in corporate gender equality and an accomplished CEO” whose name adorns the school’s new student center — left him five years earlier and he never moved on. Additionally, Greg likes nuts and cocoa, can toss a penny into a jar from across a room, and played minor league hockey, which will put him back on skates here.
College president Walter Mann (John C. McGinley) decides it would be “a feather in his cap” to hire a reluctant Greg, “a best-selling author that the parents have actually heard of,” as an artist-in-residence — a deal he makes impossible to refuse by agreeing to keep Katie on staff after she accidentally burns down Archie’s house. (She was only trying to burn his first edition of “War & Peace.”) It’s a role quite like the one McGinley played/plays on “Scrubs,” but more politic and better dressed, when dressed — he takes meetings in his backyard sauna.
And they’re off.
Poetry professor Dylan (Danielle Deadwyler) and author Greg (Steve Carell) become colleagues when Greg is named artist-in-residence.
(Katrina Marcinowski / HBO)
The series was created by Bill Lawrence (“Ted Lasso,”“Shrinking,”“Scrubs,”“Bad Monkey”) and frequent collaborator Matt Tarses, and as men of at least a certain age, the view is slanted from experience back toward innocence; students play a secondary, though not insignificant role in the story. There are some pro forma jokes about the sensitivities of the young, with Greg getting into not-very-hot water over misunderstood references to “white whale” and the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian.” (“Liberal arts college used to be havens for free thought, Greg,” says Walt. “When did you and I become the bad guys?”) Not that the olds are reliably smart about life — the ways in which they’re not power the series — but they have a better notion of where they’re stupid.
“No one must be humiliated,” Greg says to Archie, quoting Chekhov, as Archie goes off to talk to Katie. (The quote is in the animated opening titles as well, so you can take it as important.) But no one here is out to humiliate anyone, which is nasty and unkind and not at all the sort of humor Lawrence trades in. Of course, characters will be put into embarrassing positions, or embarrass themselves, embarrassment being the root of all comedy, or near enough. (There’s a good bit of slapstick knitted in.) And though we’re told that “there are real villains lurking around this place,” niceness reigns — at least through the six episodes, of 10, available to review — with the possible exception of Alan Ruck as the dean of English. (“There’s no way she wrote all these poems,” he says of Emily Dickinson.)
Though there are couples, and ex-couples and new couples, one doesn’t necessarily feel invested in their getting together, or staying together, or getting back together. Indeed, as in other Lawrence projects — which typically feature divorced or separated characters — romance is a sort of side dish, less the issue than whether people are managing to treat one another well. We knew Ted Lasso wasn’t going to get his wife back, but it wasn’t the point (nor was winning games, really); kindness was what mattered. Greg’s possibly pre-romantic friendship with Dylan is no more significant than his cross-generational friendship with a group of goofball students (led by Maximo Solas as Tommy); they treat each other as peers, while knowing they aren’t. He teaches them that peanut butter can make celery better, and they teach him that he’s cooler than he thinks.
Katie, who says she still loves Archie — who says he still loves her — will also call him “a run-of-the-mill narcissistic a— who sometimes smells like wildflowers.” (As for Sunny, practical and deadpan — that no one gets her jokes is a running joke — not even Archie can see what she sees in him, a problem you might have as well, but, as is true of most everyone here, we’re not meant to merely write him off. Funny secondary characters, who get some of the best business, notably include Rory Scovel as a cop who can’t keep track of his gun, Robby Hoffman as Sunny’s intense, anti-Archie roommate and Annie Mumolo (co-writer of “Bridesmaids”) as Walt’s arch assistant.
Old-but-not-that-old-fashioned, “Rooster” has a tinge of Gen X nostalgia, underscored by the ’80s college radio classics that line the soundtrack. (R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe co-wrote and sings the series’ theme, and Greg, drunk and in a mood, will kill a party getting the DJ to play “Everybody Hurts.” Directed by Jonathan Krisel (“Portlandia,” “Baskets”), it’s low stakes, soft-edged, humane, basically gentle, a little fantastic, a little farcical, well cast and well played in every instance — qualities I happen to like, and maybe you do, too.
