Book Talk! Portraits by TOM LUTZ

ABOUT THE BOOK:

For years, when traveling, I found myself getting in conversations with people when I took their pictures, and started to consult with them--showing them the digital shot, then retaking it until we had one they were happy with. It gave us a reason to interact, and a way to do so, even when we shared no language in common. These portraits are the result of those extended sessions, those moments of accidental intimacy on the road. Readers of my three travel books (Drinking Mare's Milk on the Roof of the World, And the Monkey Learned Nothing, and The Kindness of Strangers) may recognize some of the people, because a number of them feature in those stories. But each stands on its own--each a testament to the human ability to connect across the fault lines that keep us precariously divided. And each is a tribute to the accidental intimacy of the road.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND INTERVIEWER:

TOM LUTZ is the author of ten books, including the At Home in the World trilogy (Drinking Mare’s Milk on the Roof of the World, And the Monkey Learned Nothing, and The Kindness of Strangers), based on his travel to some 140 countries and territories. His books Aimlessness, Born Slippy, Crying, Doing Nothing, Cosmopolitan Vistas, and American Nervousness, 1903 have been translated into a dozen languages and have won the American Book Award among other honors. He is the founding editor in chief and publisher of Los Angeles Review of Books and a Distinguished Professor at University of California, Riverside. He lives in Los Angeles.

LISA TEASLEY is the author of the novels Dive and Heat Signature, and the award-winning story collection, Glow in the Dark, published by Bloomsbury. Her story collection Fluid publishes next September 2023 by Cune Press. Her essays, stories and poems have been much anthologized, including in this year’s Europa Editions The Passenger: California and next February’s W.W. Norton anthology Flash Fiction America. Lisa was the senior fiction editor for Los Angeles Review of Books and a current editor-at-large.

A traveler and visual artist as well, Lisa Teasley’s last solo show was at the Marie Baldwin Gallery in 2019, her last group show was with the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design in 2020, and she had a painting included in an Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles show last year.