NOTE: There Are Both Online and Virtual Events Listed Here
Cleyvis Natera, with Steph Cha, & Neruda on the Park at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Cleyvis Natera, iin conversation with Steph Cha (Your House Will Pay), will discuss his new novel, Neruda on the Park, a beautifully layered portrait of family, friendship, and ambition.
Neruda on the Park weaves a rich and vivid tapestry of community as well as the sacrifices we make to protect what we love most, announcing Cleyvis Natera as an electrifying new voice.
The Guerreros have lived in Nothar Park, a predominantly Dominican part of New York City, for twenty years. When demolition begins on a neighboring tenement, Eusebia, an elder of the community, takes matters into her own hands by devising an increasingly dangerous series of schemes to stop construction of the luxury condos. Meanwhile, Eusebia’s daughter, Luz, a rising associate at a top Manhattan law firm who strives to live the bougie lifestyle her parents worked hard to give her, becomes distracted by a sweltering romance with the handsome white developer at the company her mother so vehemently opposes.
As Luz’s father, Vladimir, secretly designs their retirement home in the Dominican Republic, mother and daughter collide, ramping up tensions in Nothar Park, racing toward a near-fatal climax.
NOTE: See site for tickets, link, and details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Monday the 20th
Time: 7 pm – PST
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-cleyvis-natera-presents-neruda-park-steph-cha
Main Library Book Discussion Group via Santa Monica Public Library, SMPL – Online Event
Join a community-led discussion of books selected by the group.
In June, we’ll discuss I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong. From Pulitzer Prize-winning author comes an wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin—a “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on earth.
Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ed Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are.
Contact jeff schwatrz@santamonica.gov for the Zoom link.
NOTE: See site for Zoom link and details.
Where: SMPL Online event
Date: Monday the 20th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: http://calendar.smgov.net/library/eventsignup.asp?ID=33893
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 nonfiction and done readings with the Ventura Poetry Project.
Where: Beyond Baroque – Online event (tickets at Eventbrite)
Date: Monday the 20th
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-366558956707
Julia Clark Luncheon, with Sara Sligar, & The Lies I Tell at Pages Bookstore Off-Site at Slay Italian Kitchen – In-Person Event
Join us for a Luncheon event for author Julie Clark, in conversation with Sara Sligar (Take Me Apart), to discuss her new book, The Lies I Tell.
From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight comes a riveting new novel of two women, multiple identities, and one last con. Now in paperback!
Meg Williams, Maggie Littleton, Melody Wilde. Different names for the same person, depending on the town, depending on the job. She’s a con artist who erases herself to become whoever you need her to be—a college student. A life coach. A real estate agent. Nothing about her is real.
Kat Roberts has been waiting ten years for the woman who upended her life to return. And now that she has, Kat is determined to be the one to expose her. But as the two women grow closer, Kat’s long-held assumptions begin to crumble, leaving Kat to wonder who Meg’s true target is.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, and details.
Where: Slay’s Italian Kitchen
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 11:30 am
Address: 1001 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/julie-clark-luncheon
Ali Brady & Gillian Libby at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – Online Event
Join us to hear authors Ali Brady and Gillian Libby present and chat about their new romance releases with Ali Hazelwood (The STEMinist Novellas).
Ali Brady is the author of The Beach Trap, a debut story of two best friends torn apart by a life-altering secret, and one summer to set the record straight.
Gillian Libby is the author most recently of Four Ways to Wear a Dress, a bright, sexy and hopeful story about friendship, self-discovery, and acceptance, and fighting for your own happiness.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details on this hybrid event.
Where: Ripped Bodice Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Braintrust: Summer Solstice Poems Workshop with Nadia Alamah at The Poetry Lab – Online Event
Join us to celebrate the summer solstice together with poetry! This workshop will focus on writing poems individually and collaboratively using motifs and elements inspired by the summer solstice. We will be experimenting with various poetry styles in response to art, calendars, star charts, cultural traditions and more. It is led by Lebanese American poet Naida Alamah.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details on this hybrid event.
Where: The Poetry Lab
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.thepoetrylab.com/upcoming-events/2022/braintrust/june-21
Poetry Readings by Carl Marcum and David Olivera at Loose Lips Poetry Series – Online Event
Join us to celebrate the summer solstice with readings by Carl Marcum and David Oliveira at the quarterly Loose Lips Poetry Reading series online.
Carl Marcum us a Chicano poet from Tucson, AZ, whose poems have appeared in the anthologies, “The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, and “Latinx Rising: An Anthology of Latinx Science Fiction and Fantasy.” He is the author of Cue Lazarus and A Camera Obscura. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA.
David Oliveira, author of Still Life with Coffee (2022) is published widely, has three poetry collections, and featured in important anthologies. He was Santa Barbara’s millennium poet laureate., 1999-2000. He lives and writes on the banks of the Mekong River in Cambodia
NOTE: See site for details on this quarterly event.
Where: Loose Lips Poetry Series & Ventura County Poetry Project
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9607501600
Website: https://www.pw.org/literary_events/loose_lips_poetry_reading_1/
Julie Clark, with Jessica Knoll, & The Lies I Tell: A Novel at Diesel Bookstore – Online Event
Join Julie Clark, in conversation with Jessica Knoll, to hear them discuss her new book, The Lies I Tell: A Novel.
Meg Williams, Maggie Littleton, Melody Wilde. Different names for the same person, depending on the town, depending on the job. She’s a con artist who erases herself to become whoever you need her to be—a college student. A life coach. A real estate agent. Nothing about her is real.
Kat Roberts has been waiting ten years for the woman who upended her life to return. And now that she has, Kat is determined to be the one to expose her. But as the two women grow closer, Kat’s long-held assumptions begin to crumble, leaving Kat to wonder who Meg’s true target is.
The Lies I Tell is a twisted domestic thriller that dives deep into the psyches and motivations of two women and their unwavering quest to seek justice for the past and rewrite the future.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details on this hybrid event.
Where: Diesel Bookstore – in the Courtyard
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/julie-clark-the-lies-I-tell
Bilingual Reading Group: (Every Other Tuesday) at Re/Arte Centro Literario – In-Person Event
Jose Prado PhD is a professor of Sociology at CSUDH. His interest lay in the analysis of the relations of power within various educational contexts. His twenty-five years of secondary and post-secondary teaching is built on a tradition of critical pedagogy and multicultural education where he and his students construct understandings about the character of schooling in both national and international settings. He will facilitate Re/Arte’s discussion of El Capital by Carlos Marx.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Re/Arte Centro Literario
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 2123 E. Cesar Chavez Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033
Website: https://reartela.com/events%2Feventos
Book Launch: Ashley M. Coleman, with Oludara Adeeyo, & Good Morning, Love via Salt Eaters Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to hear Ashley M. Coleman, in conversation with Oludara Adeeyo, celebrate the launch and discuss her debut romance novel, Good Morning Love.
