James Ellroy
James Ellroy is riveting crime writer whose own family tragedy is as captivating as his works of fiction. Ellroy's work includes novels, memoirs, screenplays, and essays; his speaking focuses on the history and social climate of Los Angeles. Read Full BiographyBooks by James Ellroy:
Blood's A Rover
"Wild and brilliant, dazzling and funny... The plotting [is] fiendish and intricate... Ellroy's descriptions of violence remain powerful and slo-mo vivid." —Los Angeles Times
See All BooksLectures & Speaking Topics
Caldron: L.A. After the War
This jazzy lecture -- spieled entirely in my alliterative, syncopated verbal style -- is a deft and hilarious recounting of post-World War II Los Angeles, replete with police scandals, baffling sex murders, political chicanery, land grabs, labor battles and witch hunts.
Film Noir: The Shadowed Inferno
This lecture is no less than a cultural history of Los Angeles and America at large from 1945 to 1960. It's bombastic, it's profane, it's full of grotesque characters from the most scrutinized genre of worldwide cinema. Bent cops, nymphos, corrupt D.A.'s, hophead jazz musicians and homosexual informants abound.
Memoir as Madness and Moral Mission
This provocative lecture is an actual how-to primer on the memoir form, as exemplified by my own two Knopf/Vintage memoirs, My Dark Places and The Hilliker Curse, as well as a treatise on the reader/writer symbiosis that results in that powerful memoir alchemy. This lecture is wild juju -- and a gassy look at my own tortured and transcendent soul!
