Access to all Library services will be unavailable on Thursday, July 23, 2026 starting at 9 pm due to server maintenance. Services are expected to resume in the early morning hours of Friday, July 24, 2026.
Join LA County Librarian in conversation with acclaimed authors Jacqueline Woodson and Justin Torres as they delve into their creative processes and the power of storytelling in the face of oppression and erasure.
Together, they’ll explore how literature can challenge systems, affirm identity, and open space for unheard voices. They'll be offering insight, encouragement, and community for both emerging writers and anyone passionate about the transformative force of stories.
This event is taking place in West Hollywood Park.
Book signing will follow at 5:40 pm in West Hollywood Park.
Among her many accolades, Jacqueline Woodson served as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, received the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and was the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018-2019. In 2020, she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal, the most prestigious international award recognizing authors and illustrators of children’s literature, and then later that year named a MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow.
A recipient of a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, Woodson is the founder of the Baldwin for the Arts in New York State, an artist residency program providing a safe and nurturing space for Artists of The Global Majority. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Justin Torres is the author of Blackouts, which won the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lambda Literary award, and the Southern California Book Award. A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, he’s also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center. His first novel, We the Animals, was a national bestseller and adapted into a feature film. He lives Los Angeles, and is an associate professor of English at UCLA.
EVENT TYPE: | Lectures & Conversations | Education & Literacy | Books, Poetry, & Writing |
TAGS: | Next Chapter Writers' Summit |
West Hollywood Library began service to the area (then unincorporated ) in 1913. The library was previously located at Sherman School, a cottage on Clark Street, a building on Westbourne Drive, and a building near the present site. The Library has an active Friends of the Library group.
The new library was dedicated October 1, 2011.