For decades, Iranian novelist and memoirist Shahrnush Parsipur wrote under the threat of her country’s oppressive laws. Parsipur was imprisoned for her work four separate times: once under the shah, who ruled Iran before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and three times under the regime that took power that year.
Despite this Damoclean sword hanging over her, she managed in 1989 to publish “Touba and the Meaning of Night,” a sweeping historical novel that lays bare Iran’s crushing patriarchal culture. In 1990, she wrote “Women Without Men,” a book of connected stories that trace the lives of five women, including a sex worker and schoolteacher, in search of liberation and self-actualization.
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Shortly after the book’s publication, the Iranian government threw Parsipur in prison for a fourth time, where she remained for over four years.
Flash forward 36 years, and an English translation of “Women Without Men” has published in the U.K. for the first time. (The first U.S. English translation was published by Feminist Press in 2011.)
Now, the U.K. book has been nominated for this year’s International Booker Prize. In an email exchange, Parsipur, who presently lives in exile in Northern California, expounded on her career, Iran and the recent developments there.
✍️ Author Chat
(The L.A. Times may earn a commission from bookshop.org links.)
Women Without Men was longlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize
(The Feminist Press)
What is your feeling about the U.S. air attack against Iran?
I am very sorry for my country. People suffer and the country becomes ruined. I will never forgive Israel and the U.S. I am an American also and as an American I want to stop the war. I do not think that Americans and Israelis can bring liberty to Iran. The people of Iran must try for themselves.
The government threw you in prison shortly after you published “Women Without Men.”
I was never a political activist and they did not torture me. But one time they put me in a grave for two months in Ghezel Hesar Prison. There, we always had to sit without speaking and our eyes were closed by a cover and we listened to Islamic slogans.
So it was solitary confinement?
We were sitting in a space the size of a grave and there was a wooden wall between every grave, so you could not see anything except your grave.
Did you write in prison?
Yes, I began to write my novel “Touba and the Meaning of Night.” I wrote half of it and suddenly they took it and after one year the men of Ayatollah Montazeri came to prison and they gave me the novel. They had destroyed two pages that were about the killing of a girl. I thought the virginity of my book was ruined. So I burned it. I wrote my memoirs when I came to the U.S.
So you burned the book and then rewrote it?
When my prison term finished I wrote “Touba” again.
Do you still have family in Iran?
Yes, I have some family in Iran and I cannot contact them. The internet does not work and mobiles are silent.
Do you think change in Iran will come soon? Will the U.S. help to liberalize the country?
The Islamic laws must change and a country like Israel cannot do that. So, the Iranian must change the situation. All my books are banned in Iran, except ones that they change themselves. But “Women Without Men” is published in more than 30 countries. The Booker International Prize is an English prize and if they give it to me there is no relation with banning the book in Iran. I am not surprised about the situation.
(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
📰 The Week(s) in Books
“‘Second Skin’ is more sociological than sexy; more anthropological than animalistic,” writes Meredith Maran.
(Los Angeles Times illustration; book jacket from Catapult)
Julia M. Klein is fascinated by Loubna Mrie’s memoir “Defiance,” which, she writes, “offers a prism on Syria’s authoritarian society before the 2011 uprising and subsequent civil war, and vivid snapshots of the devastation that the war unleashed.”
Mark Athitakis considers two books that tackle the old “New Hollywood” of the late ’60s and early ’70s: Paul Fischer’s “The Last Kings of Hollywood,” which spotlights the Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg pantheon, and Kirk Ellis’ “They Kill People,” about the making of “Bonnie and Clyde.” Athitakis calls Ellis’ history “a meaty yet accessible book that captures the lightning-in-a-bottle nature of the generation’s ur-text,” while Fischer’s book “has a gift for highlighting the ways that moments that we now accept as inevitable were often the product of dumb luck.”
Diane Garrett has a chat with Elizabeth Arnott about her novel “The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives,” which she calls “an empathetic and at times bracing mystery tale about unlikely crime solvers circa 1966.”
