Eve Babitz, if you know, you know. L.A. native, Stravinsky’s goddaughter, and someone who moved through the city’s art and literary scenes without ever really acting like she needed to be in them. She was one of the city's truest cool girls. Artist, muse, writer, party girl.
You've likely already powered through her seminal memoirs like Eve's Hollywood and Fast times, Slow Company, but now, there's even more of her writing to devour. A new, posthumously-published book is en route, so naturally it's rocketed to the top of our TBR piles. Without further ado, here's everything you need to know about it.
What is it about?
Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were) is a new collection of Eve Babitz’s correspondence, edited and annotated by Lili Anolik (who became a close friend and confidant of Babitz in her later years, as she wrote Hollywood's Eve and Didion and Babitz).
This new book will entail a collection of Eve Babitz’s unsent (and some sent) letters plus journal fragments – missives to Joan Didion, Joseph Heller, Annie Leibovitz, Paul Ruscha, Anne Rice, Steve Martin, and many others are noted to appear in it.
The book sits around her Los Angeles orbit in the 60s and 70s – Ferus Gallery, music, film, the Didion/Dunne circle, all of that. But it’s really just her talking to people as things are happening, in her usual delicious, un-smoothed-out manner.
When is it being published?
The book will be published on 23 June 2026, via New York Review Books in both paperback and as an e-book.
Who is Lili Anolik?
Lili Anolik is Babitz’s biographer and the editor of this collection. She also adds commentary and notes throughout, which basically guide you through the context without killing the pace.
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