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 underscored 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 Memories of MK-ULTRA by Bill Yarborough, which is being showcased in the Book Gallery. A deeply compelling and reflective narrative, Yarborough’s latest work taps into the shadows of history, offering readers a gripping and unsettling exploration of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program and its enduring impacts on those it touched.
Author Bill Yarborough’s debut novel, Memories of MK-ULTRA, is inspired by experiences from his early childhood, during which he, along with his brother and sister, underwent experiments as part of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA mind control program. As a result of his traumatic childhood, Bill engaged in a long healing journey, employing a wide range of traditional and energetic techniques. He is currently working on a sequel to his first novel and co-authoring a novella with his sister. Two short story anthologies have been published works by Bill.
Bill lives with his wife, Inge, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before retiring, he worked in the financial industry and served as board president for two non-profits. Because of their interest in healing, Bill and Inge are both certified hypnotherapists, EFT practitioners, and Reiki Masters. They offer EFT (also known as tapping) coaching services and are co-authoring an upcoming book on EFT Circles. Bill also co-authored a series of emotional health articles for The Diablo Gazette Magazine. For more information about Bill’s writings and the EFT coaching services he and Inge offer, visit billyarborough.com.
Memories of MK-ULTRA is a work of fiction inspired by actual events. The CIA operated a mind-control program in the 1950s called MK-ULTRA, which included 149 subprojects carried out at over 80 institutions. The program’s broad aim was to develop mind control techniques, perfect interrogation methods, and condition CIA agents not to disclose secrets. MK-ULTRA used psychedelic drugs, electroshock, hypnosis, psychological assault, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture. It experimented on both American and foreign citizens, such as hospital patients, prisoners, college and university students, and other unwitting adults—often without their consent. The program also experimented on children.
Bill believes that, during the summer of 1958, his sister, brother, and he were subjected to the MK-ULTRA program at the ages of eight, two, and four, respectively. They repressed their memories of these events for over 25 years, but beginning in the late 1980s, they began to recall the buried past. Due to their young age and the trauma and drug experiments they endured, they cannot be certain of all the memories—hence, it’s a novel.
However, they independently recalled several common memories, which fit a pattern corroborated by well-researched MK-ULTRA books, major media articles, and witness testimonies presented to the Church Committee of the U.S. Senate in the 1970s and to the President’s Committee on Radiation in the 1990s.
Sometimes, paranormal events accompanied their recollections, as well as experiences involving non-ordinary reality—perhaps triggered by the extreme trauma and drugs used in MK-ULTRA. For more extensive information on MK-ULTRA, visit his website at billyarborough.com.
Additionally, a Hollywood movie script for Memories of MK-ULTRA by Bill Yarborough has been released to support the book’s qualification for a Hollywood screen adaptation. As per the movie script, it presents a compelling and chilling exploration of a dark chapter in American history through the eyes of its youngest victims. The story’s concept is its strongest asset, offering a unique perspective on the infamous CIA mind control program that has the potential to captivate audiences and spark important conversations about government overreach, the lasting impacts of trauma, and the complexities of post-war international relations.
Watch the video trailer below:
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