#PodcastersForJustice The bestselling, award-winning novelist, Aris Janigian, had a candid conversation with me about the recently "mandated dystopia," his circuitous path to bestselling author, the city as muse, and what it means to be a transgressive writer. “As a cognitive social psychologist, I can tell you without any hesitation that the human mind really is built for deception.” – Aris Janigian The author of six novels (all without traditional representation), critics hailed his 2012 novel This Angelic Land – set during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots – as "today's necessary book," and his novel Waiting for Lipchitz at Chateau Marmont, spent 17 weeks on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list. Janigian holds a PhD in psychology from the Claremont Graduate School and was formerly Senior Professor of Humanities at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He was a finalist for Stanford University's William Saroyan Fiction Prize and has been a contributing writer to West, the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine. The second book of Janigian's Waiting for... trilogy, Waiting for Sophia at Shutters on the Beach, "... is a satirical mashup of Nabokov's Lolita and Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground." The book has be described as "... an unflinching, deadly serious ... tragic-comic view of male sexuality in the era of #metoo." *Note: This interview was recorded at the beginning of May, 2020. Please help us learn more about you by completing this short 7-question survey If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. In this file Aris Janigian and I discussed: The life of a lazy author Why graduate school corrupts good writers Wisdom on the importance of mentorship How the cruel mistress of Los Angeles plays a character in his works The self-censorship of academia And why life is the best teacher Show Notes: ArisJanigian.com Waiting for Sophia at Shutters on the Beach by Aris Janigian [Amazon] “When the Lunatics Run the Asylum: On Aris Janigian’s “Waiting for Sophia at Shutters on the Beach” - LA Review of Books "Governors should trust mayors and county officials on reopening. California shows why." - Washington Post Aris Janigian on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter #PodcastersForJustice Anti-racism Resources Donate to any of the following: Minnesota Freedom Fund Black Visions Collective Campaign Zero Black Lives Matter Podcasts to subscribe to: 1619 (New York Times) About Race Code Switch (NPR) Intersectionality Matters! hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast Pod For The Cause (from The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights) Pod Save the People (Crooked Media) Seeing White Articles to read: "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge" | Los Angeles Times 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice