“Right when I moved here, because I didn’t want to move here, I sought to recreate the things I loved in New York,” says LA Bushwick Book Club founder, Stacy Rock. One of those things was being part of the BBC, a monthly gathering of musicians and songwriters who perform an original song inspired by a book. Started in Bushwick, Brooklyn, by songwriter, Susan Hwang, Stacy birthed the Los Angeles chapter in her front yard as a workshop for fellow musicians to gather and create.

Rock says, “The coolest thing about it is that everyone seems to have a different way of discovering a song. Everyone picks up on something different about a book to be inspired.”

From its beginnings in 2014 in Rock’s yard, the LA BBC has migrated to Stories Books in Echo Park, and most recently to Molly Malone’s in Hollywood. February of 2020 was their last in-person show, but despite the pandemic, the LA BBC continues now in the virtual world. “It really pushes you as a writer because sometimes the book inspires you in a different way than how you would normally write a song,” says Rock. “And there’s a deadline. Having that deadline is a unique experience for many songwriters.”

The Bushwick Book Club now has several branches all over the world, including Brooklyn, Portland, Los Angeles, Seattle, Santa Barbara, New Orleans, Greenville, London and Malmö, Sweden.