Many/Most Events Are Online/Virtual DUE TO CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS
45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival via UC Riverside – Online Event
Join the 45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival of Events: February 12 and 14-18, 2022. This series of events is online, free and open to the public, (captioned & ASL translated), and you may register at site link or on any session time listed there.
DAY 2 of 6, EVENTS:
Session 1: 3 pm PST:
Edgar Gomez is the author of High Risk Homosexual: A Memoir, which follows a touching and often hilarious spiral-like path to embracing his gay, Latinx identity against a culture of machismo. This is a crackling, witty and poignant debut.
Daniel Olivas is the author most recently of How to Date a Flying Mexican, New and Collected Stories (University of Nevada Press, 2022). He is the author of ten books and editor of two anthologies, as well as plays produced for the stage and readings by Playwrights’ Arena, Circle X Theatre Company, and The Road Theatre Company. He has written for many publications, including the New York Times, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, LARB, La Bloga, BOMB, and others
Steve Erickson is the author of ten novels, and has written two books about American politics and popular culture, Leap Year and American Nomad. He has also written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Salon, and other publications and journals. He was editor and co-founder of Black Clock literary journal, and is now film/TV critic for Los Angeles magazine and a Distinguished Professor at UC Riverside.
Session 2: 5 pm PST:
Jamaica Heolimeleikatani Osorio is the author of Remembering Our Intimacies (University of Minnesota Press, 2021). She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule. Dr. Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli artist and scholar and an Assistant Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Elisa Washuta is the author most recently of White Magic (Tin House, 2022), long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Award, a collection of intertwined essays about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural aspects of her own life to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule. She is a member of the Cowlitz Indian tribe and an assistant professor of creative writing at the Ohio State University.
Session 3: 6:30 pm PST
Anthony Cody is the author most recently of the 2021 American Book Award winning Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020). He has a lineage in both the Bracero Program and the Dust Bowl and his poetry has appeared widely. He has taught eco-poetry at Fresno State University, and read and led workshops across the country. He continues to run the Laureate Lab Studio with Juan Felipe Herrera at Fresno State, and serves as poetry editor for Noemi Press and a poetry editor for Omnidawn.
Carribean Fragoza is a passionate writer, journalist, and artist from South El Monte, and is the author most recently of the collection Eat the Mouth that Feeds You (City Lights), and is also co-editor of East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte. She is also founder and co-director of the South El Monte Art Posse (SEMAP), a multi-disciplinary arts collective.
Sesschu Foster taught composition and literature in East L.A. for over 20 years, and also taught at the University of Iowa, CalArts and UC Santa Cruz. His most recent books are City of the Future, poetry; World Ball Notebook, poetry; and Atomik Aztex, a novel. His has won numerous literary awards, including the Paterson Poetry Prize for City Terrace Field Manual. He is based in Alhambra, CA.
NOTE: See site for event link and details.
Where: UC Riverside Writers Week – Online Event
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 3 pm – 8 pm (Day 2 of 6)
Address: UC Riverside – Online (see site)
Website: https://writersweek.ucr.edu/schedule22
Monday Night Fiction Workshop at Beyond Baroque – Zoom Online Event
This free Monday Night Fiction Workshop led by Raquel Baker is a community writing workshop in which participants are asked to bring copies of 2-3 pages of fiction to read, and to use for critique and discussion. Registration is required.
Raquel Baker earned a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She is currently Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Studies and Transnational Literatures at CSU Channel Islands. She has published poetry and non-fiction, and done readings with the Ventura Poetry Project.
Where: Beyond Baroque – Online event (tickets at Eventbrite)
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: Zoom Online
Website: https://beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/monday-night-fiction-workshop-tickets-260446621857
45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival via UC Riverside – Online Event
Join the 45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival of Events: February 12 and 14-18, 2022. This series of events is online, free and open to the public, (captioned & ASL translated), and you may register at site link or on any session time listed there.
DAY 3 of 6, EVENTS:
Session 1: 2 pm PST:
Allison Hedge Coke is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, Director of Writers Week, and Director PI of Along the Chaparral: memorializing the enshrined/Puowaina, Advisor of Writers Resist/Poets Place Garden, and affiliated Faculty, School of Medicine, Narrative Medicine-Narrative Pathways.
Luis J. Rodriguez is the acclaimed author most recently of From Our Land to Our land: Essays, Journeys & Imaginings from a Native Xicanx Writer (Seven Stories Press), He is a novelist, memoirist, short story and children’s book writer, essayist, and community & urban peace activist, and former Los Angeles Poet Laureate. He is also founder of Tia Chucha Press, co-founder of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore, and has published 16 books of all genres. With his wife Trini he has a podcast called “The Hummingbird Cricket Hour, and is dedicated to his indigenous roots and Native American spirituality. He has now embarked on a campaign for Governor of California, among his many other endeavors.
Session 2: 3:30 pm PST: Readings by UCR MFA Candidates, Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts
Session 3: 6:30 pm PST
Cornelius Eady is the author of eight books of poetry, including Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (Putnam, 2008). His work in theatre includes a libretto for the opera Running Man, which was finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and his play Brutal Imagination, in 2002. In 1996 he was co-founder of Cave Canem, He has been a teacher for 20 years and now is a professor at Notre Dame University.
Cornelius Eady Trio is the entity in which National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize nominated poet Cornelius Eady has set his poetry to song. Guitarists Charlie Rauh & Lisa Liu join Eady to create layered and graceful arrangements to bolster his adept craftsmanship as s songwriter lyricist and poet.
Rupa Mayra is a physician, activist, artist and writer who is an Associate Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco, and the founder and executive director of the Deep Medicine Circle, a worker-directed nonprofit committed to healing the wounds of colonialism through food, medicine, story, learning and restoration. In 2021, with Raj Patel, she published Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice, which incorporates history and lines of power into our understanding of the root causes of health disparities and the rise of inflammatory diseases in industrialized places. She is also co-founder of Do No Harm Coalition, and works on the health impacts of police violence and colonialism.
Rupa & the April Fishes is a polyglot band for which Mayra is the composer and front-woman. She travels with her band to witness the impact of social structures on suffering, and her compositions defy categorization. Gil Scott Heron described it as “Liberation Music.”
NOTE: See site for individual event links and details.
