I came to 826 in a lovely, roundabout way, and here I have stayed. A friend who always knows everything that is going on in Los Angeles at any given moment emailed me that the great Walter Moseley would be reading in Venice, perhaps five-hundred yards from my house. I was thrilled and stopped for a moment bashing this city’s lack of culture and cultural events. Though I had to round up a babysitter I was fairly determined to attend.

The next night at the Grove’s Barnes & Noble I saw a man in line in front of me. A black man wearing a fedora. Walter Moseley is the only black man I know who wears a fedora and sure enough it was him. We hadn’t seen each other in over a year and it is always a thrill to reconnect with him. I promised him that I would find a damn sitter and attend his reading the following night. Kismet, it seemed, was dictating my actions.

I made it, a little late, so I heard him reading as I mounted the stairs. As soon as I saw the room I smiled. What a lovely space to grow brains in. Walter was terrific as always and yet the highlight of the night for me was when I found out what 826 really is. Especially in a city that so worships the moving image, to find a place where the word rules and where kids are guided to express themselves through words has done great things to my soul.

I returned for the Jonathan Safran Foer reading and returned again for the Arianna Huffington/Anna Deveare Smith dialogue and I can’t wait to return again. We all need this space in our lives and in the lives of the children it touches. We all need to do everything we can to insure its survival.

Trey Ellis is a novelist and screenwriter living in Venice. His first novel, Platitudes, was recently reissued by Northeastern University Press.