Finally, Costa Beavin Pappas considers Brian Raftery’s curiously titled “Hannibal Lecter: A Life,” which is really a biography of Lecter’s creator, author Thomas Harris. “For fans of true crime, Raftery has written a fascinating biography and origin story about one of pop culture’s most emblematic serial killers, and his lasting bite on society,” writes Pappas.
📖 Bookstore Faves
Taschen Beverly Hills sells eye-catching artistic works
(TASCHEN)
Taschen Beverly Hills may well be the most gorgeous bookstore in Los Angeles, all gleaming, polished wood and ambient light illuminating the store’s lavishly illustrated art and design books. The shop opened over two decades ago as a showcase for the German publisher’s catalog, and it remains a popular destination for tourists and Taschen cultists who collect the company’s highly collectible titles. I spoke with Taschen Executive Director Creed Poulson about what’s selling right now.
What is the store’s clientele?
At the risk of sounding like a marketing manager, we have something for everyone, because our price points range from $10 up to thousands of dollars. Which allows us to have a mixed clientele in the store.
I know there is a kind of Taschen cult, folks who will buy your books because of your reputation.
That comes from our owner Benedikt Taschen, who is a collector and understands the mindset of a collector. Our books become collectible, regardless of the cost.
Lately, there has been a turn among Gen Z into all things analog. Have you seen younger customers come into the store?
Yes, absolutely. I’m seeing a lot of the younger generation coming, especially during our annual sales — fans that are migrating away from just looking at images online, into book collecting. They want a tactile object they can hold and feel, and they want something they can enjoy as an object.
LIFE Film Festival (Latina Independent Film Extravaganza) returns to Los Angeles this week for its 13th year. Founded by “Real Women Have Curves” playwright Josefina López, the festival will screen over 60 short films and four feature movies at Casa 0101 in Boyle Heights, and for the first time at Cinépolis in Pico Rivera.
From Thursday to Sunday, LIFE Film Festival will offer a series of workshops and networking opportunities where aspiring filmmakers will have a chance to learn from Latinas in Hollywood, like Emmy Award-winning editor Michelle Tesoro, who worked on Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” and the 2023 film “Maestro.”
Since López founded LIFE Film Festival in 2013, her commitment remains the same: to celebrate Latino stories in cinema and empower the next generation of Latina filmmakers.
As a Chicana screenwriter and producer for over 30 years, López knows firsthand the underrepresentation of Latinos in Hollywood films. “Latinos are the majority here in California, and we’re still rendered invisible, even though the industry is right in our backyard,” López said. “They just really don’t want to invest in our stories.”
According to UCLA’s 2025 Hollywood Diversity Report, which looked at the 104 top-performing English-language movies released in 2024, only 1% of leading roles went to Latinos; less than 5% of directors were Latino; and approximately 2% of writers were Latino in last year’s top movies. Latinos make up nearly 20% of the U.S. population.
When it comes to gender, the disparities were even more glaring. There were zero Latina directors and screenwriters in the top theatrical movie releases of 2024. In front of the camera, the numbers weren’t that much better. Less than 1 in 50 movie roles went to Latinas.
“I never knew anybody in my family who was a screenwriter, and now I’m a WGA screenwriter and I’m giving back to my community,” LIFE Film Festival co-director Cristina Nava said. “I could be the tia [to] one of these filmmakers.”
López’s response to underrepresentation extends beyond opening doors. With LIFE, she says she wants to support storytellers who are challenging Latino stereotypes. “There are all sorts of Latinos,” López said. “Yes, we are the immigrants, the servants, but we’re more than that.”
Every year, LIFE recognizes a Latina moviemaker whose work has reshaped representation within the entertainment industry, with the Lupe Ontiveros Award.
Created by López to honor the legendary Mexican American actress, the award is bestowed to a filmmaker whose work amplifies Latino voices. This year’s honoree is “Encanto” Oscar-winning producer Yvett Merino.
In her 35 year-long career, Ontiveros played the role of maids and housekeepers over 150 times. López believed that Hollywood was wasting her friend’s talents and promised to cast her as a more complex and interesting character.
López kept her word, casting Ontiveros as Carmen, the hardworking, hysterical mother in “Real Women Have Curves.” “We have to keep telling stories so that all these talented Latino actors have better opportunities than to play stereotypes,” she said.
