By Jorge Casuso

September 18, 2024 -- Santa Monica College (SMC) will hold a launch party next month for the latest edition of its acclaimed literary journal, which offers a probing look at pressing social issues.

The fall 2024 edition of Santa Monica Review (SMR) includes 13 original short stories and essays, most by established West Coast writers, that often merge fact and fiction.

Santa Monica Review cover art by elin O'Hara slavick (Courtesy SMC)

The works will be showcased at a reading from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday, October 6, in The Edye at the SMC Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th Street.

Among the writers reading from their work is award-winning novelist Ismet Prcic, a Bosnian refugee whose 2024 novel "Unspeakable Home" was deemed both "stylistically brilliant" and "unreadable" by the critics.

In the latest issue, Prcic "shares a wildly Kafkaesque auto-fiction dispatch from the streets of Portland, an irreverent, if genuine, call to empathy, and an unlikely portrait of resilience," event organizers said.

Also reading are novelists Monona Wali ("Sutra Americana") and Michelle Latiolais ("She"), whose work has previously appeared in the review, and Alisa Slaughter ("Bad Habitats") who contributed a non-fiction piece.

The issue also features nonfiction from frequent SMR contributors Christopher Buckley ("One Sky to the Next") and memoir excerpts from poet and editor Daniel Lawless ("I Tell You This Now").

"Their topics include youthful good luck, ecosystem destruction, resonant generational memories, the legacy of the India-Pakistan partition, and the limits of imagination and courage in higher education politics," organizers said.

Review editor and launch party emcee Andrew Tonkovich notes how "much of the writing plays with voice, persona, and identity, purposefully confusing elements of both fiction and nonfiction."

"These writers seem to be experimenting with ways to tell their stories -— our stories —- and see hybrid formal expression as an urgent, necessary, and even helpful response to civic, cultural, and political crises.”

Tonkovich notes that "there’s a lot of truth-telling and gestures toward witness and problem-solving, artfully composed, and with humor and sophistication."

Tickets for the launch party are available at smc.edu/tickets and cost a suggested donation of $10. Refreshments will be served.

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center will have a variety of author titles for sale at the party. Abundant free parking is available on premises. Seating is on a first-arrival basis.