Bookworm (KCRW)
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Pura Lopez-Colome and Forrest Gander: Watchword
Pura Lopez-Colomé's poetry, translated by Forrest Gander, envisions the body as a mystically rich reservoir of experience and language.
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Aleksandar Hemon: The Book of My Lives
Aleksandar Hemon takes us though his life from his childhood in Sarajevo -- from the public tragedy of warfare to the private catastrophe of the loss of his child.
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Margaret Atwood on Innovation
Margaret Atwood has embraced the frontiers of online literary culture. She reflects on her exploration of literary innovation and why Hermes is the patron of the new(s).
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Rachel Kushner: The Flamethrowers
A novel of multiple voices, motorcycles, and swift zigzags between separate times and places.
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David Shields: How Literature Saved My Life
David Shields explores the power of the written word in his new book of essays.
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Mohsin Hamid: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Mohsin Hamid mocks the self-help genre in his new novel.
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Sam Lipsyte:The Fun Parts
The brazen, satirical stories in Sam Lipsyte's latest book incite reactions that run the gamut from anger to outrage to sheer hilarity.
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Joyce Carol Oates: The Accursed
Set on the Princeton campus in 1905, a penetrating social commentary masquerades as a classic American Gothic.
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Michael Ondaatje: The Cat's Table
Ondaatje discusses his turn from concealment to revelation and reflects on the magic of youth.
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Jess Walter: We Live in Water
How did Jess Walter make the leap between his romantic novel, "Beautiful Ruins," and the end-of-the-world sadness of his stories in "We Live in Water?"
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Eloise Klein Healy: A Wild Surmise
The recently named the first poet laureate of the City of Los Angeles reads selections from her new collection and reflects on what it means to be a poet of place today.
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Luis Alberto Urrea, Part Two
Luis Alberto Urrea ("The Hummingbird's Daughter" and "Queen of America") continues to discuss his saga inspired by the life of Teresita Urrea, "the Mexican Joan of Arc."
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Luis Alberto Urrea: The Hummingbird's Daughter and Queen...
Luis Alberto Urrea's "Queen of America," completes the two-volume saga that began with "The Hummingbird's Daughter." Both follow the journey of a Mexican curandera...
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George Saunders: Tenth of December, Part Two
In this second interview, George Saunders delves further into the dark-comic twists and turns of his recent short story collection. (Part 2 of 2)
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Nick Flynn: The Reenactments
Nick Flynn on the strange days on the set of Being Flynn, a film adapted from his personal memoir, and starring Robert De Niro and Paul Dano.
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Jamaica Kincaid: See Then Now
Jamaica Kincaid's first novel in ten years is an emotionally bare story about the erosion of a marriage.
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George Saunders: Tenth of December
George Saunders reflects on writing, "infinitely" revising, and how he finds the voices for his luminous but smudged characters.
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Ange Mlinko: Shoulder Season; Marvelous Things Overheard
Poet Ange Mlinko reads poems from her forthcoming collection and talks about the way that poetry braids difficulty and pleasure.
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Lydia Millet
In Lydia Millet's novels, characters pass from the comedy of daily life to the beauty of visionary experience.
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Amy Wilentz: Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti
Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti is journalist Amy Wilentz's admiring and sober portrait of post-earthquake Haiti. All too aware of her own status as a foreigner, Wilentz is more interested in what it means for her to be an outsider than she is in fashioning herself a beneficent aid worker. As efforts to rebuild Haiti in the wake of the 2010 disaster are still underway, Wilentz talks about literary journalism, being a catastrophist, and the perils of good-hearted impulses.
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Antoine Wilson: Panorama City
The aimless hero of Antoine Wilson's second novel takes the world at face value and wishes to impart wisdom to his unborn son, after a life of suspended childhood himself.
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Oliver Sacks: Hallucinations
Oliver Sacks on the neuropsychology and literature of hallucination, and what this disorienting medical condition reveals about the nature of the mind and human condition.
