Wouldn’t it be of great interest and value if we could watch filmed interviews with our favorite authors from previous eras? Who would you want to see? Tolstoy? Melville? Proust? Dickens? Jane Austen? Henry James? Anaïs Nin? Emily Dickinson? F. Scott Fitzgerald or Nathanael West? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a library of filmed author interviews and short documentaries on literary and cultural subjects, including the rich literary history of LA? That is exactly what the Los Angeles Review of Books has set out to do in launching the LARB Audiovisual Library.
To date, LARB has filmed and posted some 125 professionally edited author interviews, including such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Judith Butler,T.C. Boyle, David Shields, and Leo Braudy, along with mini-documentaries such as “Living History: The John Feathers Map Collection.” To view these and other projects from our audiovisual division, LARB AV, please click here. We have set for ourselves a goal of building a library of 500-1,000 interviews and short films by the year 2020. This means we will need to do at least 100-200 filmed interviews per year, at a cost of $50,000+ per year. The result will be a library that benefits not only LARB readers but also students, teachers, academics, librarians, and cultural historians worldwide.
LARB was conceived as a digital online magazine dedicated to playing a prominent role in the literary community by connecting with the people, books, and ideas that enliven and explain our world. Today it is that and more. Since launching our full website in 2012, LARB has a print publication program, including the LARB Quarterly Journal and the Los Angeles Review of Books: The Magazine; we hold and participate in various kinds of events, including our LARB Luminary Dinners and Tom’s Book Club; we have a weekly radio show on KPFK called the LARB Radio Hour; we produce podcasts and short films; we serve as the home base for an array of independent literary and cultural websites that operate as LARB Channels; and much more. The LARB Audiovisual Library is an important component of our multidimensional program.
As a nonprofit, LARB is funded by your donations. It is not only tiresome to you, our friends and readers, to be solicited for donations throughout the year, it is tiresome and difficult for us. But we have no choice. LARB is independent, provocative, timely, and free of charge. We publish digitally, in print, and in audiovisual forms the best thinking and writing about books and culture today. In 2014 we published some 1,500 reviews, essays, podcasts, and short films! Fundraising is what makes this possible. Our members make this possible. Giving to our cause – whether through a single donation or by signing up to be a member – matters.
We are asking you today to please show your support for LARB in general and the LARB Audiovisual Library project in particular. Please donate as generously as you can, whether that be $5 or $5,000, by clicking here or by sending a check made payable to the Los Angeles Review of Books to Los Angeles Review of Books, 1614 S. Central Ave., Glendale, CA 91204.
We are making literary and cultural history. Please take this exciting journey with us. On behalf of the LARB staff and board, we thank you for your involvement and generous support.
With appreciation,
Albert Litewka
Chairman of the Board
Los Angeles Review of Books