Where: UC Riverside Writers Week – Online Event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 2 pm – 8 pm (Day 3 of 6)
Address: UC Riverside – Online (see site)
Website: https://writersweek.ucr.edu/schedule22
Antioch LA MFA Literary Uprising Event: 5 Writers via Two Hawks Quarterly – Online Event
Join Antioch University LA MFA Program & Two Hawks Quarterly for a Literary Uprising Reading, featuring five stellar readers:
Nina Louise is an AULA BA alum, and the author of the novel The Sea of Dead Souls.
traci kato-kiriyama is a Women Who Submit reader, and the author of Navigating With(out) Instruments – a book of poetry, micro essays and Notes to Self.
M. Kigawa is a PEN America Emerging Voices alum, and author of the poetry collection Reveries of Longing.
Leonora Simonovis is an MFA alum and author of the poetry collection Study of the Raft.
Marco Wilkinson is an MFA Faculty member, and author of the memoir Madder.
NOTE: See site for link and event details.
Where: Antioch Literary Uprising – Online event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: Antioch University LA MFA – Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/3017159221881954
At Store Meet & Greet: Stuart Gibbs Book Launch: Spy School Graphic Novel at Children’s Book World – On-Site Event
Join children’s author Stuart Gibbs to celebrate the release of his graphic novel, Spy School: The Graphic Novel!
The author will be signing CBW purchased copies of his newest book, Spy School the Graphic Novel as well as other books from his Spy School series.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and event details.
Where: Children’s Book World – On-site event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 5:30 pm
Address: 10580 ½ W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064
Angel Dominguez & Carribean Fragoza Reading via Pitzer College Literary Series – Online Event
Join the Pitzer College Literary Series for a reading by two Latinx poets and writers:
Angel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Maya descent, born in Hollywood and raised in Van Nuys by their immigrant family. Dominguez is the author of RoseSunWater (The Operating System, 2021) and Black Lavendar Milk (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015), and has published online and in print in various publications. DESGRACIADO (the collected letters) (Nightboat Books) is forthcoming in 2022.
Carribean Fragoza is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and was raised in South El Monte, CA. She co-edits UC Press’s acclaimed California cultural journal, Boom California, and is the founder of South El Monte Arts Posse, an interdisciplinary arts collective. She is the author of the collection of stories Eat the Mouth that Feeds You (City Lights, 2021) and co-edited the essay collection, East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte (Rutgers University Press) which covers over 300 years of her hometown’s history.
NOTE; See site for registration link and event details.
Where: Pitzer College – Online event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 5:30 pm PST
Address: Pitzer College – Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/619827872438336/
Gal Beckerman, with Ben Rhodes, & The Quiet Before via Book Soup – Online Event
Join us to hear author and New York Times Book Review Editor Gal Beckerman, in conversation with writer, commentator and NSA advisor to Obama, Ben Rhodes, discuss his new book, The Quiet Before.
In this book the author takes us back to the 17th century, to the correspondence that jump-started the scientific revolution, and forward through time to examine engines of social change; the petitions, the zines, and even messaging maps all show that our most defining social movements—from decolonization to feminism—were formed in quiet, closed networks that allowed a small group to incubate their ideas before broadcasting them widely.
But Facebook and Twitter are replacing these productive, private spaces, to the detriment of activists around the world. He reveals what the new social media ecosystem lacks—everything from patience to focus—and offers a recipe for growing radical ideas again. This lyrical and profound book helps us imagine a different future.
NOTE: See site for book purchase, link, and event details.
Where: Book Soup – Online event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm PST
Address: Book Soup – Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/gal-beckerman
Book Club & The Promise via Village Well Bookstore – Online Event
Join our Village Well Book Club to read and discuss the 2021 Booker Prize Winner, The Promise, by Damon Calgut.
This novel is a modern family saga written in gorgeous prose about a haunting, unmet promise. Haunted by that promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa: Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
Reunited by four funerals over three decades, the dwindling family reflects the atmosphere of its country—one of resentment, renewal, and, ultimately, hope.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Village Well Bookstore – Online event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: Village Well Bookstore – Online (see site)
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events or https://shop.villagewell.com/events/15245
Abdi Nazemian, with Sarah Enni, & The Chandler Legacies via Skylight Bookstore – Online Event
Join author, Abdi Nazemian, in conversation with Sarah Enni, to hear him discuss his book, The Chandler Legacies.
From the Stonewall Honor–winning author of Like a Love Story comes a revelatory novel about the enclosed world of privilege and silence at an elite boarding school and the unlikely group of friends who dare to challenge the status quo through their writing.
At Chandler, the elite boarding school, five teens are brought together in the Circle, a coveted writing group where life—changing friendships are born—and secrets are revealed. Their professor tells them to write their truths. But is the truth enough to change the long-standing culture of abuse at Chandler? And can their friendship survive the fallout?
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore – Online event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: Skylight – Online (see site)
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/live-crowdcast-abdi-nazemian-conversation-sarah-enni
Tuesdays at the Virtual Cobalt: Poets Series Presents: Open Reading & Kemlyn Tan Bappe – Virtual Zoom Event
The Virtual Cobalt Poets Series, presented by Rick Lupert via Zoom, will feature an Open Reading and guest poet Kemlyn Tan Bappe.
Kemlyn Tan Bappe is a native of Singapore, and an artist, writer, and special education teacher living in Phoenix, AZ who also holds a BA in Studio Art, MDIV Theology, and a MA in Special Education.
NOTE: Details and Zoom link at event link.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: http://poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/calendar.html
Da Poetry Lounge Tuesday Open Mic via Da Poetry Lounge – IG Online
Open Mic Tuesdays at Da Poetry Lounge are back! Catch us live on IG for our first Open Mic of the season and hear updates about the 2022 season.
Where: DA Poetry Lounge – IG Online
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYvULkirZCx/
Coffee Time Book Club & The Sentence, by Lousie Erdrich,at Pages Bookstore – On-site Event
Join our Coffee Time Book Club to read and discuss our selection this month, The Sentence, a novel by Louise Erdrich.
This novel asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading “with murderous attention,” must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Pages Bookstore – On-site event on Patio
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 10 am
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/coffee-time-book-club-3
45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival via UC Riverside – Online Event
Join the 45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival of Events: February 12 and 14-18, 2022. This series of events is online, free and open to the public, (captioned & ASL translated), and you may register at site link or on any session time listed there.
DAY 4 of 6, EVENTS:
Session 1: 1 pm PST: Writers Resist Event
Session 2: 3 pm PST:
Kimberly Guerro, Film/Script, is an Associate Professor of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production at UC Riverside. She is a Native American actor who works in film, TV and theatre, including Reservation Dogs and Rutherford Falls.
