The 2025 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (LATFOB), held on April 26–27 at the University of Southern California (USC), was a significant cultural event that brought together a diverse array of participants and marked its 30th anniversary with a vibrant celebration of literature, culture, and community. The festival is known for attracting a large crowd each year. For instance, the 2024 festival drew over 150,000 attendees, and the 2025 event featured more than 550 writers, experts, and storytellers, along with hundreds of exhibitors.
The festival featured over 100 ticketed author events, children’s storytelling sessions, poetry readings, book signings, and more than 400 exhibitor booths. Notable participants in the 2025 festival included authors such as Stacey Abrams, Jon M. Chu, Amanda Gorman, Chelsea Handler, Ibram X. Kendi, and Rebecca Yarros, among many others. The festival’s success was also attributed to the generous involvement of volunteers who assisted with various aspects of the event, including welcoming attendees, staffing author events, and supervising book signings.
LATFOB 2025 emphasized accessibility and community involvement. General admission was free, with select programming requiring tickets. The festival’s partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs ensured that a wide range of activities were available to attendees of all ages and backgrounds, fostering a welcoming environment for literary enthusiasts and families alike.
As LATFOB celebrates three decades of literary celebration, the 2025 festival underscores the importance of storytelling in shaping culture and community. With its diverse programming and commitment to accessibility, the festival continues to be a premier event for book lovers and cultural aficionados. The success of this year’s event sets a promising precedent for future festivals, ensuring that the tradition of literary celebration will continue to thrive in Los Angeles.
LATFOB 2025 provides a unique opportunity to explore new voices, groundbreaking ideas, and thought-provoking works of art. This year, one of the most anticipated entries is “Hazardous Pay, Shirt Talk and Twenty-Four Other Stories” by Ivan Prashker, which is being showcased in the Book Gallery.
Ivan Prashker’s “Hazardous Pay, Shirt Talk, and Twenty-Four Other Stories” is a powerful, eclectic collection of short stories that span time periods, geographies, and emotional landscapes. Through vivid, often haunting prose, Prashker explores the fragility of human relationships, the weight of history, and the intimate conflicts that define our inner lives.
Each story stands alone as a complete world, yet together they form a cohesive portrait of humanity’s ongoing struggle with identity, morality, grief, and survival. From the innocence of childhood to the trauma of war, the brutality of history, and the complexities of modern family life, this collection reveals Prashker’s incredible range and literary depth.
In stories like The Doll, Prashker masterfully captures the delicate emotions of children navigating loss and change. The Minyan explores the ripple effects of tragedy and the subtleties of friendship, guilt, and cultural identity. In Hazardous Pay, the title story, Prashker takes readers into the heart of military tension, merging bureaucratic absurdity with the psychological strain of combat service.
The tonal range shifts from poignant to satirical to philosophical, but each narrative is rich in character and emotional weight. These stories delve not only into personal struggles but also into larger social and historical themes, providing a compelling and multifaceted reading experience.
Ivan Prashker’s collection is not just a book—it is an emotional odyssey through the peaks and valleys of human experience. It demands attention not through melodrama, but through its quiet, penetrating truths. Each story is a carefully crafted vignette that lingers long after the final line. For readers who value literary fiction that tackles real issues with depth and nuance, this collection is a treasure.
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