More than 30 writers will converge on the El Segundo Public Library this weekend to celebrate literature and reading at the third annual “El Segundo Loves Books” author fair.

Many different genres ranging from children’s literature and biography to horror and travel will be represented at the June 1 event, with many local authors taking part. At least six El Segundo residents will participate in the fair including Jordan Lane who wrote “The Babysitting Bible.”

“I live about two blocks away from the library,” Lane said. “I go there all the time. This should be a great experience. I’ve never done a book signing before.”

Another El Segundo resident, John Mese, along with Manhattan Beach native Dawn Kelsey, wrote the children’s board book “Flippy and Toadpole.”

Mese, an actor and screenwriter, said he and girlfriend Kelsey decided to publish their own children’s book with the help of graphic designer Chanler Holden following a visit to relatives in Louisiana, his home state.

Within six months, “Flippy and Toadpole” became a reality.

“We had 2,000 printed initially, and we hope to sell the rest and reinvest in the company,” Mese said. “We hope to have a second printing of the first book and publish a second book in the series. We don’t have a deadline but we hope to have it out be Christmas. That might be overzealous.”

According to Dina Cramer, director of activities at the library, the author’s fair attracted 500 visitors each of the past two years and has increased from 25 authors in its first year to 32 this year.

There will be three author panels organized around three different themes: “Reading for Pleasure,” “Contemporary Literary Fiction” and “Los Angeles, California, the World.”

“We’re the only library in the area I know that does anything like this,” Cramer said. “I go to library meetings with other librarians and they’re all amazed that we do this. It’s kind of a major event, especially considering that we are a small library.”

Cramer said the fair was instigated three years ago to draw people into the library and draw attention to its collection. She added there is no shortage of authors in the area. Each year brings new authors to the event. They also don’t repeat authors to make each year fresh for visitors.

“There are so many authors in the South Bay,” she said. “If you keep your ears open, you hear about them and sometimes authors bring in other authors. I do go beyond the South Bay. We bring in authors from all over the Los Angeles area.”

According to Cramer, the children’s program is the largest in its three years with seven authors participating. There will also be professional story-telling by Steven Henegar, an author and illustrator, and John VanDenEykel, who will be demonstrating art.

El Segundo Councilman Kelly McDowell will once again moderate one of the panels.

One of the more well-known authors participating in the fair is Lisa See, who wrote “One Gold Mountain,” a history of her Chinese-American family, and crime thrillers set in California and China.

Other participating authors include mystery writers Dick Lochte and David Sherman, and two columnists from the Los Angeles Times, Patt Morrison and Barbara Muchnic.

Morrison has written two books about Los Angeles while Muchnic wrote a biography of Norton Simon called “Odd Man In.”

Continuous live music will also be provided throughout the fair.

Cramer said the Friends of the Library was instrumental in raising funds for the live music and the demonstrations for the children.

“El Segundo Loves Books” takes place from 12:45 to 5 p.m. Sunday, June 1, at the El Segundo Public Library, 111 W. Mariposa Ave. For more information, call 524-2722.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2003/05/29/the-writers-way-5-30/
www.dailybreeze.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-49
190248
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:VIEVGWVKICFJOBYPDT2YOF4QMXNOHI54
<urn:uuid:ec10c234-832d-4aba-8640-81352327c9ee>
2021-12-03T23:16:49Z
192.0.66.2
text/html
sha1:Y55JNJPJ2Z3S2R5EEYLH4S2TJFVMXIDI
<urn:uuid:33064e04-46c8-49ef-bb17-7b1f41777e31>
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2003/05/29/the-writers-way-5-30/
response
<urn:uuid:c595ba51-5fe8-4efc-8da4-42c4baf30607>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-49
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for November/December 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-6
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/