Kalani Queypo, Film/Script, isan actor, filmmaker, songwriter and storyteller. He’s acted in The New World, Into the West, and the Jamestown series. He wrote, directed and produced his first short film, “Ancestor Eyes” and is developing scripts of for an episodic comedy and a drama. He’s written music with Chadwick Johnson for his show “Music and Me,” and for the new play “Missing Peace,” currently in development at Native Voices Theatre in Los Angeles.
Elizabeth Frances, Film/Script, is an actress and producer noted for her countless on-camera roles in films and series, including Bad Penny in the Emmy-nominated series, Her Story. Recently, she has taken on a new role as co-producer and actor with collaborator Stacey Parshall Jensen and Through The Wilderness (Blessed, Seppuku, First Girl I Loved) on their next feature Coastin On E, currently in development.
Session 3: 6:30 pm PST
Richard Van Camp is an author, storyteller and mentorand proud member of the Dogrib (Thcho) Nation form Fort Smith, NWT, Canada. He is an internationally renowned storyteller and best-selling author. His novel, The Lesser Blessed, is now a movie with First Generation Films and premiered in September of 2012 at the Toronto International Film Festival. He is the author of five collections of short stories, six baby books, three children’s books, five comics and the author of Gather: On the Joy of Storytelling (Regina Press).
Isabella Madrigal is Director of the Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit, which seeks to empower Naïve voices telling Native stories. She has written, directed, and starred in a lay on missing murdered Indigenous women, won scholarships and awards for her work, and spoken at the United Nations—all at age seventeen. Madrigal, a Cahuilla Band of Indians tribal member, said her play, “Menil and Her Heart,” was inspired by ancient Cahuilla stories. It follows two sisters—played by Madrigal and her real life sister, Sophia Madrigal—one of whom goes missing.
Sophia Madrigal is co-founder of the Indigenous Storytelling Movement and acted in the play “Menil and Her Heart,” written by her sister, Isabella Madrigal.
NOTE: See site for individual event links and details.
Where: UC Riverside Writers Week – Online Event
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 1 pm – 8 pm (Day 4 of 6)
Address: UC Riverside – Online (see site)
Website: https://writersweek.ucr.edu/schedule22
Middle Grade Book Club/Author Event & The Circus at the End of the Sea, by Lori R. Snyder,at Pages Bookstore – On-site Author Event
Join our Middle Grade Book Club to read and discuss our selection this month, The Circus at the End of the Sea by Lori R. Snyder. The author will appear in person!
This is a vibrant and enchanting debut novel about an orphan girl who discovers a magical circus among the canals and boardwalks of Venice Beach.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Pages Bookstore – On-site Author event on Patio
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 4:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/middle-grade-book-club-2 or https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/lori-r-snyder-visits
Virtual Storytime with Joanna Ho & Eyes that Speak to the Stars via Café con Libros Bookstore – Online Event
Join us online for Virtual Storytime with Joanna Ho, author of Eyes that Speak to the Stars. The New York Times bestselling team of Joanna Ho and Doug Ho present a companion book to their acclaimed Eyes that Kiss in the Corners.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, book purchase, and event details.
Where: Café con Libros Bookstore – Online event
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 5 pm
Address: Café con LIbros – Online (see site)
Website: https://www.cafeconlibrosbk.com/events
Virtual Book Release: Adana Moriarty & Threadbare via Sims Library of Poetry – Online Event
Join us online for a Virtual Book Release event with author Adana Moriarty, who will present her book Threadbare, hosted by Ann Marie Wells.
Born in 1978 to parents finding their way through the Los Angeles music business, Adanna’s life has constantly been submerged in art. Moving to upstate New York at a young age, she attended a Waldorf/Steiner school on a small, working organic dairy farm. After a fifteen-year nursing career to a hairstylist to today, where she works as a literary publicist and web designer, Adanna makes sure her entire world revolves around literature. Adanna writes about life inspired by nature and has a deep desire to make the world a better place, one word at a time. She lives with her husband, stepsons, and daughter in the mountains of Idaho.
Guest readers include:
Ravina Wadhwani, is a Los Angeles CA-based poetess who was born and raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Ravina is the author of Yellow—a collection of poetry & prose published through World Stage Press. Ravina is active in the Community Literature Initiative (CLI) community as a faculty and alum as well as AIM4the Heart & Never Speak Long Beach.
Grace R. Reynolds is a native of the great state of New Jersey, where she was first introduced to the eerie and strange thanks to local urban legends of a devil creeping through the Pine Barrens. Since then, her curiosity with things that go bump in the night bloomed into creative expression as a dark poet, horror, and thriller fiction writer. She is the author of the debut collection, Lady of the House, released in December 2021 by Curious Corvid Publishing.
Brenda Vaca was born in Huntington Park, CA, and raised in South Whittier CA to a Mexican/Xicana family where the Apostolic and Roman Catholic traditions were hardcore influences. She is the youngest of 4 children, was educated in the local public school system, and earned her B.A. in English at UC Berkeley. Later she went on to graduate school in Berkeley earning a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in Biblical Languages from the Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union. She is the author of the debut collection of poetry, Riot of Roses. She is an admissions representative at CLI and lives in Whittier, CA.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, book purchases, and event details.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry – Online event
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 5 pm
Address: Sims Library – Online (see site)
Website: https://www.simslibraryofpoetry.org/events
Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyema, with Michael Tubbs, & The Black Agenda at Book Soup – Online Event
Join author and editor Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyema, in conversation with former Mayor of Stockton Michael Tubbs, to hear them discuss the book, The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System.
This book is a bold and urgent move towards social justice through a profound collection of essays featuring Black scholars and experts across fields of expertise to speak to the question of: What’s next for America? On the subjects of policy making, mental health, AI, climate, the future of work, the LGBTQ community, the criminal justice system, and much more. The solutions range from reparations to AI bias, to inclusive new economic policy to uplift all.
NOTE: Please see details and link at website link.
Where: Book Soup – Online Event
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Book Soup – Online (see site)
Matt Sedillo & The Three Act Poem Writers Workshop at Re/Arte Centro Literario – In-person Event
Please join our Poet-in Residence, author and Chicano political poet Matt Sedillo, to participate in his Writers Workshop: The Three Act Political Poem.
Matt Sedillo is the author of Mowing Leaves of Grass (Flowersong Press, 2018) and City on the Second Floor (Flowersong Press, 2022), and is a Chicano political activist and speaker who has performed at colleges and universities nationally and world-wide. This workshop has been taught in many educational venues.
NOTE: See site for guidelines & event details.
