Slake at the WeHo Book Fair Sunday, October 02 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Get Directions The final reader at our WEST HOLLYWOOD BOOK FAIR booth on Sunday, SAM SLOVICK, made his name as an L.A. journalist by covering Skid Row with a visceral, raw voice for the L.A. Weekly. He brought that same depth to his first piece of published fiction, “Tommy Crow,” in Slake No. 2.   Slake: Los Angeles—Tommy Crow excerpt from Tommy Crow (Slake #2):  My knees are not what they used to be. I climb carefully down the loft’s steep stairs and a drop of sweat trickles down my back. It’s just a few hours after sunup and the heat is already oppressive. In my palm, I cradle the spider I found on my pillowcase as I elbow the screen door open and set her … Stop by the Slake booth at the 10th-annual West Hollywood Book Fair this Sunday to say hi to the staff, get a head start on your holiday shopping, and catch a reading from one of our contributors. The sales table will of course be groaning under the weight of stacks of Slake, but we’ll also be selling merchandise and some of our contributors’ work. We’ll keep adding to our list of readers throughout the week. The roster so far: 10:30 a.m.: comic author, memoirist, and b-baller Owen Wiseman 11 a.m.: mystery writer and Joe Donnelly co-conspiratorHarry Shannon 11:30 a.m.: poet and rambling man Joe Lapin Noon: journalist, documentary filmmaker, and sartorial legend Hank Cherry 1 p.m.: novelist, proclaimer of truths and jungle enthusiast Joseph Mattson 2 p.m.: rock star, cocktailian, and short storyist Deborah Stoll 3 p.m.: award-winning writer and hot TV property David Schneider 4 p.m.: author, movie reviewer, and master of the gravelly voice Dave White 4:30 p.m.: journalist and short-story writer Sam Slovick...

This is a Korean Radio show called 1013 Main Street They hit me up after the Huffington Post did a feature on me. I’m talking about homelessness and the Prison Industrial Complex, which I think are among the most important American stories to tell today. [audio:http://samslovick.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Korean-Radio.mp3|titles=1013 Main...

Here’s ex-LA Weekly  editor Joe Donnelly giving me some love in print;   It Started With a Kiss: Finding Shelter Among the Stray Cats What news of a murdered girlfriend triggers A A AComments (1)By Joe Donnelly Wednesday, Dec 3 2008 Contributor 1996-2002 Deputy editor 2002-2008   excerpt: In my time as deputy editor of L.A. Weekly, I tried to do the same — to open the paper to a new generation of writers hoping to share their own weird voices with the city. New talent is the lifeblood of any paper that hopes to be as dynamic and vital as L.A. Weekly aspires to be, and theWeekly was, at the time, overdue for some new blood. So many examples come to mind, but if I had to hold one up as symbolic, it would have to be Sam Slovick and his three-part cover series on the challenges posed by Skid Row in the context of the new downtown Los Angeles. Published between December 2005 and August 2006, the pieces were sprawling, epic investigations of the pressures of life in the middle of what police chief William Bratton called “the worst social problem in America.” Slovick told his stories from the perspectives of the police, politicians and mostly the elderly and the young trying to carve out some dignity, hope and balance in an unforgiving environment. read the entire store here: LA...

Here’s a new piece on me in the Huffington post: Journalist Sam Slovick Spotlights Los Angeles Homeless Through Words, Pictures, Video It is tough to truly understand the plight of the homeless if you’ve always had a place to live. For many of us, attempting to look at the world through the eyes of the homeless would be a big step outside of our comfort zone. For Sam Slovick, a filmmaker and writer who has been chronicling the lives of Los Angeles’ homeless, interacting with the down-and-out has never been difficult. As a teenage runaway he had a drug abuse problem and was once evicted from his apartment on Skid Row for not paying rent. He developed a street sensibility that now allows him to relate to the people he meets on the street. read the entire story in the Huffington Post...

Here’s me on Off Ramp with John Rabe talking about Tommy Crow, the story I  Published in SLAKE that was banned by the oppressive Christian print mafia in the Bible Belt; click below to listen to the broadcast: OFF...

Here’s a piece about PAVEMENT from Alissa Walker at GOOD. I did a story for GOOD about homelessness in LA called Welcome to Los Angeles and followed up with a 5 part doc series called On Skid Row. Kenneth Cole’s Awearness blog sponsored it and MySpace blasted it on thieor homepage for a month so it got a lot of attention. LINK TV, Hidden Los Angeles and others picked it up so it got a lot of attention. A lot of kids from around the world felt compelled to take action after they saw it and contacted me. Some of them did bake sales at their schools and donated the profits to School on Wheels and other enlightened philanthropies. Some wrote stories for their school papers and stuff like that. While most of us in Southern California stayed inside during the latest bout of unseasonably cold rain, Sam Slovick spent last weekend under a tarp. “I was with a lost tribe of homeless people in the Valley, a mother and son,” he says. “They were shaking in a puddle, chilled to the bone. The police continually harass them. There was a guy with a bloody hole in his head, and stitches, trying to get a fork from his mouth to a styrofoam plate.” A writer and filmmaker, Slovick thinks it’s important that people learn about Los Angeles’ unglamorous side, too. His new series, Pavement, explores ignored communities across the city. “These are notes from the underclass and the opportunity for us all to take a look,” he says. “If we’re open to it.” Slovick has been giving a “voice to the voiceless” for years, covering underserved Los Angeles communities for magazines and newspapers, and producing GOOD’s series on Skid Row, “Welcome to Los Angeles,” in 2007. He may...