The Stay Home and
Read a Book Ball

Gabrielle Zevin | Annual Chair

Read Gabrielle Zevin’s Chair letter here. 

Gabrielle Zevin is an internationally bestselling novelist, whose books have been translated into forty languages. 

Her most recent novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, has spent almost a year on the New York Times Best Seller List, and was a selection of the Tonight Show’s Fallon Book Club. Tomorrow was Amazon’s #1 Book of the Year, Time’s #1 Book of the Year, the winner of both the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction and the Book of the Month Club’s Book of the Year, and was named a best book of the year by more than two dozen publications, including the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Time, the New York Times, Slate, the Hollywood Reporter, and Oprah Daily. Following a twenty-five-bidder auction, the feature film rights were acquired by Paramount.  

Her other novels include the New York Times-bestselling The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Young Jane Young, and the children’s book, Elsewhere, which was on Time’s 2021 list of the 100 Best YA Novels of All-Time.  She is the screenwriter of the feature film adaptation of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, which can now be seen on Hulu, and Conversations with Other Women for which she received an Independent Spirit Award Nomination for Best First Screenplay. Both Conversations and A.J. Fikry were directed by her frequent creative collaborator, Hans Canosa. Zevin’s essay and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, Modern Love and All Things Considered, and she began her writing career, at age fourteen, as a music critic for the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. Zevin is a graduate of Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.
Author photo credit: Hans Canosa

Rachel Bloom | Honorary Chair

“No heels or Spanx necessary?! I’m in!”

Rachel Bloom is best known as the co-creator and star of the CW musical dramedy, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015-2019). For her performance as “Rebecca Bunch,” Rachel won the 2016 Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Series – Musical or Comedy, the 2016 Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actress in a TV Comedy, and the 2016 TCA Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy. In 2019, she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics alongside songwriting partners Jack Dolgen and the late Adam Schlesinger for, Antidepressants Are So Not a Big Deal. Learn more here. 

Alejandra Campoverdi | Honorary Chair

“How often do you get to #StayHomeandRead while also raising money for free programming at the Los Angeles Public Library? The Stay Home and Read a Book Ball is the pajama party of my dreams!”

Alejandra Campoverdi is a nationally recognized women’s health advocate, founder, producer, and former White House aide to President Obama. Her memoir, First Gen was released in 2023 and was a national best-seller. She produced and appeared in the celebrated PBS documentary Inheritance, founded the Latinos & BRCA awareness initiative in partnership with Penn Medicine’s Basser Center, and served as the first White House deputy director of Hispanic media. Alejandra is currently on the boards of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, the Friends of the National Museum of the American Latino, and the California Community Foundation. She holds a master in public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California.

Santi Elijah Holley | Honorary Chair

“One thing writers and readers share is a love for libraries. Another thing we share is a love for staying home with a good book. Cheers to the Los Angeles Public Library for pairing our two common loves in support of a great cause!” 

Santi Elijah Holley is an award-winning journalist and the author of An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created. His writing has appeared in numerous national and international outlets, including The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Time, and The Washington Post. He lives in Los Angeles.

Yiyun Li | Honorary Chair

“This must be the most splendid ball that ever happens in Los Angeles! Stay home and read a book and feel connected to many other ball-goers? Yes yes yes!”

Yiyun Li is the author of eleven books, including Wednesday’s Child, The Book of Goose, Where Reasons End, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life, and Tolstoy Together, 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Li’s honors and awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Windham Campbell Prize, a 2023 International Writer Award from the Royal Society of Literature, the 2021 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Benjamin H. Dank Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Award, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award for fiction, and others. She is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, an independent film directed by Wayne Wang and adapted by Li from her short story, was the winner of Golden Shell for best film, 55th San Sebastian International Film Festival.