“For writers, UCLA is new territory - beautiful, with a brilliant film school. “Posh East Coast schools are over-familiar,” he says. Estleman - whose mild-mannered UCLA film professor-turned-sleuth, “Valentino,” returns in an eighth mystery, “Vamp,” in 2023 - utilizing the campus as a setting is an opportunity to play between his more hard-boiled detective stories. “It is surprising more writers have not yet investigated UCLA.”įor Loren D. “I see UCLA from an outsider’s perspective, with a narrator who finds it both incomprehensible and infuriating, yet extraordinary,” Zink says. Her latest novel, “Avalon,” published last May, tracks a Torrance teen’s hilarious and heartbreaking entanglements with student Bruins. UCLA stands for what a lot of Los Angeles is, which opens doors for a writer,” says Nell Zink, a National Book Award nominee. “When I came to create a campus, there was no choice. (As if to confirm the point, Isherwood left his body to UCLA for medical research upon his death in 1986.) Frederick Kohner, a Jew who fled the Nazis in the 1930s, created an alternative persona for himself as a fictional UCLA professor when he introduced the world to California’s surf culture in the “Gidget” novels, which were later made into movies and ABC’s first color television series.īut the literary spotlight on UCLA did not brighten considerably until the last few years, when more novelists found stories to tell here. The famed novelist Christopher Isherwood did not name the university in his semi-autobiographical “A Single Man,” but its geography strongly hints that the main character’s lover studied theater arts here. UCLA’s appearances between hard covers have often been under cover. Sometimes bodies turn up in Westwood at a disturbing rate in other tales, UCLA is an aspiration, a life goal or a hero’s quest, in stories that reveal what UCLA represents to people beyond California, and what Bruins bring uniquely to the world. There are stories of evil spirits, immigrant tales both grim and uplifting, personal crises and dark comedies. (For capsule reviews of some recent UCLA-centric fiction, scroll down.) Writers are bringing a fresh eye to whodunnits, family sagas, magical realism and other emotions inspired by the campus, in offerings as diverse as UCLA itself. Television scriptwriters have also spun gold from the rolling green campus, adding authentic detail to such shows as “Modern Family” and “Parks and Recreation.” It’s taken more time for novelists to find inspiration in Westwood, but a recent flood of UCLA-centric fiction suggests that day may have arrived. Royce Hall alone has appeared in dozens of comedy and horror movies, as well as in thoughtful biopics ranging from “The Jackie Robinson Story” in 1950 to “Steve Jobs” in 2013. UCLA has long inspired storytelling in movies.

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