Writing Place in Southern California—

a reading and discussion

D.J. Waldie

D.J. Waldie is the Public Information Officer for the city of Lakewood and a contributing writer at Los Angeles Magazine. His book Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir received the California Book Award for nonfiction in 1996, and his most recent book is Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles (2004). Waldie’s books about Los Angeles and suburban Southern California have been widely praised and anthologized.

Gail Wronsky

Gail Wronsky has a PhD from the University of Utah and is the director of creative writing at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She has published three volumes of poetry and a novel, among other books. Wronsky also founded a program called Syntext in which students conduct creative writing workshops in non-academic settings throughout Southern California.