Where: Re/Arte centro literario – In-person Event
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Where: 2014 ½ E. Cesar Chavez Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033
Website: https://reartela.com/events%2Feventos
WEHO READS: Road to Joy: Justice and Resilience, A Journey in Poetry Reading, via City of West Hollywood – Online Event
Please join our next 2022 WEHO READS event titled “Road to Joy: Justice and Resilience/A Journey in Poetry” to celebrate Black History Month. Featured guests include:
Lynne Thompson is the 2021-2022 Poet Laureate for Los Angeles, and the author of three collections of poetry: Fretwork, Start with a Small Guitar, and Beg No Pardon. A lawyer by training, she sits on the boards of the Los Angeles Review of Books and Cave Canem, and is Chair of the Board of Trustees of Scripps College, her alma mater.
Natalie J. Graham is the Inaugural Orange County Poet Laureate and has toured nationally with her poetry collection, Begin with a Failed Body. She is Director of the Institute of Black Intellectual Innovation at Cal State Fullerton.
Lester Graves Lennon is the poetry editor for Rosebudmagazine and an investment banker whose career in public finance exceeds 40 years. His third and most recent book, Lynchings: Postcards From America, will be published in January, 2022. His sits on the board of directors of the Community of Writers and is a member of the Board of Visitors for the English Department at the University of Wisconsin. He is a past member of the board of directors for Red Hen Press and the Poetry Center at West Chester University. Then Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa credited him with the idea of a Poet Laureate for Los Angeles. He was a founding member of the Mayor’s Poet Laureate Task Force and lives with his family in the Los Angeles megalopolis.
Writing Prompts from Camari Hawkins
NOTE: See site for guidelines & event details.
Where: WEHO READS – Free Online Event
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Where: WEHO READS (see site)
Danielle J. Lindemann, with Dame Brian Moylan, & True Story via Skylight Bookstore – Online Event
Join us to hear author and sociologist Danielle J. Lindemann, in conversation with Dame Bryan Moylan (The Housewives) present and discuss her book, True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us.
Danielle J. Lindemann’s True Story is a sociological study of reality TV that explores its rise as a culture-dominating medium—and what the genre reveals about our attitudes toward race, gender, class, and sexuality.She argues that by taking reality TV seriously, we can better understand both key institutions and broad social constructs, as our programming unveils the major circuits of power that organize our lives—and the extent to which our own realities are, in fact, socially constricted.
NOTE: See site for book purchase, link, and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/live-crowdcast-danielle-j-lindemann-conversation-brian-moylan
At Skylight: Randal J. Metz, with Alex Evans, & Enchanted Strings via Skylight Bookstore – On-site Event
Join us to hear author and founder of The Puppet Company Randal J. Metz, in conversation with Executive Director and Head Puppeteer Alex Evans, present and discuss his book, Enchanted Strings: Bob Baker Marionette Theater.
Bob Baker Marionette Theater has enchanted families in Los Angeles and beyond with delightful marionette performances since 1963. Enchanted Strings captures the visual history of this palace of puppetry from Bob Baker’s earliest days to the theater’s transformation into a thriving hub of creative culture. You’ll meet the remarkable visual artists and craftspeople who worked alongside him, contributing their talents to build the theater, design the shows, and hand-craft over two thousand incredible marionettes. Archival images and ephemera provide a behind-the-scenes look at it all.
NOTE: See site for book purchase, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-randal-j-metz-presents-enchanted-strings-alex-evans
Anansi Virtual Writers Workshop at The World Stage – In-Person Event
Join this weekly community workshop founded in 1990, and following a three-part format, by joining in via Zoom every Wednesday night at 7:30 pm.
We return to the building after a 15-month, Covid-19 imposed exile, where the faithful met weekly via Zoom online. We are currently working on the process to continue to include our online community each session.
In its 30th year, the Anansi Writers Workshop is a workshop and open mic performance featuring L.A.’s freshest, most inspiring voices speaking their truth in poetry and prose.
Suggested: $5.00 Donation via PayPal: The World Stage Gallery.
NOTE: See site for further details, and any change in the schedule. Contact kaliflowers@gmial.com or call (323) 293-2451
Where: The World Stage (Eventbrite)
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 4321 Dengan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.theworldstage.org/events.html
Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop via Beyond Baroque – Zoom Online
Join Beyond Baroque’s longest running free poetry workshop via Zoom online as we welcome new and seasoned poets to share their work and provide feedback. Facilitators are rotated quarterly, and the current facilitator is Pam Ward.
Pam Ward is the author most recently of Between Good Men and No Man at All (World Stage Press, 2022). Author of two novels, Want Some Get Some, and Bad Girls Burn Slow, she is a California Arts Council Fellow, Pushcart nominee, and Art Center instructor/designer. Her poetry has been published in Calyx, Chiron, The Santa Monica Review, Voices of Leimert Park, and The Los Angeles Times. Pam’s writing sings of her beloved city in prismatic color.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets and information.
Where: Online event (Eventbrite)
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: Online event
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wednesday-night-poetry-workshop-tickets-266507470017
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry & LeAnne Hunt at The Ugly Mug – In-Person Event
Join Ben Trigg and Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug on Wednesday Nights.
The format is to welcome a featured poet for a reading, and also have an Open Mic reading. Tonight’s featured artist is LeAnne Hunt.
LeAnne Hunt is a poet from the Midwest who now lives in Orange County. She is a regular at Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at The Ugly Mug in Orange. She has been published in Cultural Weekly, Spillway, Honey & Line, and Lullaby of Teeth: An Anthology of Southern California Poets. She publishes a blog of writing prompts and apologies at leannehunt.com.
See site for details and/or to verify.
$4 cover fee, cash only. Masks are required unless eating or drinking.
NOTE: See site for further details, guidelines & information.
Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange – In-person event
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/Two-Idiot-Peddling_poetry/ or https://www.facebook.com/events/352603529814389
45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival via UC Riverside – Online Event
Join the 45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival of Events: February 12 and 14-18, 2022. This series of events is online, free and open to the public, (captioned & ASL translated), and you may register at site link or on any session time listed there.
DAY 5 of 6, EVENTS:
Session 1: 10 am PST:
Tom Lutz is a Distinguished Professor and Chair of Creative Writing at UC Riverside, the founding editor-in-chief and publisher of the Los Angeles Review of Books, founder of The LARB Radio Hour, The LARB Quarterly Journal, The LARB Publishing Workshop, LitLit Book Fair, and LARB Books.
