Join Occidental College President Harry J. Elam, Jr. in conversation with Steph Cha, author of Your House Will Pay, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy, on Monday, August 8, at 10:30 a.m. PDT as part of Oxy's Community Book Program.

An award-winning novel published in 2019, Your House Will Pay is a fictionalization of the events surrounding the notorious killing of an African-American teenager (Latasha Harlins) by a Korean-American shop owner (Soon Ja Du), a few weeks after the videotaped beating of Rodney King by several LAPD officers in 1991. Cha weaves a compelling story about the many ways this traumatic event affects both families involved in the Harlins-Du tragedy as well as the entire Black and Asian communities in Los Angeles by depicting events in 1991 and in 2019. The Los Angeles Times, which awarded Your House Will Pay its Best Mystery/Thriller Award in 2020 said “As the action moves through SoCal’s diverse and divided communities, grief, rage, repentance, duty to family and more force readers to consider all sides of complex moral issues.”

Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the California Book Award, and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s a critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, where she served as noir editor, and is the current series editor of the Best American Mystery & Suspense anthology. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her family.

The Community Book Program promotes the mission of the College by empowering students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and other members of the broader Oxy community to experience the joy of reading and learning together.

Registration for this virtual event is required, and is open to all Oxy community members.

We will be collecting questions for the author in advance, using this form. Questions must be submitted by Wednesday, August 3.

The College will purchase an e-book for each student wishing to participate. The book is required Core Program Summer Reading for first-years. Students can contact communitybook@oxy.edu for more information.

Oxy's Community Book Program | Steph Cha & President Elam in Conversation