For fans of My (Not So) Perfect Life and Jasmine Guillory’s While We Were Dating, a disarmingly fun debut novel follows Carlisa Henton as her life comes undone after a chance meeting with a rising pop star.
Carlisa “Carli” Henton is a musician and songwriter hoping to follow in her father’s musical footsteps. But, biding her time until she makes it big in the music industry, she works as a junior account manager at a big-name media company to cover her New York City rent. Carli meticulously balances her work with her musical endeavors as a songwriter–until a chance meeting with rising star Tau Anderson sends her calculated world into a frenzy. Their worlds collide and quickly blur the strict lines Carli has drawn between her business and her personal life, throwing Carli’s reputation—and her burgeoning songwriting career—into question.
NOTE: See site for further details, RSVP, guidelines, and information.
Where: Salt Eaters Bookshop
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 302 East Queen St., Inglewood, CA 90301
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/author-chat-ashley-m-coleman-and-oludara-adeeyo-tickets-356195539447
Reyna Grand & Special Guests & Somewhere We Are Human at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Join us to hear author and editor Reyna Grande (The Distance Between Us, A Ballad of Love and Glory) with special guests, discuss her new anthology of 41 groundbreaking essays, poems, and artwork by migrants, refugees and Dreamers that illuminate what it is like living undocumented today.
This anthology of essays, poetry, and art seeks to shift the immigration debate—now shaped by rancorous stereotypes and xenophobia—towards one rooted in humanity and justice. Through their storytelling and art, the contributors to this thought-provoking book remind us that they are human still. Transcending their current immigration status, they offer nuanced portraits of their existence before and after migration, the factors behind their choices, the pain of leaving their homeland and beginning anew in a strange country, and their collective hunger for a future not defined by borders.
Created entirely by undocumented or formerly undocumented migrants, Somewhere We Are Human is a journey of memory and yearning from people newly arrived to America, those who have been here for decades, and those who have ultimately chosen to leave or were deported.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines and event details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/reyna-grande
Robin Benway, with Abdi Nazemian, & A Year to the Day at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Robin Benway, in conversation with Abdi Nazemian, will present and discuss her new book, A Year to the Day
IT’S BEEN A YEAR–A YEAR OF MISSING NINA.
Leo can’t remember what happened the night of the accident. All she knows is that she left the party with her older sister, Nina, and Nina’s boyfriend, East. And now Nina is dead, killed by a drunk driver and leaving Leo with a hole inside her that’s impossible to fill.
East, who loved Nina almost as much as Leo did, is the person who seems to most understand how she feels, and the two form a friendship based on their shared grief. But as she struggles to remember what happened, Leo discovers that East remembers every detail of the accident—and he won’t tell her anything about it. In fact, he refuses to talk about that night at all.
As the days tumble one into the next, Leo’s story comes together while her world falls apart. How can she move on if she never knows what really happened that night? And is happiness even possible in a world without Nina?
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Zaha Zainabu Book Release Event: i‘m Writing to Tell You… at Soul Supreme Studio – In-Person Event
Zaha Zainabu will present and sign her new book, I’m Writing to Tell You…at her book release celebration.
Hosted by N’Spire along with special guest performers, there will be refreshments by Divine Bliss Catering
I’M WRITING TO TELL YOU is a collection of vulnerable, transparent, inspiring and entertaining poetry written by Jaha Zainabu. In this book, she talks about her journey and soul work as a woman and mother. She lives with bipolar 1 and talks about her life with depression. She is also encouraging and witty in her poetry.
Event produced with assistance from Camari Hawkins and Mama’s Kitchen Press.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Soul Supreme Studio
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 3905 W. Slauson Ave,, :Los Angeles, CA 90043
At Skylight: Jhani Randhawa, with Teo Rivera-Dundas, & Time Regime at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Jahni Randhawa, in conversation with Teo Rivera-Dundas, will present and discuss her book, Time Regime.
This book is a collection of experiments, mechanical dream logs, epistolaries, and field notes, Time Regime—winner of the 2021 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize—assembles an emergent mutant body intent on interrupting neoliberal imperialism’s rhythms and expectations. Disassembling and reassembling the marginalized body through the intersecting lenses of ecofeminism and necrosociality, the poems in Time Regime form a poetic fugue that defies regimes of purity and correctness, in an historical epoch demarcated by violence, discipline, and erasure. Time Regime traces the lives, ecological contexts, and dreams of multiple beings—rice germ, red ticks, a grandmother’s skin cells, limestone deposits, machine intelligence, shaggy language, the poet, no-self, or the mythological winged cow Surabhi—as they collide and float in parallel vectors. Displaced and seeking, these spectral and material bodies erode and recombine at the edges of domestic ruin, ecological collapse, and state-sanctioned death, delivering an image of presence that seeks communion with mess. In their transcending debut, Jhani Randhawa posits an alternative figuration for the post-modern self—one untethered by oppressive regimes marked by systems of silence—and gives us a body that transforms itself into a site of resistance by bearing witness to our living.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-jhani-randhawa-presents-time-regime-teo-rivera-dundas
Tuesdays at the Virtual Cobalt: Poets Series Presents: Open Reading & T.A. Miles – Virtual Zoom Event
The Virtual Cobalt Poets Series, presented by Rick Lupert via Zoom, will feature an Open Reading and guest Thelma Reyna.
Thelma Reyna is a poet, writer, author and editor, and a former Poet Laureate. She will present a publication reading for her anthology, Doctor Poets & Other Healers: COVID In Their Own Words.
NOTE: Details and Zoom link at event link.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday the 21st
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: http://poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/calendar.html
Da Poetry Lounge IG Live Open Mic Night – IG Live Event
Every Tuesday (except for 3rd Tuesdays and special events) Da Poetry Lounge holds open mic nights. At an open mic, all are welcome to share their poetry or sit in the audience.
See sites for details.
Where: DA Poetry Lounge
Date: Tuesday the 21st Check to Verify details.
Time: 9 pm – 11 pm
Address: IG Live (see site)
Website: https://www.instagram.com/dapoetrylounge_com/
SOM Tuesdays Open Mic at Di Piazza’s Pizza, Long Beach – In-Person Event
SOM Open Mic Tuesdays at Di Piazza’s are back! Come and share music, comedy, and poetry with us.