Tom Lutz’s latest book is a third volume of travel narrative, THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS (2021). Also in 2021 he published a twisty philosophical essay titled AIMLESSNESS, nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award. His first collection of photographs will be published by Rare Bird Lit in 2022: PORTRAITS: MOMENTS OF INTIMACY ON THE ROAD.
His fiction debut, BORN SLIPPY: A NOVEL, was released in January 2020, and he has just completed a sequel. His other works include cultural histories, literary histories, work for film and TV, essays and reviews for journals, book collections, and other publications.
Ibrahim Nasrallah is considered one of the most influential voices of his generation. Raised in a refugee camp to Palestinian parents, he became a journalist before turning to creative writing. His work includes fourteen novels, including Time of White Horses and The Lanterns of the King. He lives in Amman, Jordan. He received the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Session 2: 1:30 pm PST:
Chloe Martinez is a poet and writer, and a scholar of South Asian religions, and is Program Coordinator of the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at Claremont McKenna College, as well as Lecturer in CMC’ Department of Religious Studies. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (2021), and the chapbook Corner Shrine. Her proems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Common, Waxwing, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. She is a poetry book reviewer for RHINO and one of the organizers of a reading series, The Sprawwl.
Emily Rapp Black is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside andthe author of three memoirs: Poster Chlld, The Still Point of the Turning World, and most recently, Sanctuary (2021). She is also the author of Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg, and her work has appeared in VOGUE, The New York Times, Die Zeit, The Times London, The Sun, TIME, The Los Angeles Times, and many others. She is co-founder of Circe Consulting.
Susan Straight is a Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing at UC Riverside. She has published eight novels, including her Rio Seco trilogy, and her most recent book, In the Country of Women: A Memoir (2019). Her new novel Mecca is forthcoming in March, 2022.
Straight is a prolific writer of essays and reviews and other cultural commentary which have appeared in numerous journals and publications, including: The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Amazon Originals, and others. Her many awards include: a 2001 finalist, National Book Award for Fiction for Highwire Moon, the 2007 Lannon Literary Award (Fiction), the 2008 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Short Story “The Golden Gopher,” and the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Robert Kirsch Award.
Session 3: 3:30 pm PST
Kate Bolton Bonnici grew up in Alabama and holds degrees from Harvard, NYU Law, UC Riverside, and UCLA. She teaches =early modern English literature and creative writing at UCLA. She is also a Lecturer in Rhetorical Arts at Loyola Marymount University.
Bonnici’s poetry collection Night Burial is the winner of the 2020 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Arts & Letters, Southern Humanities Review, CounterText, Image and elsewhere.
Moheb Soliman is a poet and an interdisciplinary artist from Egypt and the Midwest. He is the author of HOMES: a book of poems which is an accumulation of poems from a decade of immersion in the Great Lakes region, and the tensions of place in identity politics in the world’s most porous borderland. He splits his time between Minneapolis and Tulsa, where he has a Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
Session 4: 6:30 pm PST
Diane Lefer braids three strands of her life: writing, social justice work, and earning a living. Besides her widely published and often anthologized fiction – see on Amazon’s site – her essays and advocacy journalism have appeared frequently in LA Progressive and New Clear Vision as well as in The Believer, Colombia Reports, Connotation Press, CounterPunch, La Bloga, Numéro Cinq, The Sun, and TruthOut. She is the author most recently of the novel Out of Place, published in 2021.
Though she never received a college degree, for 2, 3 years Diane was on the faculty of the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts as well as for semesters in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch-Los Angeles and the Writers Program at UCLA Extension. She has received several literary fellowship awards and has been a finalist for the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature, the Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction, and the Editors Book Award.
John Kinsella is an acclaimed Australian poet and essayist, and the author of over forty books, and has been an anarchist pacifist for 33 years.He co-shares a blog with poet Tracy Ryan: Mutually Said. He is the author most recently of Insomnia: Poems, a vivid and urgent collection that addresses contemporary crises that keep us up at night—environmental, philosophical, and artistic.
Luo Ying is a poet and founder of Zhongkun Poetry Development Fund, Vice President of China Poetry Association, and Standing Deputy-Dean of China Poetry Institute at Peking University. He has published 11 collections of poetry and fiction, and his work has been translated into nine languages. His translated books include Seven + Two: A Mountain Climbers; Journal and Memories of the Cultural Revolution. He has initiated many poetry festivals and gatherings and exchanges among poets and established the Poet in Residence Program at Peking University.
NOTE: See site for individual event links and details.
Where: UC Riverside Writers Week – Online Event
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 10 am – 8 pm (Day 5 of 6)
Address: UC Riverside – Online (see site)
Website: https://writersweek.ucr.edu/schedule22
Vroman’s Live: Heather O’Neill, with Edward Carey, & When We Lost Our Heads via Vroman’s – Online Event
Join us to hear author Heather O’Neill, in conversation with Edward Carey, present and discuss her novel, When We Lost Our Heads.
In When We Lost Our Heads author Heather O’Neill writes the story of charismatic Marie Antoine, the daughter of the richest man in Montreal. Her new best friend, the clever and scheming Sadie Arnett and she, are soon united by their passion and intensity, and their games become tinged with risk, even violence. Forced to separate by the adults around them, they spend years engaged in acts of alternating innocence and depravity, until a singular event upends the city. This book explores gender, sex, desire, class, and the terrifying power of the human heart.
NOTE: See site for registration link and event details.
Where: Vroman’s – Online event
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Vroman’s (see site)
Adrienne Alitowski & Clipped: A Memoir via Flintridge Bookstore – Online Event
Join us to hear author Adrienne Alitowski present and discuss her quirky memoir, Clipped: A Memoir.
In Clipped author Adrienne Alitowski writes the story of a new mother whose desperation to get her baby to sleep catapulted her into becoming an inventor and small business owner. Her invention, blankyclip, was a hit and the US Patent and Trademark Office awarded her three utility patents and a trademark. She writes about sticking to your vision and being open to finding gold in the muck.
NOTE: See site for book purchase and event details.
Where: Flintridge Bookstore – On-site event
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 858 Foothill Blvd., La Canada Flintridge, CA 91011
Website: https://www.flintridgebooks.com/virtualandin-store
45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival via UC Riverside – Online Event
Join the 45th Annual UCR Writers Week Festival of Events: February 12 and 14-18, 2022. This series of events is online, free and open to the public, (captioned & ASL translated), and you may register at site link or on any session time listed there.
