Advisory Board

David Kipen (Co-Founder and Co-Director) served as book critic and editor for the San Francisco Chronicle for seven years before becoming the Director of Literature for the National Endowment for the Arts (2005-2010). He has published and edited several books, interviewed dozens of authors, curated film and book festivals (most notably the 60-strong Los Angeles delegation to the Guadalajara Book Festival), and is a frequent reviewer in the New York Times, L.A. Times, and on public radio. He’s the editor of Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters (Random House, 2018), and the forthcoming Dear California: The State in Diaries and Letters (Stanford University Press). In addition to his introductions to the WPA guides for Los Angeles, California, San Diego, and the Bay Area (University of California Press), he is a proponent of H.R. 3054, the 21st -Century Federal Writers’ Project. Most recently, he co-produced and hosted the public-television documentary A New Deal for Los Angeles.

Colleen Jaurretche (Co-Founder and Co-Director) has published two scholarly books on James Joyce, a collection of essays on Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and numerous other essays and reviews. She is a native of LA’s Eastside, where she grew up, and is passionate about the city’s cultural life and the pleasures of literature. She is currently working on a creative-nonfiction book about her
Mexican-Indigenous family.

Jonathan Parfrey is executive director of Climate Resolve. He is a founder and Vice Chair of CicLAvia, the popular street event. He is also a founder of theLos Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action and Sustainability and the statewide Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation.

From 2008-2013, Parfrey served as a commissioner at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He is past-president of the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters. From 2007-2011, Parfrey served as director of the GREEN LA Coalition. From 1994 to 2007, he served as Los Angeles director of Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization Physicians for Social Responsibility. From 1987-1993, he founded and directed the Orange County Catholic Worker. In 1992, Parfrey received the Paul S. Delp Award for Outstanding Service, Peace and Social Justice. In 2003, Mr. Parfrey was appointed to Governor Schwarzenegger’s Environmental Policy Team. In 2002 he was awarded a Durfee Foundation Fellowship. In 2010, he received a Stanton Fellowship. In 2011, he was appointed a Senior Fellow at the USC Marshall School of Business, and is currently a fellow at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.

Adam Somers is a thirty-year veteran of the music business. From 1971 through 1993, Mr. Somers held a number of positions in the Creative Services and Marketing departments at Warner Bros. Records. From 1988 until 1991 Mr. Somers was the Senior Vice-President of Creative Services and Operations. In this capacity, Mr. Somers was responsible for all aspects of the art, graphic arts production, creative editorial, editorial, merchandising, advertising, alternative marketing, and administrative services departments. In 1991 Mr. Somers assumed the position of Senior Vice-President of Marketing Planning and Operations. In 1994 Mr. Somers became the Executive Vice-
President of the Alternative Distribution Alliance. In 1995 Mr. Somers became the General Manager of Vapor Records, started by Neil Young. Mr. Somers did the startup and was the liaison with Reprise Records and WEA Distribution. In 1996, Mr. Somers joined DreamWorks Records. Mr. Somers headed the New Media and Internet initiative for DreamWorks Records. From January 2000 through January 2001, Mr. Somers was the Sr. VP of Partnerships and Label Relations at Music.com in New York. In January of 2001, Mr. Somers re-located back to Los Angeles and started OutsidetheSystem L.L.C. From April 1, 2004 until December 31, 2015, Mr. Somers was the Executive Director for the nonprofit PEN Center USA. Currently, Mr. Somers is the Executive Director of the California Conservation Corps Foundation.

Johanna Drucker is Distinguished Professor and Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She is internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, fine art, and digital humanities.

Her most recent book, Inventing the Alphabet, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2022. Other new titles include Visualization and Interpretation (MIT Press, 2020), and Iliazd: Meta-Biography of a Modernist (Johns Hopkins University Press 2020), with Introduction to Digital Humanities (Routledge Spring, 2021).

Drucker is also known for her artist‘s books which were the subject of a traveling retrospective, Druckworks: 40 years of books and projects, in 2012-2014.

In 2014 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A collection of her essays, What Is? (Cuneiform Press) was published in 2013 and Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production (Harvard University Press) appeared in 2014. Digital_Humanities, with Anne Burdick, Peter Lunenfeld, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp, (MIT Press) was published in 2012.

Other work includes Diagrammatic Writing (Onomatopée, 2014), Fabulas Feminae
(Litmus Press, 2015), The General Theory of Social Relativity, (The Elephants, 2018),
Downdrift: An Eco-fiction (Three Rooms Press, 2018), and Off-World Fairy Tales, with
Susan Bee (Litmus Press, 2020).

Staff

Cuauhtemoc Hernandez, Library Supervisor

Tom Laichas, Lead Teacher

Derek Mejia, Library Staff

Chris Ortega, Library Staff

Cynthia Rand-Thompson, Webmaster and Social Media

Diana Romo, Library Staff

Alberto Sahagun, Library Staff