Where: Di Piazza’s Pizza (Check to verify)
Date: Tuesday the 20st
Time: 9 pm – 12 am
Address: 5205 E. Pacific Coast Hwy., Long Beach, CA
Website: Facebook
Mystery Book Group: Fortune Favors the Dead at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us for a Mystery Book Group discussion of Fortune Favors the Dead, by Stephen Spotswood.
Fortune Favors the Dead: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery is a fast-paced mystery which introduces an audacious detective duo: unorthodox private investigator Lillian Pentecost and a scrappy circus runaway, Willowjean “Will” Parker.
NOTE: See site for Zoom link and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore – outside in front of Star Café.
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 9 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/mystery-book-group-fortune-favors-dead-stephen-spotswood
Live on Zoom: Liana Finck Illustration Workshop & Let There Be Light via Skylight Bookstore & Random House – Online Event
New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck will present and teach a virtual illustration workshop, which includes several creative prompts to work on throughout the event. Selected attendees will have the opportunity to share their work and receive feedback before the event’s close.
Please have your materials of choice on hand, whether you prefer pencil and paper, ink, a tablet, or any other medium.
Each ticket includes access to this live virtual workshop, as well as a physical copy of her book, Let There Be Light to be shipped by our independent bookstore partner, Skylight Books.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 4:30 pm
Address: Skylight Online (see site)
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/live-zoom-liana-finck-illustration-workshop
West Coast Book Launch: Anna Hogeland, with Nandi Rose, & The Long Answer via Chevalier’s Bookstore – Online Event
Anna Hogeland, in conversation with Nandi Rose, will celebrate and discuss her debut novel, The Long Answer.
The Long Answer is a stunning novel of secrets kept, and secrets shared. Deeply empathetic and hugely absorbing, it unravels the intimate dynamics of female friendship, sisterhood, motherhood and grief, and the ways that women are bound together and pulled apart by their shared and contrasting experiences of pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and infertility.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 6 pm
Address: Chevalier’s Online (see site)
Website: https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/june-22-anna-hogeland
Young Adult Book Club & I Kissed Sharah Wheeler, at Pages Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join our monthly Young Adult Book Club to discuss this month’s selection, I Kissed Shara Wheeler, by Casey McQuiston.
Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and the puritanical administration of Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.
But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.
This romantic comedy is about chasing down what you want, only to find what you need…
NOTE: See site for RSVP, book purchase, and event details.
Where: Pages Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 6 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/young-adult-book-club-9
L.A. Times Book Club & Ibram X. Kendi & How to Raise an Antiracist, at USC’s Bovard Auditorium – In-Person Event
Join the LA Times Book Club to meet and discuss this month’s selection, How to Raise an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi in an in-person discussion with the National Book award winner and author, in conversation with Times columnist Sandy Banks.
Kendi is the author of five books for adults and three books for children, including “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2016, and “How to Be an Antiracist,” a 2019 bestselling memoir and social commentary.
His latest book, “How to Raise an Antiracist,” will be published June 14 and is geared toward parents, teachers and other caregivers. Kendi addresses such questions as: How do we talk to our children about racism? How do we teach children to be antiracist? How are kids at different ages experiencing race?
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: USC, Bovard Auditorium
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 3551 Trousdale Pkwy., Los Angeles, CA 90089
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/la-times-june-book-club-event-with-ibram-x-kendi-tickets-333834246217
Rebecca Soffer, with Katie Rich, & The Modern Loss Handbook at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Join us to hear Modern Loss cofounder and author Rebecca Soffer, in conversation with SNL’s Katie Rich, discuss her new book, The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience.
n this interactive guide, Modern Loss cofounder Rebecca Soffer offers candid, practical, and witty advice for confronting a future without your person, honoring their memory, dealing with trigger days, managing your professional life, and navigating new and existing relationships. You’ll find no worn-out platitudes or empty assurances here. With prompts, creative projects, innovative rituals, therapeutic-based exercises, and more, this is the place to explore the messy, long arc of loss on your own timeline–and without judgment.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/rebecca-soffer
Kelly Lytle Hernandez & Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Kelly Lytle Hernandez will present and discuss her new book, Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands.
Bad Mexicans tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Led by a brilliant but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magón, the magonistas were a motley band of journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers—and American dissidents—to their cause. Determined to oust Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who encouraged the plunder of his country by U.S. imperialists such as Guggenheim and Rockefeller, the rebels had to outrun and outsmart the swarm of U. S. authorities vested in protecting the Diaz regime. The U.S. Departments of War, State, Treasury, and Justice as well as police, sheriffs, and spies, hunted the magonistas across the country. Capturing Ricardo Flores Magón was one of the FBI’s first cases.
But the magonistas persevered. They lived in hiding, wrote in secret code, and launched armed raids into Mexico until they ignited the world’s first social revolution of the twentieth century.
Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican-American population, making the magonistas‘ story integral to modern American life.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
At Skylight: Joseph Han, with Jean Kyoung Frazier, & Nuclear Family at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Joseph Han, in conversation with Jean Kyoung Frazier, will present and discuss her book, Nuclear Family.
Set in the months leading up to the 2018 nuclear missile false alarm, a Korean American family living in Hawai’i faces the fallout of their eldest son’s attempt to run across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea in this “fresh, inventive, and at times, hilarious novel” (Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants).
Joseph Han’s profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited, and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Anansi Virtual Writers Workshop at The World Stage – In-Person Event
The Anansi Writers Workshop was founded in 1990 by Kamau Daáood, Akilah Oliver, Nafis Nabawi and Anthony Lyons. In 1993, Michael Datcher initiated the development of a three-part format for the workshop. Our tradition of a community workshop began in the late 1960s at the Watts Writers’ Workshop, where World Stage co-founder Kamau Daáood started his writing career. For general information and booking, contact V. Kali, the Anansi Writers Workshop Coordinator, at vkaliflowers@gmail.com.
• 7:30p.m.–8:30p.m. — Formal workshop;
• 8:30p.m.–9:00p.m. — Featured reader;
• 9:05p.m.–10:00p.m. — Open mic
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 22nd
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 Jose Hernandez Diaz.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets and information.
Where: Online event (Eventbrite)
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
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-368046957357
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry & Elise Hart at The Ugly Mug – In-Person Event
Join Ben Trigg and Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug on Wednesday Night.
The format is to welcome a featured poet for a reading, and an Open Mic reading. Tonight’s featured event features poet Elise Hart.
