Los Angeles Review of Books
The Los Angeles Review of Books is a literary review journal covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 2012. A print edition premiered in May 2013. Founded by Tom Lutz, Chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of California, Riverside, the Review seeks to redress the decline in Sunday book supplements by creating an online “encyclopedia of contemporary literary discussion.”
The LARB features reviews of new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction; original reviews of classic texts; essays on contemporary art, politics, and culture; and literary news from abroad, including Mexico City, London, and St. Petersburg.
The site also proposes looking seriously at detective fiction, thrillers, comics, graphic novels, and other writing “often dismissed as genre fiction,” and printing reviews of books published by university presses. Of these plans Lutz has said, “What's considered worthy of study in the literary world has shifted radically over the past 50 years, and it reflects the natural evolution of academic thought, which is constantly raising questions about what matters.”
The site also features input from over 200 contributing editors, including Reza Aslan, Aimee Bender, T. C. Boyle, Antonio Damasio, Jonathan Kirsch, Chris Kraus, Jonathan Lethem, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mike Davis, Jane Smiley, David Shields, Carolyn See, Barbara Ehrenreich, Greil Marcus, Jaron Lanier and Jerry Stahl.
In addition to Lutz, the current editorial staff includes Boris Dralyuk and Medaya Ocher. Section editors include Merve Emre, Evan Kindley, Rob Latham, Robin Coste Lewis, Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn, Lisa Teasley, Ellie Duke, Laurie Winer, Kate Wolf, Sarah Mesle, Jonathan Alexander , Callie Siskell, Feliz Luiz Molina, Stefanie Sobelle, Michele Pridmore-Brown, Anna Shechtman, Michelle Chihara, Eric Newman, Robert Zaretsky, Brad Evans, Lee Konstantinou, Don Franzen, Sarah Fuss Kessler, Orly Minazad, Steph Cha, Arne De Boever, Costica Bradatan, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Andrew Hoberek s, and Tom Zoellner.