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Charles Burns: The Hive
Burns reflects on the eerie spaces and dark themes that populate his graphic novels, as well as the nature of suspense that does not necessarily resolve into explanation.
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Mark Z. Danielewski: The Fifty Year Sword
A ghost story about the weave of storytelling itself, written in sparse fragments of dialogue punctuated by faint embroidery, grim illustrations, and blank spaces.
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Christine Schutt: Prosperous Friends
Two artists find themselves in an inexplicable and unhappy marriage in Christine Schutt's new novel written in hypnotic prose.
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Christine Schutt: Prosperous Friends
Two artists find themselves in an inexplicable and unhappy marriage in Christine Schutt's Prosperous Friends, a novel written in hypnotic prose.
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Scott Shepherd and John Collins: Gatz
A conversation with cast members about this revelatory new take on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, "The Great Gatsby."
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Chris Kraus: Summer of Hate
Novelist and social critic Chris Kraus on her latest novel, where romance and social redemption collide in post-Patriot Act America.
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Chris Ware: Building Stories
Graphic novelist Chris Ware stretches the notion of the book to fantastic proportions in his latest publication...
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Craig Nova: The Constant Heart
Craig Nova's fourteenth novel conveys readers into dark and discomforting realms of the unseen, where human organs are harvested for sale on the black market...
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Martin Amis: Lionel Asbo
British novelist Martin Amis discusses how a writer makes a good character endearing when readers want to root for the villain in his new work.
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Susanna Moore: The Life of Objects
Susanna Moore is interested in the things her characters don?t know. Her new novel is a story of innocence and dread.
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Lawrence Norfolk: John Saturnall's Feast
British writer, Lawrence Norfolk on his new novel of historical fiction and how his desire to write about love and need relates to his epicurean tale of appetite and hunger.
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Robert Hass: What Light Can Do
Former US Poet Laureate, Robert Hass explores certain obsessions in his first collection of essays.
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Junot Diaz: This Is How You Lose Her
Our master of seductive street-slang on seduction and its relation to fiction. Can a writer seduce you? Junot Daz describes what he calls "the shock of representation."
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Michael Chabon: Telegraph Avenue
In his new novel, how did Michael Chabon dare to speak for black characters and black neighborhoods? Is this novel audacious and usurping? His answers may surprise you.
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Joshua Cohen: Four New Messages
The prolific young writer talks about his new book, as well as Internet culture, language and fiction.
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Neal Stephenson: Some Remarks
Neal Stephenson, a sort of contemporary Dickens (from Seattle,) talks about essays and other writing; science fiction and mainstream literature.
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Mary Ruefle: Madness, Rack, and Honey
Mary Ruefle brings refreshment and beauty to basic instincts and, in the process, creating mystery, surprise and, well, yes, poetry.
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Time of Useful Consciousness
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 93-year-old renowned Beat generation poet and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers, on his latest adventure, a dire warning for America.
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John Irving: In One Person
Academy Award-winner John Irving returns with a compelling novel, a tormented portrait of desire and secrecy.
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Sheila Heti: How Should a Person Be?
Neo-feminist Sheila Heti on her novel and journal, a how-to book and a philosophical treatise. Heti wants to undo coherence and, in many ways, she has.
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Ben Fountain: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Pushcart and O. Henry Prize-winner Ben Fountain talks about heroes, war, and street language in his new novel.
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Cees Nooteboom: Self-Portrait of an Other
Dutch author, Cees Nooteboom discusses the translation process and his poems of myth and landscape inspired by the drawings of Berlin artist, Max Neumann.
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Susan Orlean: Rin Tin Tin-The Life and the Legend
Susan Orlean on her moving account of how an orphaned puppy from France became a Hollywood movie star and a beloved canine icon.
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Hari Kunzru: Gods Without Men
British Indian writer Hari Kunsru on his new novel that explores loss, spiritual reconnection and sacrifice.
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Adam Levin: Hot Pink
Adam Levin on how behavior, B.F. Skinner, and his own training to be a therapist influenced his wild and crazy collection of stories.
