Thursday, March 12, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, _Stock Photo_ mines the significance of the stock photo in our everyday lives, from the ads and websites we browse, to the menus and memes that we consume. Through interviews with stock photography experts, photographers, models, consumers, and other stakeholders, Simona Supekar explores the evolution of the industry by tracing the creation of a stock photo from concept to usage while highlighting significant historical moments. Supekar weaves in her own experiences as a keyworder for a stock photography company while reckoning with her Asian American/South Asian identity in a post-9/11 world. _Stock Photo_ also addresses how these images have the power to shape our perceptions about race, class/caste, gender, ability, and more, thus underscoring the importance of representation even in something as innocuous as a stock photo. _Ballot_ examines the psychological, cultural, and political significance of voting in an increasingly anti-voting climate. Armed with her personal experiences as a poll worker, electoral organizer, and activist, Anjali Enjeti unspools a timely narrative about the precarious state of the ballot during one of the most tumultuous political eras in US history, and recounts the astonishing events leading up to the 2024 presidential election. Enjeti lays out the growing challenges for voters in battleground states, where rightwing legislatures have introduced staggering numbers of voter suppression bills and redrawn district lines, all to disenfranchise as many Black and other marginalized voters as possible. As her account of the history and stakes of election integrity shows, the aftershocks of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021 have manifested most egregiously on the four corners of the ballot. **Simona Supekar** teaches English and Creative Writing in the Los Angeles area. Her writing has appeared in _The Atlantic_ and the _Los Angeles Review of Books,_ and she was a 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction finalist for her novel manuscript. **Anjali Enjeti** is the award-winning author of _The Parted Earth_ and _Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change_. Her third book, _Ballot_, describes voting and voting rights from her perspective as a Georgia voter, poll worker, and electoral organizer, who has volunteered for the campaigns of Jon Ossoff, Stacey Abrams, Reverend Raphael Warnock, and others. Her writing has also appeared in the _Los Angeles Times_, _Boston Globe_, _Harper's Bazaar_, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing in the MFA programs at Antioch University in Los Angeles and Reinhardt University in Waleska, Georgia. **Tanzila Ahmed** is a political strategist, storyteller, and artist based in Los Angeles. She creates at the intersection of counternarratives and culture-shifting as a South Asian American Muslim 2nd-gen woman. She’s turned out over 500,000 Asian American voters, recorded her #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast at the White House and makes #MuslimVDay cards annually. Her essays are published in the anthologies _Pretty Bitches, Whiter, Good Girls Marry Doctors, Love Inshallah_**,** and numerous online publications. In Spring 2019 she was UCLA’s Activist-in-Residence at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy and in 2016 received an award from President Obama’s White House as a Champion of Change in Art and Storytelling**.**