\u201cForget New York, some of the most ambitious literature in America is happening in California,\u201d<\/a> Aug. 19). It\u2019s wonderful that Transit Books and Unnamed Press are thriving. They are located in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, but the authors referenced in this article are from Europe, New York City and Chicago.<\/p>\nTransit and Unnamed stand on the shoulders of current West Coast legacy publishers such as Chronicle Books, City Lights, Copper Canyon Press, Heyday and Red Hen Press. These presses are decades old and have survived amid financial downturns, a challenging printing and distribution system, and a current political climate at war with the arts.<\/p>\n
As a second-generation Angeleno and author, I am concerned that the Los Angeles Times doesn\u2019t regularly highlight local authors and presses. California is racially and financially diverse. We excel at the creative arts, tech, biotech, aerospace, international trade and agriculture, among other industries, but as a culture, we have an inferiority complex. This Times article focuses on these upstart publishers who dare to challenge the New York literary establishment. Well, the legacy presses have been doing that for years.<\/p>\n
As the West Coast\u2019s most prominent and largest metropolitan newspaper, how about lifting up the unique voices and publishers from the Southland? The Times needs to do better at covering the literary world of Los Angeles and California.<\/p>\n
Denise Frost, Los Angeles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug. 26, 2026 5:30 AM PT To the editor: The title of this article should be, \u201cThe ambitious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[141,175979,2308,847,5661,7,175980,2072,24819,48,52,51,175978,47,50,49,63,4694,10159,175976,175977],"class_list":["post-444043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-aerospace","tag-ambitious-literature","tag-art","tag-article","tag-author","tag-california","tag-copper-canyon-press","tag-editor","tag-l-a-times","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-local-literary-scene","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-new-york","tag-press","tag-transit-books","tag-upstart-publisher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}