DAY 6 of 6, EVENTS:
Session 1: 1 pm PST:
Juanita Mantz is a podcaster, lawyer, defender, and the author of Tales of an Inland Empire Girl (Los Nietos Press, 2022), a coming-of-age story of twin sisters. She is also the author of a chapbook, Portrait of a Public Defender (or how I became a punk rock lawyer) (Bamboo Dart Press). Her blog is titled Life of JEM: Life in the Inland Empire.
Amanda Moore is the author of a debut collection of poetry, Requeening, selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by Harper Collins/Ecco in 2021. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, ZZYZVA and others and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center blog. She is poetry co-editor at Women’s Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA review and INCH, and is a high school English teacher in San Francisco.
Antonio de Jesus Lopez is the author of the debut collection Gentrification (Four Way Books) praised by Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardio as poems which “… work like personal trainers” and call for “… mental and physical absorption.” Selected as a Top Ten “New” Latinx Author by Latino Stores, he has many other accolades.
Session 2: 3:00 pm PST:
Jasmine Elizabeth Smith is a poet whose work is invested in the Diaspora of Black Americans in various historical contexts and eras. Her work has been featured in Black Renaissance Noir, POETRY, and LA Review of Book, and Kweliamong others. Her debut collection South Flight was named a finalist for the 2020 National Poetry Series and is the winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize. South Flight is forthcoming with the University of Georgia Press in February of 2022.
Smith currently works as an associate guest editor for the Black Earth Institute’s About Place Journal and serves on the 25th Anniversary Cave Canem Fellows and Faculty Committee while teaching English courses in her recent home of South Seattle.
Daisy Hernandez is the author of The Kissing Bug: a True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease, voted a Time Magazine Top Ten Best Nonfiction Book of 2021, and finalist for the PEN America Jean Stein Book Award.This book is both memoir and science tome, showing the personal effects of a disease perpetuated by a cascade of systemic failures. She is also author of the award-winning memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed, co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, and an associate professor at Miami University in Ohio.
Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home, and the story collection How Winter Began, as well as the memoir The Truth Book and the essay collection Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Award. She is also editor of the anthology Family Trouble and served as the guest judge of CRAFT‘s first Creative Nonfiction Award. Her work has appeared widely in journals, and she is currently the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Session 3: 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm PST
Sandra Cisneros is a 2022 LARB and UC Riverside Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree. She is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer, and artist. In addition to her many books, from The House on Mango Street to Caramelo, to Marita, le recuerdo, she has fostered the careers of aspiring and emerging writers through two non-profits she founded, the Macondo Foundation and the Alfredo Cisneros de Moral Foundation. A citizen of both the United States and Mexico, she currently lives in San Miguel de Allende.
Linda Hogan is a 2022 LARB and UC Riverside Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree. (Chickasaw) Pulitzer Finalist, Professor Emerita from the University of Colorado, she is the author of non-fiction, novels and poetry, including DARK. SWEET: New and Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2014), and THE RADIANT LIVES OF ANIMALS (Beacon Hill Press, 2020) and A HISTORY of Kindness (Torrey House Press, 2020). She has received numerous awards, and was inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame in 2007 for her contributions to indigenous literature.
Ishmael Reed is a 2022 LARB and UC Riverside Creative Writing Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree. He is the author of more than thirty titles, including the acclaimed novel Mumbo Jumbo, along with non-fiction, plays and poetry.Professor Emeritus of UC Berkeley, and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, which promotes multicultural American writing, and The American Book Awards, he is involved in numerous other organizations, and the recipient of many awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship (genius award).
NOTE: See site for individual event links and details.
Where: UC Riverside Writers Week – Online Event
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 1 pm – 8:30 pm (Day 6 of 6)
Address: UC Riverside – Online (see site)
Website: https://writersweek.ucr.edu/schedule22
LA MADE Author Series: Misty Copeland & Black Ballerinas: My Journey to Our Legacy at Los Angeles Public Library – Online FB and YouTube Event
Join the LA MADE Author Series to welcome famed ballerina Misty Copeland, to present her new middle grade non-fiction book, Black Ballerinas: My Journey to Our Legacy, followed by an audience Q&A.
Misty Copeland made history by becoming the first African American female principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre. She has performed some of the most iconic classical ballet roles, including Odette/Odile in Swan Lake; Juliet in Romeo & Juliet; Giselle; Manon; Coppelia; Kitri in Don Quixote; and Firebird, to name a few.
Participants will have a chance to win a free copy of Misty’s book!
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Los Angeles Public Library – Online Event
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 4 pm
Address: LAPL – Online (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/misty-copeland-black-ballerinas-my-journey-our-legacy
2nd and 3rd Grade Book Club & Skunk and Badger 1, by Amy Timberlake and Jon Klassen,at Pages Bookstore – On-site Event
Join the 1st Meeting of our 2nd and 3rd Grade Book Club to read and discuss our selection this month, Skunk and Badger, by author Amy Timberlake and illustrator Jon Klassen.
This is an early reader book filled with silliness, fun science facts, beautiful artwork, and a heartfelt lesson told through the mistakes Badger makes on a bumpy road to friendship with Skunk that leads him to a reckoning and atonement.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Pages Bookstore – On-site event on Patio
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/2nd-and-3rd-grade-book-club-0
Bookish Author Event: Host Sandra Tsing Loh & Guestsvia SOCAL News Group & Once Upon a Time Bookstore – On-site Zoom Event
Join host Sandra Tsing Loh (The Madwoman and the Roomba) to welcome three authors who will present and discuss their new works:
Danny Rubin is the author of Wait, How Do I Write This Email?, a collection of 100+ templates for networking, the job search and LinkedIn. The book is used in settings like high schools, colleges, workforce development programs and even the Pentagon where educators work with active-duty military and civilian contractors. In 2016, “Wait, How Do I Write This Email?” was a finalist in the Business: Careers category of the national Best Book awards. It was also named a “Notable Indie” by Shelf Magazine.
Heather Harvilesky is the author of ForeverLand: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage. She is an American author, essayist, and humorist, and writes the advice column “Ask Polly” for Substack, She is also the author of Disaster Preparedness: A Memoir, the advice book How to Be a Person in the World, and the assay collection What If This Were Enough?
Chris Jones is the author of The Eye Test: A Case for Human Creativity in the Age of Analytics. He is former writer-at-large for Esquire magazine, has won two National Magazine Awards. He is the author of Out of Orbit and Falling Hard: A Rookie’s Year in Boxing. His work has also appeared in The Best American Magazine Writing and The Best American Sports Writing anthologies. Chris Cilliza of CNN says this book is “a nuanced argument that while analytics are all the rage, there isn’t any sort of mathematical equation to ensure success.”
