This week’s L.A. book talks have Demi Moore, Jonathan Safran Foer and Annalee Newitz

This week’s book events focus on strategies for survival, in alternate realities, current realities and everything in between.

Hollywood star Demi Moore divulges how to persevere in her memoir, “Inside Out.” Annalee Newitz’s novel, “The Future of Another Timeline,” shows what a teenage riot girl has to do to keep afloat in a man’s world. In “We Are the Weather,” Jonathan Safran Foer suggests consuming less meat as a way to ensure the planet keeps spinning.

But if we’re talking survival skills in the wild and woolly world of publishing, then Beyond Baroque’s Small Press Book Festival will offer plenty of sustenance. A panel at the picturesque Annenberg Beach House shall provide, too: I’ll join writers Adam Popescu and David L. Ulin to discuss how to make the leap from journalism to novels.

Here are five book talks for the week ahead:

Small presses, big books

In its first annual small press book festival, Beyond Baroque presents an afternoon of Saturday workshops, performances and readings throughout the day. Local small presses will be on hand, including cosponsor Vagabond Press, Tia Chucha, Angel City Press and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as the Culver City Historical Society and Los Angeles Poetry Society.

11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturday. The Wende Museum of Cold War, 10808 Culver Blvd., Culver City. Free.

The long and winding road to publication

Adam Popescu, a New York Times contributor, will share the path to getting his novel “Nima” published; the book is about a teen Sherpa who flees a marriage and finds herself assisting a hiker on Mt. Everest. David L. Ulin, a former Times book editor, shares his experience with “Ear to the Ground” (cowritten with Paul Kolsby), his satirical sendup of 1990s Hollywood when an earthquake prediction resuscitates a dead-in-the-water script. And I’ll be talking about the journey of “Neon Green,” which kicks off with the arrival of a spaceship in suburban Chicago in 1994. All three novels were published by Los Angeles’ Unnamed Press.

6:30 p.m-8 p.m. Tuesday. Annenberg Beach House, 415 Pacific Coast Hwy. at Beach House Way, Santa Monica. Free.

Why we should eat less meat

Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals” took on animal suffering in factory farming. In his latest, “We Are the Weather,” the author who broke out with the 2002 novel “Everything Is Illuminated,” comes at the same issue through the prism of climate change. Though he acknowledges that our animal agriculture practices are just one piece of the puzzle, Foer lays out an argument for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by abstaining from meat for the first two meals of the day. At Scripps College, he’ll be in conversation with “The Big One” host and KPCC science reporter Jacob Margolis.

7 p.m.-8 p.m. Thursday. Garrison Theater, Scripps College, 241 E. 10th Street, Claremont. Free.

About Last Night, and Mo(o)re

In 1996, Demi Moore received an unprecedented $12.5 million for her role in “Striptease.” The salary earned her the derisive nickname “Gimme Moore” in the press. In truth, Moore was an early advocate for equal pay for men and women in Hollywood. In her memoir, “Inside Out,” Moore writes about the dissonance of being a high-paid actress while working through childhood trauma, addiction and raising three children. The actress, now 56, will open up about her memoir during the Live Talks Los Angeles event.

8 p.m. Thursday. Writers Guild Theater, 135 South Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills. $20-$53.

War on the timeline

Annalee Newitz’s latest novel, “The Future of Another Timeline,” involves a teenage riot girl in 1992 and an idealistic geology professor in 2022 battling against a secret cabal of men who hope to destroy time travel. In this reality so close to our own, time travel allows anyone to jump into the past and future, but the cabal wants it only for the elite. Michelle Tea (“Black Wave”) praised the book as “the mind-blowing punk feminist sci-fi time traveling thriller you’ve been waiting for.” Newitz, who founded the science fiction website io9, will be in conversation with Sean Carroll, Mindscape host, author and professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology.

7:30 p.m. Thursday. Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave. Free.