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Lights, Secrets, Action: An Evening with Rasheed Newson

Author Talk in Recognition of LGBTQ PRIDE

This Pride Month, the MLK Jr. Memorial Library welcomes bestselling novelist and producer Rasheed Newson for a conversation about his highly anticipated new novel.

There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood — a razor-sharp, cinematic story of fame, desire, power, and the price of silence.

Glamorous, witty, and impossible to put down, There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood takes readers on a dazzling trip through the hidden queer world of Golden Age Los Angeles, where ambition, love, and survival collide behind the studio gates.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by The Nerd Daily, Queerty, She Reads, and more, the novel is Newson’s follow-up to his national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me. A Georgetown University graduate with an ID badge from every studio lot in Hollywood, Newson brings rare authenticity to the world he writes, and he also co-created and showruns Bel-Air.

Following the conversation attendees will have the opportunity to purchase a signed copy of the book from Loyalty Bookstore.

About the Author
  

Rasheed Newson is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was selected as a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. He is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. He codeveloped Bel-Air and worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series. Newson is a 2025–26 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. He currently lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.

In Conversation With

Dr. Nii-Quartelai Quartey is a storyteller with a mission to humanize the headlines. As the host of A More Perfect Union and White House Correspondent for KBLA Talk Radio, he creates space for the "teachable moments" and "cautionary tales" that define our national discourse. Whether he’s behind the mic or in the classroom, Dr. Quartey is known for his unique ability to challenge assumptions while building bridges across diverse perspectives.

A proud Ghanaian-American and Bay Area native, Nii-Quartelai’s journey has taken him from the set of The Oprah Winfrey Show to newsrooms at MSNBC, CNN, NewsNation and FOX Television. Today, he balances his media work with a deep commitment to public interest advocacy. Beyond the airwaves, he is a Journalist-in-Residence for the Black Land Loss Narrative Archive Project and the author of Kamala, The Motherland, and Me. When he isn’t producing documentaries or hosting his afternoon drivetime radio show, he is shaping the next generation of leaders as a professor at Pepperdine University. With a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership, Master’s in Social Entrepreneurship and a heart for creating social change, Dr. Quartey is particularly passionate about ensuring that as the media industry evolves with AI, the human stories—especially those of the Black community—remain at the very center of the narrative.

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