Elyse Hart is a is a writer and musician residing in Venice, California. She is an alumnus of Beyond Baroque’s legendary Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Maudlin House, The Nervous Breakdown, Ghost City Review, Okay Donkey, and others. Her first chapbook, White Noise Crucible, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press this summer.
As a composer, Elyse set five poems by the female 16th-century Hindu mystic poet, Mirabai, to music in 2020. The piece won the top prize in a music composition competition at the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG).
You can find more of her work on Instagram @elysehartpoetry or on SoundCloud @elysehartmusic.
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
Date: Wednesday the 22nd
Time: 8 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/718156425987721
Cover to Cover Book Club: The Bean Trees via Mid-Valley Regional Library, LAPL – Online Event
In June, we’ll be discussing The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. The book is about the perils of single motherhood, and it should be read in advance of the meeting.
Copies of each month’s selection will be available for check out at the Reference Desk. New members are always welcome!
NOTE: See site for Zoom link and details. Or email to npholana@lapl.org to receive Zoom login information.
Where: LAPL Online event
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/cover-cover-book-club-2
West L.A. Library Book Club: Humankind: A Hopeful History via West Los Angeles Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
Adults are invited to join a monthly West L.A. Book Club discussion.
In June, we’ll be discussing Humankind: A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman, which explores how humans can use our inherently good nature to build a better society. The book should be read in advance of the meeting. Find a copy to borrow at the library link.
NOTE: See site for Zoom link and details. Email cdavies@lapl.org for Zoom link.
Where: LAPL Online event
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/west-la-library-book-club
Mystery Book Club & The Unwilling (Barrier Lands #1) at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us for the LGBTQ Book Club to read Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.
This book is the gripping true story, told here for the first time, of the Last Call Killer and the gay community of New York City that he preyed upon in the 1990s.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and event details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside
Date: Thursday 23rd
Time: 6 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/lgbtq-book-club-last-call
Poetry Reading: Three Idiots Shouting Poetry Present Karen Scott – Online Event
Join Ben Trigg and Three Idiots Shouting Poetry online on FB & Zoom Thursday Night.
This format is to welcome a featured poet for a reading of their work. Tonight’s featured event features poet Karen Scott.
Karen Scott is a is a poet in Columbus, Ohio, is a member and ardent supporter of Ohio Poetry Association (OPA), a past participant in the Women of Appalachia Project (2017-18, 2019-20, and 2020-21) and a proud member of the SALON writing group.
Some of her work has been published in Common Threads [OPA anthology, 2013, 2016, 2018,2020, 2021], She Speaks [Women of Appalachia anthology, 2017, 2019, 2020], Delirious: A Poetic Celebration of Prince (2016), Northern Appalachia Review (2020), and the Quarantine Zine published by OPAWL. Another poem was made into a broadside that can be found on https://poetrysuperhighway.com.
NOTE: See site for further details, link, & information.
Where: Three Idiots Shouting Poetry
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/1158709431593332
Luis J. Rodriguez & Claudia Castro Luna: Cipota Under the Moon: Poetry for Everyone at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join Tia Chucha Press and Luis J. Rodriguez to celebrate the new release of Claudia Castro Luna’s book, Cipota: Under the Moon: Poetry for Everyone.
In this book the author scores a series of poems as an ode to the Salvadoran immigrant experience in the United States. The poems are wrought with memories of the 1980s civil war and rich with observations from recent returns to her native country. Castro Luna draws a parallel between the ruthlessness of the war and the violence endured by communities of color in US cities; she shows how children are often the silent, unseen victims of state-sanctioned and urban violence. In lush prose poems, musical tankas, and free verse, Castro Luna affirms that the desire for light and life outweighs the darkness of poverty, violence, and war. Cipota under the Moon is a testament to the men, women, and children who bet on life at all costs and now make their home in another language, in another place, which they, by their presence, change every day.
See site for details and/or to verify.
NOTE: See site for further details, guidelines, & information.
Where: Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 12677 Glenoaks Blvd., Sylmar, CA 91342
Website: https://www.facebook.com/TiaChuchasCentroCultural
Rachel Lynn Solomon, with Marisa Kanter, & See You Yesterday at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to hear authors Rachel Lynn Solomon, in conversation with Marisa Kanter, present and chat about her new romance release See You Yesterday
From the author of Today Tonight, Tomorrow comes a magical romance in the vein of Groundhog Day about a girl forced to relive her disastrous first day of college—only to discover that her nemesis is stuck in the time loop with her.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details on this hybrid event.
Where: Ripped Bodice Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 7 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Natalia Molina, with Michael Begler & A Place at the Nayarit at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Natalia Molina, in conversation with Michael Begler, will present and discuss her new book, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community.
In 1951, Doña Natalia Barraza opened the Nayarit, a Mexican restaurant in Echo Park, Los Angeles. With A Place at the Nayarit, historian Natalia Molina traces the life’s work of her grandmother, remembered by all who knew her as Doña Natalia–a generous, reserved, and extraordinarily capable woman. Doña Natalia immigrated alone from Mexico to L.A., adopted two children, and ran a successful business. She also sponsored, housed, and employed dozens of other immigrants, encouraging them to lay claim to a city long characterized by anti-Latinx racism. Together, the employees and customers of the Nayarit maintained ties to their old homes while providing one another safety and support.
The Nayarit was much more than a popular eating spot: it was an urban anchor for a robust community, a gathering space where ethnic Mexican workers and customers connected with their patria chica (their “small country”). That meant connecting with distinctive tastes, with one another, and with the city they now called home. Through deep research and vivid storytelling, Molina follows restaurant workers from the kitchen and the front of the house across borders and through the decades. These people’s stories illuminate the many facets of the immigrant experience: immigrants’ complex networks of family and community and the small but essential pleasures of daily life, as well as cross-currents of gender and sexuality and pressures of racism and segregation. The Nayarit was a local landmark, popular with both Hollywood stars and restaurant workers from across the city and beloved for its fresh, traditionally prepared Mexican food. But as Molina argues, it was also, and most importantly, a place where ethnic Mexicans and other Latinx L.A. residents could step into the fullness of their lives, nourishing themselves and one another. This book is a stirring exploration of how racialized minorities create a sense of belonging. It will resonate with anyone who has felt like an outsider and had a special place where they felt like an insider.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
ALOUD Reading Series: Tom Perotta, with Albert Berger, & Tracy Flick Can’t Win: A Novel at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us to hear author Tom Perotta, in conversation with Albert Berger, discuss his novel, Tracy Flick Can’t Win, which chronicles the second act of a most memorable character, Tracy Flick from his novel Election.
