How L.A.’s writers spent their two-year pandemic

This article has been updated to include a greater diversity of voices among writers, and to acknowledge the disproportionately grave impact of the COVID pandemic on the lives of Latinx people in Los Angeles. Los Feliz mystery writer Charles Finch put fiction aside to write his 2021 memoir, “What Just Happened: Notes From a Long Year.” Highland Park journalists Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley published “Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine.” Others were forced to set aside work entirely to focus on child-rearing, healthcare and even grief, especially in L.A. communities hit hardest by the virus. In May of that long year, a coalition of writers’ organizations petitioned the L.A. City Council for emergency relief, arguing, “Our city cannot afford to leave writers behind.” Shortly after lockdown began, The Times commissioned writers’ quarantine diaries, yielding entries like novelist Anna Solomon’s: “An eight-city tour was in the works. The pandemic killed any momentum for the play and my new book, “From Our Land to Our Land.” But I’m still writing. – Luis J. Rodriguez Books Charles Yu knows the world isn’t black and white Steph Cha shares a meal and some notes on performing identity with the “Interior Chinatown” author.