David L. Ulin on How Walking Is an Act of “Re-Creation”

Authors in the Tent is a professionally filmed series of interviews with established and emerging authors conducted in a tent Ona Russell purchased during the pandemic. Inspired by Boccaccio’s Decameron and the 1001 Arabian Nights, the tent—elemental, ancient, and ubiquitous—serves as a magical backdrop for literary conversation.

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On the first episode of the new third season, Ona Russell talks with David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles. The book is an inquiry into the evolving landscape of Los Angeles through the soles of his feet. Throughout the discussion, Ulin and Russell discuss his relationship with Los Angeles and Joan Didion, the necessity of narrative, and finding stability in a landscape of instability.

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This series is in support of the charities Tents-4-Homeless, PATH, Alpha Project, and VVSD.

Ona Russell holds a PhD in literature from UC San Diego where she also taught for many years. She is author of three award-winning historical mysteries and the recently released Son of Nothingness: A Novel of Appearances.

David L. Ulin is the author or editor of eight previous books, including The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and the Library of America’s Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is book critic, and former book editor, of the Los Angeles Times.