LA-Lit: Sawako Nakayasu December 10, 2006

LA-Lit interviews Sawako Nakayasu
Sunday, December 10 at 5pm
At Betalevel (http://www.betalevel.com) (Directions Below)

We’d like to invite you to a live radio recording, reading & conversation this coming Sunday December 10 at 5 p.m. at Betalevel in Chinatown. Sawako Nakayasu will be the featured writer on LA-lit, a radio show co-curated by Mathew Timmons & Stephanie Rioux. The show (& hence the recording) lasts a little over an hour and will be about 30 minutes of reading & about 30 minutes of questions & answers/further questions – alternating between the two modes in hopes of creating a space for dynamic conversation.

Sawako Nakayasu is currently writing about, through, on, around and with ants and other insects, but mostly ants. She was born in Yokohama, Japan, and has lived mostly in the US since the age of six. Her books include Insect Country (A)Nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she, (Quale Press), So we have been given time Or, (Verse Press), and Clutch (Tinfish chapbook, 2002). She is currently working on an insect-based collaborative project featuring ants, while editing the journal Factorial, which often features contemporary Japanese poetry in English translation. In 2006 she received a Witter Bynner Foundation poetry translator residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute and a PEN Translation Fund Grant for translations of Chika Sagawa and Takashi Hiraide, respectively. Her own writing has been translated into Japanese and Swedish, and Arabic.

LA-Lit interviews poets and writers in the Los Angeles area. Reflecting the shifting nature of Los Angeles as a place, this may mean writers that have lived in LA all their lives or writers who happen to be in LA for a few days. LA-Lit is a place for the literary culture of Los Angeles to develop and exhibit itself. Co-hosted and co-produced by Stephanie Rioux and Mathew Timmons, LA-Lit is sponsored by Superbunker (http://superbunker.com) and recorded at Betalevel (http://betalevel.com). You can subscribe to the LA-Lit podcast by visiting our website (http://LA-Lit.com) and dragging the Subscribe link from the sidebar to your podcast folder in iTunes, or download past shows by visiting the writer’s page on the website.

Ideally we will have an audience made up of people who are inclined to jot down a thought, query, doubt, or other incitement. During the second half of the show the floor will be opened for questions from the audience.

Please do your best not to arrive late, so as to minimize the sounds of shuffling & stair-creaking while the show is being recorded.

Feel free to forward this invitation on to your friends and neighbors. For more information, visit http://LA-Lit.com.

We will be delighted to see you there,
Mathew Timmons & Stephanie Rioux

Directions to Betalevel:
1. Find yourself in front of “FULL HOUSE RESTAURANT” located at 963 N. Hill Street in Chinatown.
2. Locate the alley on the left hand side of Full House.
3. Walk about 20 feet down the alley (away from the street).
4. Stop.
5. Notice dumpster on your right hand side.
6. Take a right and continue down the alley.
7. Exercise caution so as not trip on the wobbly cement blocks underfoot
8. The entrance to Betalevel is located 10 yards down on left side, behind a red door, down a black staircase.

Official Website: http://la-lit.com/2006/11/26/la-lit-interviews-sawako-nakayasu/