Book aficionados gathered for a weekend of literary immersion.

Reading enthusiasts crowded the University of Southern California on Sunday for the annual LA Times Festival of Books. Eager to maximize the event’s last day, bookworms wriggled through author panels, story and poetry readings, and musical performances, all of which shaped the event’s ambiance. A mix of fantasy fiction and educational texts focalized some of the event’s most enticing panels.

Read on for Daily Bruin’s coverage of day 2 of the LA Times Festival of Books.

Arts & Culture: Hidden Histories in the City of Angels

When every story feels like it’s already been told through social media, educators and specialists alike came together to uncover the untold tales of Los Angeles.

At 11 a.m., panelists set the stage with an open forum on the City of Angels’ hidden secrets. Patt Morrison guided the hourlong conversation between Amy Price, Naomi Hirahara, Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans. Subjects included the enigmatic occurrences at the Hotel Cecil, Los Angeles’s many unclaimed deaths and Terminal Islands’ historical context.

When asked how shifting from an academic to a general audience was done in Prickett and Timmermans’ book, “The Unclaimed,” Timmermans said the process was much more difficult than expected, broadening the scope of the story’s necessary agenda. Striving to bring awareness to the city’s burial service each December for unclaimed deaths, the duo focused its message on explaining the myriad of ways people end up without any respective lineage.

“People come to Los Angeles hoping for something or because they have nowhere else to go,” Prickett said. “Their families have cut ties with them, or they have lost touch with their families.”

Struck by the cryptic and inexplicable happenings in her time working at Hotel Cecil, witnessing nearly 80 deaths in the span of a few years, Price said she knew she would write a book about it almost immediately. The situation never got easier, Price remarked.

Further, Hirahara focused primarily on the hidden communities of Los Angeles, spanning the coasts of Rattlesnake and Terminal Islands and a forgotten Japanese fishing colony. She said the body of these forgotten landmarks used to harbor homes for squatters and the wealthy, bringing in over 3,000 Japanese immigrants to what was temporarily called Fish Harbor during the 1920s.

Through an open forum on the city’s hushed secrets, the authors said they hope to change the narrative of what can and can’t be discussed through literature.

Magical Realms and Family Sagas in Young Adult Fiction

Writers in young adult fiction shared narrative goals and experiences on their fantastical bodies of work.

At 12:40 p.m., authors Ana Ellickson, Darcie Little Badger and Emily Barth Isler settled in their seats for a discussion on fantasy fiction with Zan Romanoff. The writers confided personal aspects of their stories and how they aimed to influence future generations by integrating knowledge that wasn’t accessible to them as teens.

“I feel my job as an author, particularly for young people, is to give kids the language to see themselves or to see others and know what questions to ask to be prepared for all kinds of diversity,” Barth Isler said.

Barth Isler recognized the importance of spreading awareness when it comes to understanding one’s neurodivergence or individual complexities. The protagonist in her upcoming book, “The Color of Sound,” experiences heightened mental stimuli as a violin prodigy, similar to the author’s lived experiences, she said. After receiving a delayed diagnosis of synesthesia in her 30s, she set out to end the absence of media coverage relating to her personal circumstances.

Moreover, when asked if autobiographical elements were incorporated, heritage revealed itself to be a connecting thread through each story. Little Badger said she aimed to honor her Native American heritage through her characters and the struggles they experienced in the South in the ’70s. Similarly, Ellickson said she incorporated her Filipino ancestry in her main character, wanting to familiarize readers with the unique upbringing she knows so well. Eager to break the expected assumption of a white, Christian background in American fiction, Barth Isler said she made Judaism a prominent feature of her story, wanting her culture to be more normalized for future generations.

“I wanted kids to pick this book up regardless of their religious or cultural background and be able to relate to the character, but also learn something and humanize our culture,” Barth Isler said.

Aiming to strengthen the next generation’s literary foundation, the authors merged mystery with realism, guiding young adults to start asking the right questions.

Fiction: The Art of Storytelling

Among a board of revered authors, the panelists encouraged readers to reexamine their approach to finding meaning in literature.

Nearing the end of the event, Boris Kachka met with Greg Sarris, Justin Torres and Kaveh Akbar at 2:30 p.m. to discuss the release of their novels. Together, they discussed the transformative power of literature, breaking generational spells and passing invaluable lessons onto future generations

“The idea of beauty as being the inexorable horizon towards which art must march is a relatively new and European one,” Akbar said. “The idea of the story as this beautiful artifact that we made as practical data for living is something I take really seriously.”

When asked about his personal ties to the novel, Akbar elaborated on the relevance of his Iranian heritage. He said he remembered aspects of his upbringing sparsely and inconsistently, like a metaphorical bouquet from a family garden. The arrangement of his memories guided his writing process, as he was forced to write with them coming in inconsistently and rearrange them afterward. The process of writing turned out to be incredibly rewarding and insightful in navigating the shared human experience of grief in relation to his upbringing, Akbar said.

When Kachka asked about the writing process, Torres highlighted the intricacies behind the production of his book, which spanned 12 years, six years longer than his first. He said he aims for this book to be more challenging than his last publication, expanding the page count and encouraging readers to take their time in pulling meaning from the text.

The speakers emphasized the notion of recovering one’s history through fiction. In reassessing the art of storytelling, the authors cleared the shelf for a new wave of bibliomaniacs.