The Los Angeles Review of Books launched in April of 2011 as a humble
Tumblr, with a 2600-word essay by Ben Ehrenreich entitled "The Death of
the Book." The gesture was meant to be provocative, and to ask a genuine
question: Was the book dying? Was the internet killing it? Or were we
simply entering a new era, a new publishing ecosystem, where different
media could coexist?
The LARB website currently publishes a minimum of two rigorously edited
pieces a day, and we've cultivated a stable of regular contributors,
both eminent (Jane Smiley, Mike Davis, Jonathan Lethem) and emerging
(Jenny Hendrix, Colin Dickey, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah). We've found our
way to a certain tone that readers expect and enjoy: looser and more
eclectic than our namesakes the New York and London Review of Books,
grounded in literature but open to all varieties of cultural experience,
far from the New York publishing hothouse atmosphere but not myopically
focused on L.A. either.
The new LARB print quarterly builds on the best aspects of our flagship
online magazine. The long form literary and cultural arts review is
alive and well, and now, has a new home in Los Angeles.