The city of West Hollywood invites the community to celebrate literature and local authors with its WeHo Reads literary series. In safeguarding community health during the coronavirus pandemic, the spring series will be presented virtually and streamed on the city of West Hollywood’s WeHo Arts YouTube channel at youtube.com/wehoarts.

“Creating Hollywood Chinese,” which took place on May 12, explored depictions of Chinese-Americans in Hollywood film and television and the history of discrimination faced by Asian Americans. It featured a conversation between Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Arthur Dong, who is the recipient of two GLAAD Media Awards, the Paul Monette Award and the OUT 100 Award from Out Magazine among other honors, and Charles Yu, the winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction for his book “Interior Chinatown.”

Dong’s most recent book “Hollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Feature Films,” is a chronicle of images based on more than 2,000 pieces of movie memorabilia the author collected from the time of his childhood and through the 10-year research for his Academy Award-nominated documentary “Hollywood Chinese.” The book won the Asian/Pacific American Literature Award and has been selected a Critic’s Choice by Kenneth Turan at the Los Angeles Times and one of 13 Smart Must-Read Books on Race and Hate by the Advocate.

Yu is the author of the novels “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” and “Interior Chinatown,” as well as the short-story collections “Third Class Superhero” and “Sorry Please Thank You.” His book, “Interior Chinatown,” won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction and earned the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in both fiction and nonfiction. “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” was listed in Time magazine’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2010 and the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2010. In 2007, Yu was named a Five under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation.

To view “Creating Hollywood Chinese,” visit youtube.com/wehoarts.

The final two City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Reads 2021 Spring Series events will be “Alternative Futures: The Importance of Seeing Yourself in Young Adult Literature” at 6 p.m. on May 19 and “Legacy and Lineage and the Lost Generation” at 6 p.m. on June 16. All events are free to attend. For information, visit weho.org/wehoreads.