For this ALOUD program, Tom Perrotta and film producer Albert Berger, who has produced many films and television series based on Perrotta’s novels including Election, Little Children, and The Leftovers for HBO, will talk about the depth of Perrotta’s characters and why they translate so well from the page to the screen.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and event details.
Where: Mark Taper Auditorium, Central Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday 23rd
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://lfla.org/event/tracy-flick-cant-win-a-novel/
At Skylight: Cristina Rivera Garza & Caren Beilin, with Amina Cain, Present: New and Selected Stories and Revenge of the Scapegoat at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to hear two authors present their new books, in conversation with Amina Cain.
Cristina Rivera Garza presents New and Selected Stories, which brings together In English translation stories from across Rivera Garza’s career, drawing from three collections spanning over 30 years and including new writing not yet published in Spanish. It is a unique and remarkable body of work, and a window into the ever-evolving stylistic and thematic development of one of the boldest, most original and affecting writers in the world today. She is also Distinguished Professor and founder of the PhD Program in Creative Writing in Spanish at the University of Houston, Department of Hispanic Studies. In 2020, she was named a MacArthur Fellow in Fiction.
Caren Beilin is the author most recently of a nonfiction book, Blackfishing the IUD (Wolfman Books, 2019), and a memoir, Spain (Rescue Press, 2018). Revenge of the Scapegoat isa darkly hilarious novel about familial trauma, chronic illness, academic labor, and contemporary art. Here she offers a tale of familial trauma that is also a broadly inclusive skewering of academia, the medical industry, and the contemporary art scene. Beilin teaches at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and lives close by, in Vermont.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Fos–Thursday & FOST Artistic Collective Presents: Freedom of Speech Open Mic with Sabir y Cultura Café – In-Person & Online IG Event
Please help FOS’s in-person venue Sabor y Cultura with the link in the bio. Open Mic is currently only on IG Live at 8 pm, with sign-ups open on Wednesday at 3pm.
NOTE: See site for cost, event details.
Where: Freedom of Speech (FOS) Open Mic – In-Person & Online IG event
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 665 N. Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.instagram.com/fos_thursdays/
Tom Segura, with Greg Fitzsimmons, & I’d Like to Play Alone Please – In-Person & Online Event
Please join us for an in-person and virtual event to hear Tom Segura‘s, the stand-up comedian and co-host of chart-topping podcasts 2 Bears 1 Cave and Your Mom’s House, hilarious real-life stories of parenting, celebrity encounters, youthful mistakes, misanthropy, and so much more, in conversation with Greg Fitzsimmons, present his new book.
In this collection of stories, Tom combines his signature curmudgeonly humor with a revealing look at some of the ridiculous situations that shaped him and the ludicrous characters who always seem to seek him out. The stories feature hilarious anecdotes about Tom’s time on the road, including some surreal encounters with celebrities at airports; his unfiltered South American family; the trials and tribulations of parenting young children with bizarrely morbid interests; and, perhaps most memorably, experiences with his dad who, like any good Baby Boomer father, loves to talk about his bowel movements and share graphic Vietnam stories at inappropriate moments. All of this is enough to make anyone want some peace and quiet.
I’d Like to Play Alone Please will have readers laughing out loud and nodding in agreement with Segura’s message: in a world where everyone is increasingly insane, sometimes you just need to be alone.
NOTE: See site for tickets, cost, event details.
Where: John Adams Middle School (JAMS) Performing Arts Center – In-Person & Online event
Date: Thursday the 23rd
Time: 8 pm
Address: 1630 Pearl St., Santa Monica, CA 90405
Website: https://livetalksla.org/events/tom-segura/
2nd AND 3rd Grade Book Club: Cress Watercress, by Gregory Maguire at Pages Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
The 2nd and 3rd Grad Book Club will meet monthly and this month’s selection is Cress Watercress, by Gregory Maguire.
Cress Watercress is lavishly illustrated woodland tale with a classic sensibility and modern flair—from the fertile imagination behind Wicked. The story is about growing up, moving on, and finding community. When Papa doesn’t return from a nocturnal honey-gathering expedition, Cress holds out hope, but her mother assumes the worst. It’s a dangerous world for rabbits, after all. Mama moves what’s left of the Watercress family to the basement unit of the Broken Arms, a run-down apartment oak with a suspect owl landlord, a nosy mouse super, a rowdy family of squirrels, and a pair of songbirds who broadcast everyone’s business. Can a dead tree full of annoying neighbors, and no Papa, ever be home? In the timeless spirit of E. B. White and The Wind and the Willows—yet thoroughly of its time—this read-aloud and read-alone gem for animal lovers of all ages features an unforgettable cast that leaps off the page in glowing illustrations by David Litchfield. This tender meditation on coming-of-age invites us to flourish wherever we find ourselves.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Pages Bookstore – in the Courtyard
Date: Friday the 24th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/2nd-and-3rd-grade-book-club-4
Historical Fiction Book Club & The Evening and The Morning at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us for the Black Lit Book Club to read The City We Became: A Novel (The Great Cities #1) by N.K. Jemison, the beginning of a trilogy about the soul and personification of New York.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and event details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside, CA 92507
Date: Friday 24th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/black-lit-book-club-city-we-became or https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/book/9780316509886
Backyard Poetry Reading Event Featuring Denice Salas & Open Mic – In-Person Event
Join us at Backyard Poetry & Open Mic, featuring artist and writer Denice Salas. She is influenced by the DSTL Arts program, graphic novels, realism and anime/manga and her books include Book of Shadows.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Private Residence
Date: Friday the 24th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 5507 Norwich Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90032
Website: N/A
Represent: An evening of poetry of L.A. poets at Cal Tech Postdoctoral Association – In-Person Event
There will be poetry readings and refreshments at this event at Cal Tech, and it features readings by:
Angelina Saenz returns for a second year to host readers for this event. Her work focuses on memory, mujeres and motherhood. She is a poet and educator who also hosts the La Palabra Reading Series monthly at Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park. Angelina Saenz is the author of Edgecliff, her debut collection from FlowerSong Press.
bridgette bianca is a poet and professor from South Central Los Angeles. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University and her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Otis College of Art & Design. She has performed her poetry all around Southern California, including features at The World Stage, the Southern California Poetry Festival, Los Angeles Lit Crawl, the Table Lit, LitFest Pasadena, Rapp Saloon, La Palabra, and the un::fade::able Reading Series. She is the author of a debut collection, be/trouble.
