Mikel Jollett’s remarkable new memoir of a tumultuous life, Hollywood Park, is both the story of a man born into one of the country’s most infamous cults and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse; and the story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer.

Mikel is the frontman of the indie band The Airborne Toxic Event. Prior to forming the band, he graduated with honors from Stanford University. Mikel was an on-air columnist for NPR’s All Things Considered, an editor-at-large for Men’s Health and an editor at Filter magazine. His fiction has been published in McSweeney’s.

Tom Barbash is the author of the novels The Dakota Winters and The Last Good Chance and the non-fiction books On Top of the World: Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick, and 9/11; A Story of Loss and Renewal, which was a New York Times bestseller. His stories and articles have been published in Tin House, McSweeney’s, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other publications, and have been performed on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts series. He currently teaches in the MFA program at California College of the Arts. He grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives in Marin County, California.