Wendy Werris worked at some of the most cherished and long-vanished Los Angeles bookstores, starting at Pickwick Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard, where Susan Sontag developed her love for books on forays from the Valley 'burbs. Werris then went to Hunter's in Beverly Hills and Papa Bach in Santa Monica West Los Angeles. She became a publisher's rep, an author escort for many of the top writers to come through L.A., and the photographer for Michael Connelly and others. She has now written a memoir, An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books, that Josh Getlin calls in today's Times "an unabashed love letter to literary Los Angeles."

She writes humorously of her boozy one-night stand with counterculture poet Richard Brautigan. She feels helpless anger when her father, Snag Werris, once a TV writer for Jackie Gleason, can no longer find work. In the most devastating segment, she describes the trauma of her 1981 rape in Los Angeles and her long journey toward healing.

"So what's your book about?" a young publicist at the SCBA banquet asked brightly, as Werris, 56, sat down to dine on a recent Saturday at the Biltmore Hotel. "How would you describe it?" The author seemed momentarily stumped. She had spent years persuading book merchants to buy books by others, on the strength of a snappy sales pitch. But how do you condense your own life into a pitch?

She has a blog to help her with that.

Photo: John Smart