Hyun Jin Preston Moon, chairman of the Global Peace Foundation and author of The Korean Dream, speaks in Seoul on Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, saying Korea stands at a “historic turning point” and that the choices Koreans make now will have profound consequences for future generations. He urged a citizen-led effort to reshape public understanding of unification as North Korea hardens its stance toward the South. Photo by Ronald Park / Global Peace Foundation
March 2 (UPI) — In a recent interview with journalists from several Korean media outlets, Dr. Hyun Jin Preston Moon, Chairman of the Global Peace Foundation and author of The Korean Dream, warned that Korea stands at a pivotal crossroads where the decisions made and actions taken will determine the fate of the Korean Peninsula and the future direction of the Korean people for generations to come. With Washington focused on numerous global crises and lacking a clear policy towards North Korea, he said, it is precisely now that the Korean people must assert themselves in support of a free and unified homeland.
The interview took place amid deepening inter-Korean tensions. At the end of 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un formally abandoned the goal of unification which had existed since the formation of North Korea under his grandfather Kim Il Sung’s rule. He designated the two Koreas as “hostile states” and ordered revision of the DPRK constitution to remove reunification as a national objective.
Moon defined North Korea’s formal adoption of the “two hostile states” doctrine as a structural turning point, one that exposes the fragility of the Kim regime. He said the situation demands strategic clarity rather than reliance on past engagement models, and requires that a compelling alternative vision to be placed on the table before this window of opportunity closes.
Conciliatory approaches, he said, carry meaning only when both sides share the goal of unification. When one side formally abandons that goal and redefines the other as an enemy, the entire strategic framework must be fundamentally reconsidered. Clinging to outdated models, he warned, is not diplomacy – it is self-delusion.
At the core of the alternative he is presenting is the Korean Dream – a comprehensive national vision rooted in Korea’s civilizational heritage spanning five millennia and grounded in democratic governance, economic opportunity, and fundamental human rights and freedoms for all its citizens. Rather than reacting to Pyongyang’s provocations, Moon argues, South Korea must define the peninsula’s future on its own terms. He noted that the previous Korean administration had already accepted the Korean Dream framework in principle; during the 2023 Camp David Summit, the U.S. and Japan agreed to support South Korea in its pursuit of a free and unified Korea. Moon also called for a non-governmental advisory committee to replace the current Ministry of Unification to allow for institutional continuity in how South Korea’s administration relates to North Korea, noting that the ideological reversals with each consecutive administration have long undermined inter-Korean policy.
Central to the Korean Dream vision is Hongik Ingan – the founding Korean ethos, roughly translated as “to broadly benefit humanity.” Moon describes this as the spiritual and historical bedrock of Korean identity. He emphasized that it is not an abstract ideal but a living principle that has been passed from generation to generation as part of the Korean people’s heritage and infuses unification with a high-minded purpose. Koreans must rediscover this founding spirit, he said, and see themselves not as passive pawns of geopolitical forces but as active agents with a civilizational mission.
On economic concerns, Moon was direct. Unification is not a burden but an opportunity of historic scale, he said, particularly for Korea’s younger generation. A unified Korea would integrate the more than 25 million North Korean residents into a new domestic market, rebalance its export-dependent economy, and spur large-scale infrastructure development, industrial restructuring, and expanded regional influence.
Moon drew parallels of the potential economic transformation that unification could unleash to China’s wealthy coastal cities that burgeoned with its historic shift from a centrally planned to a market economy. For the Korean Peninsula, he continued, such changes could fuel what he called a second Miracle on the Han River. The generation that seizes this moment, he said, will not merely inherit a problem but will open a new chapter of flourishing for Korean civilization.
The decisive factor shaping the Peninsula’s future, Moon argued, is neither military posture nor diplomatic maneuvering – it is public consciousness. If South Korean youth come to see unification not as a financial burden inherited from their predecessors but as a civilizational mission rooted in Hongik Ingan, that shift in public imagination will become the most powerful engine for change on the Korean Peninsula.
