William Loving, a Pasadena resident and former newspaper journalist, will discuss and sign his third novel, Fells Point, at Vroman’s Bookstore on Thursday, June 25, 2026, at 7 p.m.
He will appear in conversation with Los Angeles novelist Ivy Pochoda. The novel, published June 9 by Rare Bird Books, is set in Baltimore — the city where Loving was raised — though he now lives in Pasadena.
According to the publisher’s description, Fells Point follows Daniel Doyle Jr., a middle-aged corporate communications worker in Baltimore who is living under the shadow of a congenital heart defect. Doyle sets out to see his city clearly for the first time, building a bucket list of Baltimore landmarks, then comes to believe a stranger is following him. Rare Bird Books calls the book a “noir-tinged meditation on memory, mortality, and the search for purpose.”
It is Loving’s third novel. His debut, City of Angles, was published in 2020 by Heliotrope Books, followed by Blue Earth River in 2025. Before turning to fiction, Loving worked as a journalist at the Los Angeles Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where, the Vroman’s event description says, he covered city life, politics and culture.
He has drawn on Southern California before. Of his debut, set partly among Los Angeles’s homeless population, Loving said in a 2020 interview with the Los Angeles Downtown News: “The original idea for the novel actually came from seeing homeless people on the streets of Pasadena.”
The pairing with Pochoda has its own history. When City of Angles came out in 2020, Pochoda praised it in a jacket blurb, writing that Loving “turns a compassionate and comic eye on the downtrodden.” Pochoda is the author of novels including Sing Her Down, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Wonder Valley, which won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the University of California, Riverside–Palm Desert low-residency master’s program.
The appearance is part of the regular author programming at Vroman’s, which was founded in 1894 and which news-media accounts have described as the oldest and largest independent bookstore in Southern California. The store says it hosts more than 400 free community events a year.
Vroman’s Bookstore is at 695 E. Colorado Blvd. As of its current listing, the store presents the event at 7 p.m. on June 25, and the listing shows no ticket requirement. Details are posted on the store’s event page at vromansbookstore.com, and the store can be reached at (626) 449-5320.
Fells Point went on sale June 9. Loving’s next stop is the conversation with the novelist who praised his debut, in the city where he now lives.
William Loving — Fells Point (with Ivy Pochoda) | Thursday, June 25, 2026, 7:00 p.m. | 🔗 https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-06-25/william-loving-ivy-pochoda