Brian Lin is a PhD student in the creative writing and literature program at USC. His work can be found or is forthcoming in Hyphen Magazine, Lambda Literary, and The Margins. He has participated in the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and is a 2020 Desert Nights, Rising Stars fellow and a 2021 Ragdale resident. Brian is fiction editor of Apogee Journal and is working on his first books of prose.
Dare Williams (he/they) is a Queer HIV-positive poet and artist rooted in Southern California. A 2019 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, he has received support/fellowships for his work from John Ashbury Home School, The Frost Place, Brooklyn Poets, Breadloaf, and Tin House. He was the co-curator of the West Hollywood Literature Festival 2021. Dare’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best American Poets. His work has been anthologized in Redshift 5 by Arroyo Secco Press and is featured in Foglifter, The Shore, Exposition Review, West Trade Review, and elsewhere.
Gustavo Adolfo Guerra Vasquez is a recognized expert on inclusion, diversity, equity and access (IDEA) efforts. Throughout his career, Gustavo has led efforts providing capacity-building and technical assistance to organizations on IDEA. Born in Guatemala and raised in Los Angeles, he ִhas lived in various parts of California as well. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin American and Latino/a/x Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Gustavo acquired a graduate degree at the University of California, Berkeley in Comparative Ethnic Studies with coursework in a Designated Emphasis on Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and event details.
Where: Cal Tech’s Beckman Institute Courtyard
Date: Friday the 24th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=5308773132574939&set=a.411484668970501
Kelly Lytle Hernandez, with Gustavo Arellano, & Bad Mexicans at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Kelly Lytle Hernandez, author of Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands., will sit down with LA Times Columnist, Gustavo Arellano to discuss insights on the revolution that gave birth to the Mexican American population. the creation of her book, and the writing process itself.
This book tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Led by a brilliant but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magón, the magonistas were a motley band of journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers—and American dissidents—to their cause – ousting Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz. Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican-American population, making the magonistas’ story integral to modern American life.
Kelly Lytle Hernández holds the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. A 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient, she is the author of the award-winning books Migra! and City of Inmates. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Gustavo Arellano is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, covering Southern California everything and a bunch of the West and beyond. He previously worked at OC Weekly, where he was an investigative reporter for 15 years and editor for six, wrote a column called ¡Ask a Mexican! and is the author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.” He’s the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.
NOTE: See site for guidelines & event details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Friday the 24th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90230
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/17977
Cassidy Lucas & The Last Party: A Novel at Vroman’s Bookstore – In-Person Event
Please join us to hear Cassidy Lucas (pen name of writing duo Julia Fierro and Caeli Wolfson Widger) discuss the new book The Last Party: A Novel,
For Los Angeleno Dani Sanders, turning 50 seems like one more disappointment. Her career has stalled, her nineteen-year-old daughter with developmental issues is regressing, and Dani’s ex-husband Craig, a fertility doctor worshipped by Hollywood’s elite, is forever upending her life. Though she doesn’t feel much like celebrating, she can’t say no when her best friend Mia Markle, a flamboyant and strong-willed actress, insists on planning a “creative” birthday weekend in the wild, wealthy bohemian enclave of Topanga Canyon.
On the weekend of the Summer Solstice, Dani and her six closest friends gather in the hills above the canyon at “Celestial Ranch,” 18-acres of rugged, wooded mountainside where they’ll spend three glorious days hiking, practicing meditation and reiki, and enjoying lavish catered cuisine. They will also indulge in a little DMT, a short-acting psychedelic drug meant to open their senses and transport them to a higher plain. But as the weekend unfolds, long-buried tensions, unresolved grievances, and old secrets emerge, leaving Dani desperate for clarity about her life.
Dani and her friends take the drug late at night on an open hillside beneath the glittering stars. When Dani returns from her intense and revelatory trip, she learns that one of her friends has gone missing. Then another disappears. And soon, Dani finds herself alone on the dark mountainside, seemingly abandoned by the people who are supposed to love her most.
Or have they somehow been taken from her?
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Friday the 24th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/cassidy-lucas-discusses-the-last-party
Werner Herzog & The Twilight World Signing Event at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us in-store for a signing with Werner Herzog for his new novel, The Twilight World, between special screenings at American Cinematheque!
The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II.
n 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda’s long war.
In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda’s years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style—part documentary, part poem, and part dream—that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.
NOTE: See site for event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Friday the 24th
Time: 9:15 pm – 10 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-werner-herzog-signs-twilight-world
Indie Book Store Field Trip # 5 to Stories Books & Café in Los Angeles & Skylight Bookstore in Los Feliz by Bel Canto Bookstore in Long Beach – In-Person Event
Do you . . .
Love to read?
Love to explore new neighborhoods?
Love to get lost wandering the aisles of a physical bookstore?
Love to hang out IRL with fellow word nerds who will chat about plot lines and exchange reading lists?
Love to make a difference by supporting local businesses?
Then YOU, my friend, are invited to come join us for
Indie Bookstore Field Trips around Southern California!
What We’ll Do:
Once a month, we’ll host a FREE Saturday morning meetup at 1–2 bookstores in varying neighborhoods around SoCal. We’ll begin with free browsing time and end by circling up outside to introduce ourselves and share about any new books we bought or discovered. In certain months, we may even be given private tours by the bookshop owners, as well!
What to Bring:
A mask and your curiosity.
Field Trip #5: Stories Books & Cafe (Echo Park) + Skylight Books (Los Feliz)
Time: Meet at 10am at Stories Books & Cafe (look for the #22in22 sign).
The Plan: We’ll browse, chat, and pose for a group photo at Stories Books & Cafe before we head over to Skylight Books at 11am (15 min drive). We’ll end our morning by circling up outside to introduce ourselves and share about any new books we bought or discovered at either of the two bookstores.
Special Bonus:
Did you know there is a challenge to visit twenty-two bookstores in 2022? Read more about the #22in22 challenge and sign up if you’d like to join in the fun.
Your Field Trip Leaders:
Christy Krumm Richard is an author and freelance copy editor living in Long Beach, California with her husband and her toddler son (who will likely be making multiple appearances at bookstore field trips throughout the year). Her favorite genres to read are memoir and literary fiction. She also loves a good poem and any story that is set in a fascinating city, or setting.
Jhoanna Belfer is a lifelong book nerd, travel addict, and owner/founder of Bel Canto Books in Long Beach, California, which was featured in Bibliophile: Diverse Spines. Her favorite genres to read are literary fiction, sci-fi/fantasy, and graphic memoir. Two bookstores on her travel bucket list are Loyalty Bookstore in Washington, DC and Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Saturday the 25th
Time: 10 am – 12 pm
Address: 1716 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Summer Children’s Storytime at Re/Arte Centro Literario – In-Person Children’s Event
Join us for a Summer Children’s Bilingual Storytime event for kids, every Saturday morning.