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Etgar Keret: Suddenly, A Knock on the Door
Israeli writer Etgar Keret talks about the explosive and funny stories that voyage into the fantastic in his new book.
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Peter Behrens: The O'Briens
Peter Behrens on his epic family saga, a compelling tale of Irish immigration during the first half of the twentieth century.
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Heidi Julavits: The Vanishers
Heidi Julavits on female rivalry and the psychic bonds between mothers and daughters in her imaginative new novel.
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William H. Gass: Life Sentences
Eighty-seven-year-old, William Gass discusses his new book of essays on the art of crafting words into prose.
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Krys Lee: Drifting House
Krys Lee on her collection of short stories about immigrants leading two lives: the ones they left behind, and new lives they can't quite inhabit.
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Jeanette Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could Be...
Jeanette Winterson on her new memoir that details how she survived being adopted by a dominating and wildly eccentric Pentecostal mother.
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Moshe Kasher: Kasher in the Rye
The true tale of a white boy from Oakland who became a drug addict, criminal, mental patient, and then turned 16.
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Edward St. Aubyn: The Patrick Melrose Novels (Part 2)
Edward St. Aubyn on his a five-book series, The Patrick Melrose Novels. (Part 2 of 2)
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Edward St. Aubyn: The Patrick Melrose Novels (Part 1)
Edward St. Aubyn on his a five-book series, The Patrick Melrose Novels. (Part 1 of 2)
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Ben Marcus: The Flame Alphabet
What if language turned on its human users? Ben Marcus his novel, a dark story about language and the breakdown of language.
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Jonathan Lethem and Steve Erickson: The Exegesis of...
Jonathan Lethem and Steve Erickson discuss science fiction-prophet, writer Philip K Dick.
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Edmund White: Jack Holmes and His Friend
Can a gay man and a straight man be friends? Edmund White explores the gay-straight axis in Jack Holmes His Friend.
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Ayad Akhtar: American Dervish
Ayad Akhtar on coming-of-age as a Muslim in Milwaukee. We discuss the nature of cultural understanding and misunderstanding, sexual and spiritual awakening.
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Wayne Koestenbaum: Humiliation
Most everyone has a skeleton in the closet. Wayne Koestenbaum talks about those gruesome and hideous moments most of us would rather not remember.
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Steve Erickson: These Dreams of You
Steve Erickson latest novel seeks to find a haven in the midst of our economic despair and our fears of global catastrophe.
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Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage
Leibovitz's first photo book of objects and landscapes is a triumphant array of iconic images. We talk about her opinions on light, digital imagery and distilling time.
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Ismet Prcic: Shards
This first novel follows the narrator who just happens to be named Ismet Prcic from Bosnia to America, from a radical theater group to a creative writing program.
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Dennis Cooper: The Marbled Swarm
Dennis Cooper on the inarticulate emotions that underlie the razzle-dazzle of secret corridors, lush language, brutality and desire.
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Jonathan Lethem: The Ecstasy of Influence
Autobiographical essays and Jonathan Lethem on his favorite books, spending time with James Brown and the writer's role as public intellectual.
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Peter Gizzi: Threshold Songs
This book of poetry is the product of great grief in Peter Gizzi's life: the death of his mother, his brother and his best friend...
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Paul La Farge: Luminous Airplanes
Paul La Farge on his innovation of the novel form. His new novel, though it is published between covers, only represents one third of the book. The other two-thirds...
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Stephen Greenblatt: The Swerve
The true story of the historical detective whose work uncovered the 1000 year-old poem that shook the early Christian world and marked the beginning of the Renaissance...
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Joan Didion: Blue Nights
After the deaths of husband and daughter, Joan Didion wrote the most personal and poetic book of her impressive career...
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Jeffrey Eugenides: The Marriage Plot
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides on his new novel, in which he learned to "do" character.
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W.S. Merwin: The Shadow of Sirius
A rebroadcast of an engaging conversation with our great octogenarian laureate, W.S. Merwin.
