David Kipen is an author, critic, broadcaster, arts administrator and founder of Libros Schmibros, a non-profit lending library in Boyle Heights, California. He is the former literature director of the National Endowment for the Arts. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared widely, and he is most recently author of the collection, Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters 1542 to 2018. His advocacy on behalf of a Federal Writers’ Project has led to its introduction as proposed legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.