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Bookish & Once Upon a Time – Online event
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: Online (see site)
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/bookish-february-2022
Sheila Heti, with Elif Batuman, & Pure Colour: A Novel via Skylight Bookstore – Online Event
Join us to hear author Sheila Heti, in conversation with Elif Batuman (The Idiot) present and discuss her book, Pure Colour: A Novel.
Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling. Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.
In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she’s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.
NOTE: See site for book purchase, link, tickets, and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 6 pm PST
Address: Skylight Books – Online (see site)
At Skylight: Kendra James, with Gina Mei, & ADMISSIONS via Skylight Bookstore – On-site Event
Join us to hear author Kendra James, in conversation with Gina Mei, discuss her book, ADMISSIONS: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School.
Early on in Kendra James’ professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made—to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African American legacy student only a few years earlier. Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America’s inequitable system.
In ADMISSIONS, the author looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, chronicling clashes with her lily–white roommate, how she had to unlearn the respectability politics she’d been raised with, and the fall-out from a horrifying article in the student newspaper that accused Black and Latinx students of being responsible for segregation of campus. Through these stories, some troubling, others hilarious, she deconstructs the lies and half-truths she herself would later tell as an admissions professional, in addition to the myths about boarding schools perpetuated by popular culture.
NOTE: See site for book purchase, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-kendra-james-presents-admissions-gina-mei
Meet & Greet: Dilek Mir & Baby Palm: An Adventure in Growth at Flintridge Bookstore – Online Kids Event
Join us for a Meet & Greet event with author Dilek Mir, to hear about her book, Baby Palm: An Adventure in Growth, which is the 3rd book in a series.
Baby Palm learns that in order to grow, he must let go of what he no longer needs. The book teaches about the connection between humans and trees.
It contains a fictional story followed by a non-fiction section on how palm trees grow, the history of palm trees and humans, geography, the phases of the moon, and eye spy activities for the youngest readers. Beautiful pictures and an audio book are included.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Flintridge Bookstore – On-site Kids Event (Ages 2-8)
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 11 am – 2 pm
Address: 858 Foothill Blvd., La Canada Flintridge, CA 91011
LGTBQIA Book Club & The Story of a Marriage via LAPL – Online Adult Event
Join the LGTBQIA Book Club for a discussion this month’s book selection, The Story of a Marriage, by author Andrew Sean Greer (Less).
“We think we know the ones we love.” So Pearlie Cook begins her indirect, and devastating exploration of the mystery at the heart of every relationship—how we can ever truly know another person.
It is 1953 and Pearlie, a dutiful young housewife, finds herself living in the Sunset District in San Francisco, caring not only for her husband’s fragile health, but also for her son, who is afflicted with polio. Then, one Saturday morning, a stranger appears on her doorstep, and everything changes. Lyrical, and surprising, this is a book about love, and it’s devastating effect.
NOTE: See site for event link and details. Email silver@lapl.org for meeting link.
Where: LAPL – Online Adult Event
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 12 pm
Address: LAPL – Online event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/lgbtqia-book-club-7
Social Justice Book Club & bel hooks’ all about love via Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore– Online Event
Join the Social Justice- Book Club for a discussion this month’s book selection, all about love, by author bel hooks.
This acclaimed New York Times bestseller and enduring classic from the feminist icon offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. It also tells how these ideals are established in childhood.
NOTE: See site for event link and details.
Where: Tia Chucha’s – Online Event
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 12 pm – 1:30 pm
Address: Tia Chucha’s – Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/268313962108610/
Writer’s Workshop with Viva Padilla via Re/Arte Centro Literario – In-person Event
Join us for an introduction to submitting your writing to journals and magazines. Incudes career advice, and writing feedback. Bring your work and a notebook.
NOTE: See website for registration, donation, and further details.
Where: Re/Arte Centro Literario – In-person Event
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 1 pm – 2:30 pm
Address: 2014 ½ E. Cesar Chavez Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033
Website: https://reartela.com/events%2Feventos
Saturday Afternoon Poetry & Readings & Open Mic Hosted by G.T. Foster – Online Event
Join us at Saturday Afternoon Poetry for Poetry Readings hosted by G.T. Foster, and an Open Reading hosted by COCO.
Lynda V E Crawford is a poet who has lived in the USA longer than her childhood home Barbados, a fact that sways and punctuates her writing. She’s let go of journalism, copywriting, website management, and email marketing. Poetry won’t let go of her.
Chibuike Uganna is a poet from the eastern part of Nigeria (BIAFRA). A Nigerian because he was forced to be. Find his work at: powerpoetry.org/poet/Chibuike/poems.
Dig Wayne writes and features in Rebel Ink Magazine, in a column titled Inked Americana, which includes interviews and photos of interesting people. He also posts his poetry, photos at events at dig-wayne.blogspot.com.
Plus, an Open Reading hosted by COCO.
All events are curated by Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Where: Zoom Online Event
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
Pages on Stages Poetry Readings Hosted by Hiram Sims at Sims Library of Poetry – In-person Event
Join host Hiram Sims for a Pages on Stages Community Literature Initiative (CLI) Alum Reading Event, featuring:
James Coats is a poet, educator, advocate who leads an award-winning social justice workshop called Be the Change, and teaches in internment and detention centers. His debut poetry book If I Had Lived (2018) and second poetry book All The Ways You Are Wonderful (2020) are available for purchase through Amazon. His current project, Midnight & Mad Dreams, aims to fight racism and oppression through poetry.
LaWanda Dantzler received an M.A. in Literature from California State University at Humboldt and an M.F.A. in Poetry from Indiana University, where she won the Academy of American Poets Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Georgia Review, The Laurel Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Southern Poetry Review, and Sou’wester. “Her Art” was chosen by Natasha Trethewey for Best New Poets 2007. Her poem “Marilyn Monroe” appears in Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century (Dartmouth College Press, 2014).
Morgan Day N/A
Pamella D’Pella is a writer poet, actress, and audio book performer.
Anastasia Fenald is a poet and writer who lives in Los Ángeles. Her first collection, Help Me, I’m Here, comes out in June 2022.
Sheila Head N/A
Lynda LaRose is a poet/performance artist who has been writing poetry since 1993; she has been published in several poetry anthologies including I Love Your Poetry, What?!?!, Listen to Me: Shared Secrets From WriteGirl, San Gabriel Poetry Calendar, and the City of Los Angeles African American Heritage Month Cultural Affairs Guide for 2011, 2012 and 2013. In 2007 she wrote, performed and produced “Summerfruit,” a one-woman show told in the language of poetry/spoken word. Her writing is based on her own personal experiences and is a continuation of her own journey. She is a member of the Walking Theatre Workshop at The Electric Lodge in Venice, CA.