NOTE: See site for event details.
Where: Re/Arte Centro Literario
Date: Saturday 25th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 2123 East Cesar Chavez Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033
Website: https://reartela.com/events%2Feventos
Shawn Amos & Cookies & Milk at Vroman’s Bookstore – In-Person Children’s Event
Join us to hear children’s author Shawn Amos present and discuss his new book, Cookies & Milk.
It’s a summer of family, friendship, and fun fiascos in this semi-autobiographical novel that’s as irresistible as a fresh-baked cookie.
Eleven-year-old Ellis Johnson has the summertime blues. He dreamed of spending the summer of 1976 hanging out with friends, listening to music, and playing his harmonica. Instead, he’ll be sleeping on a lumpy pullout in Dad’s sad little post-divorce bungalow and helping bring Dad’s latest far-fetched, sure-to-fail idea to life: opening the world’s first chocolate chip cookie store. They have six weeks to perfect their recipe, get a ramshackle A-frame on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard into tip-top shape, and bring in customers.
But of course, nothing is as easy as Dad makes it sound, even with Grandma along for the ride. Like she says, they have to GIT—get it together—and make things work. Along the way, Ellis discovers a family mystery he is determined to solve, the power of community, and new faith in himself.
Partially based on Shawn Amos’s own experiences growing up the son of Wally “Famous” Amos in a mostly white area, and packed with humor, heart, and fun illustrations, this debut novel sings with the joy of self-discovery, unconditional love, and belonging.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines and details.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore – on the Paseo
Date: Saturday the 25th
Time: 11 am
Address: 585 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/shawn-amos-presents-cookies-and-milk
Black Business Community Uplift: Reparations Showcase Fundraiser at The dA Center for the Arts – In-Person Event
Join us for a Reparations showcase fundraiser benefiting local black businesses in the city of Pomona continuing the movement towards unity.
Romaine Washington, guest presenter – (she/her) is the author of the poetry collection, Purgatory Has an Address, (Bamboo Dart Press, 2021) nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Sirens in Her Belly, (Jamii, 2015). Washington’s poetry has appeared in local and national publications including New Direction: Howard University, Lullwater Review: Emory University, The Black Scholar California English, and Gatherings: A Women Who Submit Anthology, among others. She has presented her poetry in community and national venues including Inside Socal CBS2/KCAL9, NPR, KPFK, and the National Poetry Slam. Washington is a fellow of The Watering Hole, South Carolina and Inland Area Writing Project, UCRiverside. She has been an educator for more than twenty years and considers all forms of writing and reading to be a source for learning.
Spoken Word Artists & Musicians will captivate you with creativity.
Featured Artists include:
Conney Williams is a poet/spoken word artist/activist/performance artist, and the author most recently of The Distance of Observation.
Derek D. Brown is a poet, performer, writer, and author of the collection, Articulate Scars: Comfortable Silences and Reluctant Tears.
Daniel Hees, of Pen Clique in Pomona/West Hollywood, is an artist and musician, and producer of poetry content.
James Coates is a nationally featured poet, speaker, and author of If I Had Lived, All the Ways you Are Wonderful, and Midnight and Mad Dreams. He is also the creator of the Be the Change Social Justice Writing Workshop Series, offered monthly on Zoom.
Antonio Edwards Jr. is a spoken word artist, poet and writer, and was Tacoma Washington’s Poet Laureate in 2009. He helps young poets develop their literary voice and personal form of self-expression.
Subject Matter N/A
WZA N/A
Pretty Blaq N/A
Ibrahim Arsalan N/A
Gilead7 N/A
NOTE: See site for costs, RSVP, and details.
Where: The dA Center for the Arts
Date: Saturday the 25th
Time: 1 pm – 4 pm
Address: 252 S. Main St., #D., Pomona, CA 91766
Bridget Morrissey, with Emily Wibberly & Austin Sigmund Broka, & A Thousand Miles at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
Bridget Morrissey, in conversation with Emily Wibberly & Austin Sigmund Broka, will launch and discuss her new romance novel, A Thousand Miles.
After a decade of silence, Dee and Ben reunite for a road trip they once promised to take. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. As the miles fly by, Dee and Ben’s friendship reignites. But the closer they get to reaching their destination, the more apparent it becomes that their attraction to each other cannot be ignored. Their last adventure ended in disaster, and they’re about to find out if any hope of a future together is in the rear-view mirror.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Ripped Bodice Bookstore
Date: Saturday 25th
Time: 2 pm – 3:30 pm
Address: 3806 Main Street, Culver City CA 90232
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Carlos Allende & Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love at Diesel Bookstore – In-Person Event
Carlos Allende will present and sign his new novel, Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love.
Despite everything you know and value, Carlos Allende’s new novel Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love will make you root for its bitter, spectacularly superficial, and highly immoral protagonists. The story is both an experiment in empathy and a savagely camp, relentlessly unsentimental, incisive account of our worst impulses and our current deranged political moment. It’s a brilliant, laugh-out-loud work of dark comedy.
Set in Los Angeles, a year before same-sex marriage became legal, the novel follows the misadventures of two gay men for whom it didn’t get better: Jignesh Amin, an overweight, angry Indian American working as a bookkeeper, and Charlie Hayworth, a socially inept white guy from Leitchfield, Kentucky. After Jignesh murders the beautiful office intern because she insults his writing, and Charlie starts dating Jignesh because he wrongly believes he’s rich, the two men embark on a madcap journey that includes a few other deaths, a money-laundering scheme, a gay cruise, and an ass-backward trip to Los Cabos, Mexico.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Diesel Bookstore – in the Courtyard
Date: Saturday 25th
Time: 3 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/carlos-allende-signing
Saturday Afternoon Poetry Publishing Workshops with Scott Ferry and Jesse Rey Tovar + Spectrum Online Edition: Summer Love Readers at Rosebud Coffee – In-Person Event & Online Event Via Zoom
Join us at Saturday Afternoon Poetry off-site at Rosebud Coffee for Poetry Publishing Workshops led by Scott Ferry and Jesse Rey Tovar, plus Spectrum Online Edition: Summer Love particpants.
