Avenue 50 Studio presents

One Day on the Gold Line: A Book Celebration
with author Carla Rachel Sameth

Featuring:
Annette Wong
Gale Cohen
Hazel Clayton Harrison
Manuela Gomez
Maria Elena Fernandez
Thelma Reyna, Ph.D
Toni Mosley
& hosted by Gerda Govine Ituarte, Ed.D

Thursday October 17, 2019
7:00 pm | Free
Books will be available for purchase and signing

at Avenue 50 Studio
131 N Avenue 50
Los Ángeles, CA 90042

TRANSPORTATION: Parking is available behind the building, enter through the unpaved driveway.. Avenue 50 is also available via Metro Highland Park Station and Southwest Station stops, and by bus line 81 on Figueroa and Avenue 50. There is also street parking, though very limited.

ACCESSIBILITY: Space is accessible by wheelchair from the front entrance, bathroom has limited accessibility. Archways are narrow. Sound in the event space has some echoing. Though we do have parking, the ground is dirt, unpaved, and uneven. There is a separate space in the parking area that is suitable for accessible vehicles. There is also street parking.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Through meditations on race, culture, and family, One Day on the Gold Line: A Memoir in Essays tells the story of a lesbian Jewish single mother raising a black son in Los Angeles. A memoir-in-essays, it examines life’s surprising changes that come through choice or circumstance, often seemingly out of nowhere, and sometimes darkly humorous—even as the situations are dire.

While escaping from a burning boat, Carla realizes that if she died, her one regret would be not having children. She overcomes miscarriages to finally give birth to a son. Motherhood’s usual struggles are then complicated by identity, community, and the challenges of creating a blended family. The overarching theme of these loosely woven reflective tales is the storyteller’s dream of the “perfect” family, the pursuit of which hurls her from one crisis to the next, ultimately meeting its greatest challenge in the form of her teenage son’s struggle with drug addiction.

BOOK PRAISE

“There is so much to admire in these warm, funny, and deeply human tales of love, sex, motherhood, and other adventures. Carla Sameth never gives up on herself, and her readers will never give up on her.”

—Héctor Tobar, author of the New York Times bestseller: Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine and the Miracle That Set Them Free.

“Race, class, drugs, sexuality, otherness…21st Century American hot-button issues are on full display in this brave, gritty, unflinching memoir. As the single lesbian mother of a Jewish and African American son, Sameth navigates dangerous cultural trends tearing at the fabric of her non-traditional family. Sameth shows that a family is not an abstraction, but a tribe that overcomes threats only when those threats are faced head-on. This is a “feel-good” book not because it’s fuzzy and vague, but cause of its clear-eyed, truth-telling love.”

—Sue William Silverman, author of The Pat Boone Fan Club:

My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew
and Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir

“The well-crafted essays of Carla Sameth’s memoir, One Day on the Gold Line, kept me riveted. Sameth tells deeply moving personal stories about overwhelming yearning and love that make you frighteningly vulnerable, finding the courage to face the worst, losing the person you were in your youth and discovering her again.This is a truly beautiful book.”

—Lillian Faderman, author of Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir and Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death

“A beautifully written memoir-in-essays… notable for clarity and originality. A sharp wit and defiant humor run through this book, giving it an upbeat energy.”

—Kathryn Rhett, author of Immortal Village, Souvenir, and Survival Stories: Memoirs of Crisis

“Carla Sameth has seen it all—and she’s the perfect guide to show us the poetry she found. Like motherhood itself, One Day on the Gold Line will break your heart in all the right places and put it back together a little differently.”

—Ariel Gore, Author, Editor/Publisher of Hip Mama

“Set in California, in the context of Black Lives Matter, same sex marriage laws, and publication of The New Jim Crow, Sameth’s narrative is a riveting story of resilience–of what happens when what we hope for, and what we get, stand in stark, though sometimes beautiful, contrast.”

—Marcelle Soviero, Editor-in-Chief Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Carla Rachel Sameth is a writer living in Pasadena. Her debut memoir, One Day on the Gold Line was published on July 18, 2019. Her work appears in a variety of literary journals and anthologies including: Collateral Journal, The Nervous Breakdown, Anti-Heroin Chic, Brevity Blog, Brain, Child, Narratively, Longreads, Mutha Magazine, Full Grown People, Angels Flight Literary West, Tikkun, Entropy, Pasadena Weekly, and La Bloga. Carla was selected to be a 2019 Pride Poet with the City of West Hollywood and was a fall 2016 PEN In The Community Teaching Artist and has taught creative writing to incarcerated youth through WriteGirl. She teaches at the Los Angeles Writing Project at California State University Los Angeles and with Southern New Hampshire University Carla has an MFA in Creative Writing (Latin America) from Queens University. https://carlasameth.com/about-carla/

Maria Elena Fernandez is a writer, performer and professor.  Born In Los Angeles to Mexico City immigrants, through her work she excavates Latina womanhood that negotiates between her traditional immigrant upbringing and U.S. feminism she grew up with.  She holds a degree in American Studies from Yale University and a Master’s degree in U.S. History from UCLA.  As a freelance writer for the LA Weekly, she wrote features on rock en español, as well as book and film reviews. She toured her solo show Confessions of a Cha Cha Feminist around the country to rave reviews and sold-out theaters.  She is currently developing a second solo show The Latinx Survival Guide in the Age of Trump. She teaches Chicana and Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge.