Monique MeriWeather N/A
Albert Starr N/A
Robert Thomas N/A
Sarah Wheeler is a poet and writer whose work can be found at her site sarahwheelerpoetry.com.
NOTE: See site for event guidelines and details. $10 admission; no one turned away for lack of funds.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry – In-person Event
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 2702 W. Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.simslibraryofpoetry.org/events
Sara Gran, with Liberty Hardy, & The Book of the Most Precious Substance via Skylight Bookstore – Online Event
Join us to hear author and Founder of Dreamland Books Sara Gran, in conversation with senior editor for Book Riot Liberty Hardy, present and discuss her book, The Book of the Most Precious Substance.
Sara Gran’s eighth book is a highly anticipated new thriller which captures the eccentric world of antiquarian bookselling while portraying a profound and magical reckoning with loss and the possibility of going on. It involves a mysterious 17th century sex manual that promises unlimited power and unrivaled sexual pleasure, a down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime, and a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed.
NOTE: See site for book purchase, link, tickets, and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 5 pm
Address: Skylight Books – Online (see site)
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/live-crowdcast-sara-gran-conversation-liberty-hardy
In-Store Signing: Noah Hawley & ANTHEM via Skylight Bookstore – On-site Event
Join us for a signing with author Noah Hawley for his new novel, ANTHEM.
When Judge Margot Burr-Nadir receives a call comes from the President of the United States inviting her to accept his nomination to the Supreme Court he has reached across party lines, she is honored. But the call comes on a family trip to visit their oldest daughter, Story, who has, without warning, vanished as if spirited away in the middle of the night by forces unseen. Margot soon finds herself thrust onto the national stage in the middle of every parent’s worst nightmare.
The desperate search for Story’s whereabouts soon intersects with the mission of a group who have escaped from the Float Anxiety Abatement Center in Chicago on the trail of man known as The Wizard: an unimaginably wealthy, almost mythical figure of unspeakable evil who has for years been taking whatever he wants without reaping the consequences. Stopping him, this band of young people hopes to accomplish what their elders can’t or won’t do: fix a broken world.
NOTE: See site for book purchase, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event
Mia P. Manansala, with Roselle Lim, Present: Homocide and Halo-Halo and Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop via Bel Canto Bookstore – Online YA Event
Please join Bel Canto Bookstore to hear two YA authors present their books. Mia P. Manansala will be in conversation with Roselle Lim to discuss her new book, Homocide and Halo-Halo.
Mia P. Manansala is the author most recently of Homocide and Halo-Halo. She is an author and book coach who uses humor and murder to explore aspects of the Filipino diaspora, and her millennial love for pop culture.
Roselle Lim is the author of Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop. She writes about food, Filipino heritage, and finding family in unexpected places.
NOTE: See website for further details.
Where: Bel Canto Books – Online Event
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 12 pm
Address: Bel Canto Books – Online (see site)
Website: https://belcantobooks.net/event or https://www.crowdcast.io/e/mia-p–manansala-for/register
Sunday Series Workshop & Andres Sanchez via The Poetry Lab – Online Event
Please join Sunday Series Workshop for a combination of craft talk and generative writing workshop with poet Andres Sanchez. All levels are welcome.
Andres (Andy) Sanchez is a trans masculine poet born in Mexico City, who grew up in Southern California and Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of the collection, This Body (World Stage Press), about his personal coming-out story as a queer/trans person of color, and finding self-love and healing despite the personal challenges.
NOTE: See website for RSVP, cost, and further details.
Where: The Poetry Lab – Online Event
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 1 pm
Address: The Poetry Lab – Online (see site)
Website: https://www.thepoetrylab.com/sunday-series or https://www.thepoetrylab.com/register/sunday-series/andressanchez
Treehouse & Skylight Bookstore: Traci Sorell & Madelyn Goodnight & POWWOW DAY via Skylight Bookstore – Online Kids Event
Join us to hear author Traci Sorell and illustrator Madelyn Goodnight present their children’s book, POWWOW DAY.
River wants so badly to dance at powwow day as she does every year. In this uplifting and contemporary picture book perfect for beginning readers, follow River’s journey from feeling isolated after an illness to learning the healing power of community.
Presented with Punk Rock Marthas.
NOTE: See site for event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 2 pm PST
Address: Online Kids Event
Reading & Open Mic: Tanaya Winder via The Poetry Salon – Online Event
Join us for a Poetry Reading and Open Mic featuring the poetry of Tanaya Winder, author of Words Like Love and Why Storms Are Named After People and Bullets Remain Nameless.
Come listen and read some words of your own.
NOTE: See website for further details. Email Tresha@ThePoetrySalon.com for link.
Where: The Poetry Salon – Zoom Online Event
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Address: The Poetry Salon (see site)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/805673404161362/?ref=newsfeed
IAMROMAINE WASHINGTON with Gina Duran via The Collective – Online Podcast Event
Join The Collective podcast on KQBH with Gina Duran for good conversation as “We’re going to dig deep—to the roots,” with guest IAMROMAINE JOHNSON.
Gina Duran is an artist and poet and the author of the collection … and so the Wind Was Born (FlowerSong Press).
Where: The Collective – Online Podcast Event
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 2 pm (check to verify)
Address: The Collective Podcast (KQBH)
Website: N/A
Elizabeth Metzger, with poets L.A. Johnson & Zeeshan Khan Pathan, & BED! at Diesel Bookstore – In-person Event
Join author and poet Elizabeth Metzger, in conversation with fellow poets L.A. Johnson and Zeeshan Khan Pathan, to hear her present and sign her chapbook, Bed!
The chapbook Bed! Was selected by Mark Bibbins for The Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. Her second full-length collection, Lying In, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2023. She is poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB). Find her work at elizabethmetzger.com.
L.A. Johnson is the author of the chapbook Little Climates, and is now pursuing the PhD at USC where she is a Provost’s Fellow. Find her online at http://www.la-johnson.com.
Zeeshan Khan Pathan is the author of Minister of Disturbances. He speaks several languages and translates from some. He is in an anthology of contemporary Muslim writing by Red Hen Press, and is a Lecturer in the Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
NOTE; See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Diesel Bookstore – In-person Courtyard event
Date: Sunday the 13th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Suite 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/elizabeth-metzger-bed
Los Angeles Literature 