He pointed to North Korea’s growing internal vulnerabilities as evidence that the window for shaping the arc of history is narrowing. Rising defection rates – including among senior officials- and the regime’s deepening economic fragility suggest that the structures sustaining Kim Jong Un’s control are under mounting pressure. Moon said Kim is likely reassessing his long-term strategic options as he observes the dramatic upheaval unfolding in Iran.
“The regime’s current two-state posture is not necessarily permanent,” Moon said. “What matters is whether the right alternative is on the table.” He urged the South Korean administration to adopt the Korean Dream vision and offered to support and advise the U.S. administration as it further develops its strategy and approach to the Koreas.
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Across five novels and three story collections, Lauren Groff has merged wide-screen history with intimate stories about women seeking and confronting power, including in her latest spirited — and triumphant — release “Brawler.” Along the way, Groff has become the rare literary-fiction author who’s a mainstay on the bestseller lists, and a three-time National Book Award finalist as well. On Tuesday, she’ll discuss her work at a Vroman’s Bookstore event at Pasadena Presbyterian Church with Danzy Senna, acclaimed author of “Colored Television” and other novels.
If you’re new to her work, here is where to start with Groff’s sprawling canon, which spans from steamy Florida swamps to medieval abbeys with a gift for the unexpected.
“The Monsters of Templeton: A Novel” by Lauren Groff
(Grand Central Publishing)
“The Monsters of Templeton” (2008): Groff’s debut novel pays tribute to her hometown of Cooperstown, N.Y., featuring baseball lore, a strange aquatic creature and a young woman investigating her family history. It’s overstuffed but establishes some of her key themes: broken families, mythology and everyday misogyny.
“Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories” by Lauren Groff
(Grand Central Publishing)
“Delicate Edible Birds” (2009): Groff’s first story collection includes “L. DeBard and Aliette,” an off-kilter love story set during the 1918 flu pandemic that caught the attention of her longtime agent, Bill Clegg. Groff’s skill at historical detail is on fine display here, shifting from the World Wars to the present day, with particular sensitivity to the ways characters evolve over decades.
“Arcadia: A Novel” by Lauren Groff
(Grand Central Publishing)
“Arcadia” (2012): Groff’s breakthrough novel features a lead character, Bit, facing two forms of pressure: First, a New York ’60s hippies commune that slowly fails to live up to its values, then a near-future America ravaged by climate change. Deftly written, funny and spiky, it showcases Groff’s ability to conjure storms both internal and external.
“Fates and Furies: A Novel” by Lauren Groff
(Riverhead)
“Fates and Furies” (2015): Groff’s masterpiece upends the familiar domestic novel, studying the fracturing marriage between Lotto, a successful playwright, and Mathilde, his seemingly devoted spouse. Through some inventive structures and a playful rewiring of romantic tropes going back to Homer, Groff stitches together a portrait of a marriage that she then carefully unravels. As one character puts it: “Marriage is made of lies. Kind ones, mostly.”
“Florida” by Lauren Groff
(Riverhead)
“Florida” (2018): Set in Groff’s adopted home — she owns a bookstore called The Lynx Books in Gainesville, Fla. — her second story collection is concerned with troubling ferality. Here, snakes hiss, as do catcalling men, girls are abandoned, hurricanes blow through. Myth and metaphor still abound, but they’re more rooted in the everyday reality of a troubled parcel of the country.
“Matrix” by Lauren Groff
(Riverhead)
“Matrix” (2021): The first of a planned trilogy of historical novels, “Matrix” is set in an English abbey in the 12th and 13th centuries. Marie, who becomes the prioress of the abbey at 17, begins a rise to power — or as much power as a woman is permitted — using her fellow nuns to fight off political and violent incursions. The theme and premise owe much to Margaret Atwood, but Groff’s gift for the long view is wholly her own.
“The Vaster Wilds,” by Lauren Groff
(Riverhead)
“The Vaster Wilds” (2023): The New World of the 17th century, in all its beauty and violence, is the setting for her latest novel, a potent study of a young woman who escapes the safety of her British settlement and sets forth on a solo trek toward Canada. Dangers are ever-present, but the novel is a study in unsentimental indomitability, as the hero reckons with the elements and her past on her way to a heartbreaking coda.
