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before they break up. T Coraghessan Boyle, who teaches at USC, is one of the region’s most prolific authors of novels and short stories. The Tortilla Curtain (1995) is one of his notable SoCal tales. Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream (2007) is Sam Quinones’ book of short stories of Mexican migration to the US. Peter Lefcourt is a former Hollywood type who now writes satirical novels about the Industry, including The Deal (2001) and The Manhattan Beach Project (2005). And the prolific Michael Connelly (a former crime writer for the LA Times) continues the city’s pulp fiction tradition with novels about LAPD detective Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch, the latest being The Overlook (2007).

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Douglas Coupland set the culture-defining Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991) in bungalows in Palm Springs. In it, he also coined the term McJob.

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OUTSIDE LA

San Diego novelist Joseph Wambaugh draws on his own experience as a detective to craft crime-fiction novels such as Floaters (1996), which centers on the 1995 America’s Cup race. Abigail Padgett, also from San Diego, writes engaging mysteries that weave together themes of Native American culture, mental illness and the SoCal desert. Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Millhone mystery series and the alphabet mystery series (A is for Alibi, et al) sets her novels in Santa Barbara, though in the books it’s called Santa Theresa.

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To learn more about LA’s literary scene, read the Los Angeles Times book review or listen to ‘Bookworm,’ a weekly segment on radio station KCRW (www.kcrw.com).

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OTHER IMPORTANT SOCAL AUTHORS

Aimee Bender – Willful Creatures (2006), The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1988)

Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles (1950), Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Jonathan Kirsch – The Harlot by the Side of the Road (1998), A History of the End of the World (2006)

Martin J Smith – Straw Men (2001), Oops (2006)

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Visual Arts

In 2006 Paris’ Pompidou Center hosted an exhibition that called Los Angeles an ‘Artistic Capital,’ a designation that may have surprised folks who haven’t spent time here. New York may be the nation’s largest art market, but much of the art in that market is made right here. Large art colonies have sprung up around Downtown LA, and there are burgeoning gallery scenes there and in LA’s Chinatown, as well as in Santa Monica and Culver City.

California Institute of Arts (Cal Arts), in the northern LA county suburb of Valencia, is one of the art world’s premier schools. Heavy hitters including Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Jonathan Borofsky, Judy Chicago and Roy Lichtenstein have taught there.

For museum-goers, SoCal offers a wealth of opportunities. In Los Amgeles alone, the Getty Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Museum of Contemporary Art are world-class venues that keep evolving; the Getty opened the Getty Villa in 2006 to showcase its classical collection, and at the time of writing LACMA planned to open the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in 2008, housing the renowned collection of local real estate magnate and philanthropist Eli Broad. Other unique venues include the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach (also recently expanded) and the Hammer Museum in the Westwood district of Los Angeles.

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To find galleries, museums, fine-art exhibition spaces and calendars of upcoming shows throughout SoCal, check out ArtScene at www.artscenecal.com.

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San Diego, too, has many fine museums, many within easy walking distance inside Balboa Park. In Orange County, there’s a growing art scene in Santa Ana, home of the Bowers Museum, while in the longstanding artist colony of Laguna Beach, the Pageant of the Masters has just celebrated its 75th anniversary. Held each July and August as part of the city’s Festival of the Arts, it’s got to be seen to be believed; local residents dress in costume to recreate famous paintings, with minutely detailed sets as their backdrop.

Theater

SoCal has a large and active theater scene. The Ahmanson Theater and Mark