Hazel Clayton Harrison recently retired from her corporate management position in the computer training industry, and feels honored to now be able to pursue her passion in the creative arts. Her poetry and fiction have been published in Full Circle, River Crossings, Grandfathers, A Rock Against the Wind, Spectrum 15, Altadena Poetry Review Anthology (2015-2019 editions), Coiled Serpent, and other anthologies. She owns and operates JAH Light Media, an editing/publishing company, and serves as the 2018-2020 Altadena Poet Laureate for community events. As a member of the Pasadena Rose Poets, she enjoys performing her poetry throughout Southern California. Her memoir, Crossing the River Ohio, was published in 2014 and is available on Amazon.

THELMA T. REYNA, Ph.D.’s books have collectively won 14 national literary awards. She has written 5 books: a short story collection, 2 poetry chapbooks, and 2 full-length poetry collections, including her latest release, Reading Tea Leaves After Trump (2018), which won 6 national book awards in 2018. Her fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, textbooks, blogs, and regional media for over 25 years. As Poet Laureate in Altadena, 2014-2016, she edited the Altadena Poetry Review Anthology in 2015 and 2016. She was a Pushcart Prize Nominee in Poetry in 2017.

Gerda Govine Ituarte, Ed.D. is the author of four poetry collections, Poetry Within Reach in Unexpected Places), Future Awakes in Mouth of Now, Alterations | Thread Light Through Eye of Storm and Oh, Where is My Candle Hat. She established the Pasadena Rose Poets in 2016. In February 2017 she created poetry readings by the PRP at Pasadena City Council meetings that continues. Her work and readings take place in the U.S, i.e., Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego and San Francisco Counties. International readings include; Canada, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico. Dr. Ituarte is CEO of G. Govine Consulting specializing in diversity and inclusión weaving her poetry into reality-based solutions. She holds a B.S. and M.A. in Business Education from New york University and an M.A. and Ed.D. in Higher and Adult Education Administration and Research from Columbia University. She earned a Certificate from the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, School of Law, Pepperdine University.

Manuela Gomez Rhine is a writer and journalist who lives in Pasadena, California, and Oaxaca, Mexico. She is the award-winning author of The Wild Chihuahuas of Mexico (International Latino Book Awards) and The Power of One: Pasadenans Shaping Our Community. She writes about Mexico design, style and culture at Mexicanista.com

Gale Cohen grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BA from Brooklyn College CUNY. She currently lives and writes in Eagle Rock, CA. Previously ,as an Arts Manager, Ms. Cohen worked for: L.A. Theatre Works, as Managing Director and Director of their acclaimed Arts and Children Project, Executive Director of We Tell Stories , and as Co-Director of The Pasadena Writing Project. She has been published in anthologies such as “Bringing the Soul Back Home” published by O Books, and “The Spirit of Place,” She has also been published in online magazines including “Hometown Pasadena”. She is a frequent contributor to Spectrum Publications. She has read her poetry and prose in places such as, The Santa Monica Library, Santa Monica, CA, and Ave 50 Gallery, Highland Park, CA. and L.A./ LitCrawl. She is now working on a Memoir based her experiences as an activist living through the 1960s counter-culture.

TONI MOSLEY has been writing since age 12 when she had to create an adventure story about a place she had never visited. As a former nonprofit executive, she was responsible for telling stories about her organization and its constituents through the creation of brochures and grant proposal writing. Retired in 2013 from the nonprofit sector, she has now become a professional writer of confessional poetry and is currently at work on her memoir, Dead Flies on the Window Sill, a hybrid of poetry, prose and essays about growing up in a chaotic household. As a member of the poetry ensemble, The Pasadena Rose Poets, she has read both her poetry and growing-up stories on the stage at the Walt Disney Concert Hall as well as at schools, libraries and the Barnes &Noble Bookstore throughout the San Gabriel Valley. Mosley’s work has been featured in the Pasadena Hometown News and the Altadena Poetry Review Anthology 2019.

Annette Wong is working on a first collection of poems. Her work has been supported by the AWP Writer-to-Writer Mentorship Program, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, VONA, and Writing Workshops Los Angeles. She is currently the Rona Jaffe Foundation Graduate Fellow at Warren Wilson College, where she is pursuing an MFA. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Waxwing, and Lantern Review. Annette holds a B.A. in History from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches meditation and practices law.