<h4>Clarissa Romano is the former fiction editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a writer, teacher, and editor whose short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals including The Los Angeles Review, The South Carolina Review, The Wisconsin Review, and Flatmancrooked. She is completing her first novel, Honey.</h4>

Clarissa Romano

<a href="http://soundcloud.com/lareviewofbooks/larb-podcast-5-francesca-lia">An audio interview with Francesca Lia Block, author of the beloved Weetzie Bat series, by LARB Senior Editor Clarissa Romano.</a> &nbsp; 
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Producer/Engineer: Oliver Wang 
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Music: Iggy Pop 
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<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/la-review-of-books/id493864450">Click here to subscribe to our podcast series on iTunes.</a>

The LARB Interview: Francesca Lia Block

<h4>L.A. native Denise Hamilton is a crime novelist and the editor of&nbsp;Los Angeles Noir, a short-story anthology. Her books have been compared to Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy. She's also the&nbsp;Los Angeles Times&nbsp;perfume columnist. Visit her at <a href="http://www.denisehamilton.com">www.denisehamilton.com</a>.</h4>

Denise Hamilton

Before Sunset

Bennett Madison is an editor and writer in Brooklyn. His most recent book is&nbsp;<a href="http://bennettmadison.tumblr.com/blonde">The Blonde of the Joke</a>, which was published by HarperCollins in 2009. &nbsp;His next book, September Girls, will be published in summer 2013. &nbsp;He can be found on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/bennettmadison">@bennettmadison</a>. &nbsp;His website is&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://www.bennett-madison.com/">www.bennett-madison.com</a>.

Bennett Madison

Weetzie Bat Meets the Genie

Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.
— Dr. Seuss

Young Adult &amp; Children’s Literature

John Romano is a screenwriter and a writer-producer for television. His features include The Lincoln Lawyer with Matthew McConaughey, the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty, and most recently, an adaptation of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. He's been writer-producer on over 20 TV shows, from Hill Street Blues to Monk, including three of his own creation, among them Sweet Justice starring Cicely Tyson. Formerly he taught English at Columbia and wrote a book on Charles Dickens. He appeared on Charlie Rose with Salman Rushdie for Dickens’s bicentenary, and testified before Congress after 9/11 about Hollywood’s influence on America’s image abroad.

John Romano

Culture War

"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them." — Federico García Lorca

Nonfiction

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." — George Bernard Shaw

History

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors." — Simone Weil