Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Thursday, April 13. I’m Vanessa Franko, an assistant editor on the audience engagement team, and I’m making sure I am stocked up with sunscreen for the next few weeks.
Even though festival season is practically year-round in Southern California, April is when things kick into high gear. Two major events are happening over the next two weekends: the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
When I first started covering Coachella back in 2007, I had heard of the fest as a music fan but it had not yet become the global brand it is today. (It would still be another year before the festival made headlines for Prince covering Radiohead and Roger Waters sending off a giant piginto the nighttime desert sky.)
While 125,000 or so people will gather under the sun at the Empire Polo Club in Indio from Friday through Sunday — and again the following weekend for an encore — millions more will tune in via YouTube. In 2019, YouTube said the stream had 82.9 million live views the first weekend alone.
But one thing you won’t get from the YouTube feed is the feeling of the bass thumping through your body at the Sahara Tent. Writer August Brown took a deep dive into the beloved stage where Daft Punk built its pyramid, where Madonna returned to her club roots, and where the likes of Avicii, Skrillex, Calvin Harris and Rihanna broke pop-EDM wide open.
The Times will have a team on the ground, reporting live as Bad Bunny, Blackpink and Frank Ocean make history as Coachella’s first slate of headliners of color. And our music team also compiled their picks for 12 must-see artists, whether you’re watching in person or at home.
While Coachella is a destination for music fans, the L.A. Times Festival of Books is for lovers of the written word.
Ahead of the Festival of Books, we asked 95 writers to tell us the written works that define Los Angeles. The result is the Ultimate L.A. Bookshelf project, which includes 110 pieces covering everything from crime and mysteries to the best memoirs and essays.
Among their more than 500 picks were a few standouts that received multiple mentions. We’ve compiled the best of the best, the 26 works they recommended again and again.
Festivities kick off with the 43rd annual L.A. Times Book Prizes on April 21 before two days of panel discussions on the University of Southern California campus April 22 and 23.
The lineup includes actors such as Matthew Perry, Laura Dern and Diane Ladd speaking as well as Stacey Abrams, Katie Porter, Lois Lowry, Gabrielle Zevin, Michael Connelly and James Elroy.
In addition to those guests and many other distinguished authors, L.A. Times staff will be on hand to discuss coverage and answer questions at our Ask a Reporter stage.
Beyond our website, you can follow our coverage of both events live on the L.A. Times and L.A. Times Entertainment Instagram accounts.
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