David Kipen founded and helps run the Libros Schmibros Lending Library at 1711 E. First Street on Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights, where his family used to live. He has been the book editor and critic of the San Francisco Chronicle and director of literature at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he developed and ran The Big Read initiative. David is the author of The Schreiber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film History (Melville House, 2006) and translator of Cervantes’ The Dialogue of the Dogs (Melville House, 2009), and he wrote the introductions to [this spring’s ] the republished WPA guides to California, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco (UC Press). He owes his book Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries, Letters, and Other Ephemera to Modern Library in January of 2015, and teaches writing at UCLA.