Rachel Kushner, Marisa Silver on being L.A. writing buddies [video]

At the L.A. Times Festival of Books, novelists Marisa Silver (“Mary Coin�) and Rachel Kushner (“The Flamethrowers�) sat down to speak with book critic David Ulin.

Silver and Kushner are good friends, and they talked about being “writing buddies� as well as the influence of living in the West on their writing life. Silver’s new novel, “Mary Coin,� imagines the life of a woman, living in a California coastal valley town during the Great Depression, who was immortalized in a famous Dorothea Lange photo of a migrant farmworker’s family. Silver, who grew up in New York, says moving to L.A. was like being a tourist in a foreign country. “You come to a place you don’t know and have to figure out from the ground up.�

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Kushner notes that L.A.’s spaciousness and privacy helps her as a writer. She also appreciates “being an outsider from the epicenter of the art world and publishing world.�

In honor of our new interactive map of literary L.A., both Kushner and Silver talked about their favorite Los Angeles-based writers, including Nathanael West and his classic “Miss Lonelyhearts.�

For more chat with the two authors, click on the video above.