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Ann Beattie: Mrs. Nixon
With little known about Pat Nixon, Ann Beattie decided to write a novel in the form of a writer's manual, she used Mrs. Nixon as a model of how to create a character.
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Tony D'Souza: Mule
Tony D'Souza reveals the life events that led him to write a novel about a solid, middle-class kid who becomes a drug mule...
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Lawrence Weschler: Uncanny Valley
The veteran contributor to The New Yorker and McSweeney's distills his knowledge about how to structure the essay?from cultural comedies to political tragedies.
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Russell Banks: Lost Memory of Skin
The author of Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter takes breathtaking risks in exploring a morally complex story. The protagonist is a renegade and convicted sex offender...
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Harold Bloom: The Shadow of a Great Rock
We visited Harold Bloom to talk about his new book, but when you talk with Bloom, you talk about politics, poetry, teaching, aging, reading and ultimately, respect...
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Justin Torres: We the Animals
This sequence of short stories, or prose poems, or vignettes (author Justin Torres is open to all three descriptions) adds up to a little novel about an underclass family....
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Kevin Wilson: The Family Fang
Wilson's goofy, sweet-hearted first novel is about a family of performance artists. The Fang family's siblings are struggling to leave their parents behind in order to lead a normal life...
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Hector Tobar: The Barbarian Nurseries
Araceli Ramirez, the heroine of Hctor Tobar's new novel, is a nanny is accused of kidnapping her charges, when she is, in fact, taking them to their grandfather....
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John McPhee
Assembling California; The Ransom of Russian Art Essayist John McPhee talks about the essay as literature.
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Maggie Nelson: The Art of Cruelty-A Reckoning
Modern and post-modern art have gone up to a level of transgressive and theoretical border play that leave many viewers bewildered or repelled...
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Simon Reynolds: Retromania-Pop Culture's Addiction to...
The Bookworm learns about retro culture from a master of rock criticism. Simon Reynolds meditates on the aspects of global music that have led to endless recycling....
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Rikki Ducornet: Netsuke
An explorer of sensuality and violator of taboos, Rikki Ducornet allows a predatory psychoanalyst to narrate her new novel...
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Jesse Ball: The Village on Horseback, and The Curfew
Tales of romance and adventure inspire Jesse Ball's novellas and prose poems....
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Jon-Jon Goulian: The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt
At age sixteen Jon-Jon Goulian started to wear women's clothes ? he couldn't say why. At age forty he wrote this memoir to account for his fascination with androgyny...
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Art Spiegelman: MetaMaus
After twenty-five years, Art Spiegelman gathers his thoughts about his prize-winning, ground-breaking graphic novel, MetaMaus .
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Dana Spiotta: Stone Arabia
A deep and ultimately heartbreaking look at family relationships, love, identity and memory?all against the heyday of LA rock 'n' roll, new wave and punk...
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UpClose: Sapphire
WEB EXCLUSIVE! Michael Silverblatt felt challenged when Sapphire's publisher mentioned that The Kid "might not be your kind of thing..."
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Sapphire: The Kid, Part 2
The author of Push, on which the film Precious was based, has a new novel, The Kid, told from the point of view of Precious' son, Abdul...(Part 2 of 2)
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Sapphire: The Kid, Part 1
The author of Push, on which the film Precious was based, has a new novel, The Kid, told from the point of view of Precious' son, Abdul...(Part 1 of 2)
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Dora Malech: Say So
Dora Malech explores the violence of relationships...
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Chris Adrian: The Great Night
Oncologist and novelist Chris Adrian talks about how his need to tell and hear stories has helped him through his difficult work with children.
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John Sayles: A Moment in the Sun
John Sayles on how a writer gathers knowledge, the language, the unusual perspectives and the humanity to illuminate the whole arc of our history...
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- Santa Monica, CA
- Interviews, Books & Literature
- KCRW
- English
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1900 Pico Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405310-450-5183 -
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