Dear Readers,
As the most difficult days of the pandemic slowly retreat and the warmer weeks of spring forecast the possibility of renewed in-person living, we begin to mark the occasion of our 10th year at the Los Angeles Review of Books with gratitude for where we’ve been and buzzing anticipation about where we get to go next.
Reflecting the dizzying sprawl of our namesake, over the last decade the Los Angeles Review of Books grew from an idea into a Tumblr into a website and then a nonprofit arts organization encompassing an online magazine, a print journal, a weekly podcast and public radio show, a book press, an intensive publishing course, a network of sister magazines, civic arts programming, and more. On our site, writing about the hard sciences sits alongside reviews of crime fiction and ruminations on the future of higher education. You might as easily stumble upon a conversation about concrete poetry as a debate about prison abolition. On most days, we’re practically a five-star sushi restaurant and a 7-Eleven away from LA strip mall Bingo.
What anchors this eclecticism is a commitment to accessibility, horizontality, and community building — a set of values that will continue guide us in the decade to come. Since day one, we’ve offered all of our online content free of charge — no paywalls or subscriptions necessary — because curiosity must not be bounded by one’s background or wallet size. We’ve been so honored to feature award-winning literary and cultural luminaries over the years, but we’re just as excited to provide a home for budding authors publishing their first pieces. We welcome readers, writers, and translators from every country across the globe, and are dedicated to nurturing young people seeking not just to fill positions but to create new spaces in the publishing industry.
We see our work as a service for and inspired by you, our growing community of readers, contributors, and supporters. Your support and presence on our pages affirm the transformative power of plurality, of what we can imagine together above the barriers of professional hierarchy, internet tribalism, or financial circumstance. Over the next 10 months, we will be celebrating this prospect with roundups of some of the best, most thought-provoking content from the LARB archive, a continuous spotlight on literature in translation, a celebration of semipublic intellectual life, virtual events and conversations with a wide range of community partners — in short, all of the content you’ve come to love and expect, as well as much, much more.
As a new season dawns, we want to extend our profound thanks to all of you for helping us make it this far! LARB could not be here without the generous and tireless contributions of so many members, donors, volunteers, writers, staff, grant funders, institutional partners, and dreamers over the years. Looking ahead to a new decade for LARB, we deeply appreciate your continued support and hope you’ll join us in exploring the surprising pleasure of unexpected takes, new ideas, or even the occasional Slurpee after a top-notch omakase meal.
With gratitude from all of us here at LARB,
Irene Yoon, Executive Director