PattMorrison.com . Home of Rio L.A., Tales from the Los Angeles River

Welcome to the online home of award-winning journalist, author and commentator Patt Morrison. You're invited to plug in to Patt's vibrant, busy, absurd and beautiful L.A. Connect here with her columns and stories. Read an excerpt from her best-selling book and order it from one of her favorite local bookstores. See where Patt’s been lately — and where she’s headed next. Sign up for e-mail updates and go along for the ride!

Visit the bookstore.Take a trip into the dark heart of Los Angeles — and Beverly Hills — in Los Angeles Noir and Patt's short story in that anthology, “Morocco junction 90210” About secrets and death in Beverly Hills. Critics loved the book and one said of Patt, "Her skill in crafting vivid similies is remarkable.” And dive into Rio LA, Tales from the Los Angeles River, honored in 2002 as the best nonfiction book by the Southern California Booksellers’ Association. “Nobody knows Los Angeles without knowing its river,” says Joan Didion. “This wonderful book goes straight to the spirit of the place.”

Newswatch. Patt is the host of "Patt Morrison," a two-hour magazine program on 89.3 KPCC radio airing weekdays, with heft and humor on subjects from global politics to pop culture. Patt has interviewed such figures as presidential candidates John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani, writers Norman Mailer, Bill Bryson, Tony Kushner and Ray Bradbury, and Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi. The program's latest feature is 'Comedy Congress,' a Friday roundtable of political humorists assessing the latest political and social doings with witty insight.

The program also goes 'on the road,' with a recent broadcast from a new 21st-floor bar and restaurant to assess the progress of the downtown revival, with a panel of movers and shakers and questions from an audience of downtown residents. Another on-location program broadcast live in September from the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona.

You’ve also heard her on National Public Radio, like a recent segment of “Talk of the Nation” prompted by her column reviewing a traffic-school video as if it were a feature film, and another “Talk of the Nation” program featuring her column about the need for a constitutional amendment to protect the national anthem from bad siging. You can and read her columns and magazine pieces in the Los Angeles Times and many other publications. Patt's world moves fast. Check on her latest news.

Bylines. Patt gets inside the L.A. political scene in her weekly column and shares a slice of Southern California in a recent magazine piece: “Let it be said of the Los Angeles winter what Dorothy Parker said on hearing that Calvin Coolidge was dead: ‘How can they tell?’ That, of course, is what’s wonderful about winter months here. The ground may buck and ripple beneath our feet, but the weather — it’s so stable...” Read more.

Resources. Los Angeles doesn't remotely resemble “old America’s” notions of what a “real city” should look like — thankfully. The city’s personality is as kaleidoscopic as the people who live here, and as constantly changing. For an up-close view, visit Patt's resources page, where she shares her favorite LA haunts, reading list, and more.