All events are curated by Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry at Rosebud Coffee
Date: Saturday the 25th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 2302 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101 or Online via Zoom link (see site)
Website: http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
Naz Kutab & The Loophole at The Book Jewel Bookstore – In-Person YA Event
Debut LGBTQ and YA author Naz Kutab will join host Robbie Couch, author of Blaine for the Win and The Sky Blues, in conversation to discuss his debut novel, The Loophole.
In this book, a gay Muslim boy travels the world fir a second chance at love after a magical heiress grants him three wishes.
NOTE: See site for tickets and event details.
Where: The Book Jewel Bookstore
Date: Saturday 25th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: https://www.facebook.com/BookJewelBookstore/photos/a.104096281005518/736882591060214
Midsummer Poetry Book Fair at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person Event
The Midsummer Poetry Book Fair is a free event celebrating the power of poetry, diversity, and community, and will feature performances by a great line-up of Latinx poets, spoken word artists, and storytellers, including readings and signings by:
Davina Ferreira is a bilingual poet, social entrepreneur, author, speaker, founder of Alegria, and the author most recently ofIf Love Had a Name: Poems.
Jean-Pierre Rueda is a poet and writer from San Jose, Costa Rica, and the author of the Spanish collection, HERENCIAS, about his political and family history.
Natalie Sierra is a first generation Latinx poet and author of the book, Medusa, as well as three volumes of poems and short stories: Nadine: Love Songs for Demented Housewives, Temblers, and Strangelove: Tales of Love and Lust.
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is the author of Speaking con su Sombra published in 2021 by Alegría Publishing, La Belle Ajar, a collection of cento poems inspired by Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel, published in 2020 by CLASH Books, Between the Spine a collection of erotic love poems published with Picture Show Press, the full-length poetry collection Flashes & Verses…Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press and the poetry chapbook So Many Flowers, So Little Time from Red Mare Press. And, CLASH Books is publishing the much-anticipated poetry collection, We Are the Ones Possessed, in 2022.
Lupe Montiel is an author, poet, scriptwriter, filmmaker, art and music curator is a Board member of Girls in Focus. Her work is published in Inficciones: Relatos de escritoras en confinamiento (Spanish Edition) 2020.
Yesenia Chavez, a daughter of immigrants, and the author of the collection, This Poem Might Save You and Me (2022), which take you from the streets of L.A. to the little town of Dolores, Chihuahua.
Solany Lara N/A
Virginia Bulacio is a bilingual Latina photojournalist, storyteller, and educator, whose writings and activism highlights immigrant communities and their struggles.
Diana Medina is a first-generation Mexican American poet and educator born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. Her mission in life is to use her gift with words to bring more clarity, compassion, and comic relief to the world. She believes that this is how she will leave the world better than she found it. She is the author of Healing Out Loud.
Blanca Figueroa N/A
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines and event details.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Saturday 25th
Time: 3 pm – 7 pm
Address: 2702 West Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/midsummer-poetry-book-fair-tickets-362732772487?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
Historical Fiction Book Club & The Evening and The Morning at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us for the Historical Fiction Book Club to read The Evening and The Morning: A Novel (Kingsbridge #4) by Ken Follett, the thrilling and addictive prequel to The Pillars of the Earth—set in England in the dawn of a new era: the Middle Ages.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and event details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside, CA 92507
Date: Saturday 25th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/book/9780451478016
Queer Authors Festival, Drag Show & Open Mic with LAPS at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
Join Los Angeles Poet Society and Beyond Baroque to celebrate the first Queer Writers Festival, Drag Show & Open Mic.
Join us for an evening with featured authors Kelsey Bryan-Zwick, Sofia Fey, soledad con carne, and more! Aside from the featured readings, there will also be a special segment dedicated to the Queer Uprising! The theme for LA Poet Society’s first volume of Acid Verse Literary Journal, an anthology that centers BIPOC, and creates a safe space for undocumented, disabled, non-binary, gender-fluid, and LGBTQ folks. Attendees are welcome to sign up for the open mic! The event will culminate with a Drag show performance with Drag Kings Tim Mick Raw & Theo.
Schedule:
7 PM: Queer Uprising Poetry Showcase + Open Mic
8 – 9:30 PM: Featured Readings and Q & A
10 PM: Drag Show
This event is free & In-Person at Beyond Baroque. Masks are required while inside our center.
Kelsey Bryan-Zwick (she/they) is a disabled, queer, bilingual immigrant, and author based in Los Angeles, California. Their debut poetry collection, Here Go the Knives (Moon Tide Press 2022)—part memoir, part magical realism, part illustration—focuses on their decades surviving with debilitating scoliosis. On the gram @theexquisitepoet.
soledad con carne: (he/they) is a first-generation Chicanx poet, student, and mixed-media artist. Based in the heart of the valley, soledad is known by the SFV scene as the poet laureate of the San Fernando Valley. Their work explores themes like alcoholism, Chicanx identity, mental illness, and divine existence through a surrealist and reluctantly optimistic perspective. soledad just likes expressing himself through poetry, so catch them at an open mic sometime.
Sofia Fey is a Lesbian and Non-Binary writer living in LA. Currently, they are the founder of the Luminaries Poetry workshop, and poetry editor at Hooligan Magazine. They love to beat their friends at Mario Party. They tweet @sofiafeycreates.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines and details.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 25th
Time: 7 pm –11 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Burning Issues Book Club & Unapologetic via Bel Canto Bookstore – Online Event
Jon the Burning Issues Book Club on the last Sunday of the month to discuss Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, by Charlene Carruthers.
This book provides a vision for how social justice movements can become sharper and more effective through principled struggle, healing justice, and leadership development. It also offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Bel Canto Bookstore, Long Beach
Date: Sunday 26th
Time: 12 pm – 1:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/burning-issues-book-club-261829
Sunday Series: Gustavo Hernandez Workshop: Journey, Growth, Destination via The Poetry Lab – Online Event
Jon the next Sunday Series Writing Workshop for Journey, Growth, Destination, led by poet and author Gustavo Hernandez.
In this generative workshop, poet Gustavo Hernandez will use his debut poetry collection to demonstrate how personal journeys and personal growth can be used to inform our writing and how technical growth occurs each time we write a poem. The main writing exercise of this class is inspired by the time-hopping structure of his debut collection, Flower Grand First, and will focus on the topic of destinations and endings. Participants will be guided through a writing exercise to non-linearly construct a poem.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, and event details.
Where: The Poetry Lab
Date: Sunday 26th
Time: 1 pm – 4 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.thepoetrylab.com/upcoming-events/2022/gustavo-hernandez
Latinx Book Club & Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us for the Latinx Book Club to read Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution by Kelly Lytle Hernandez.
This book tells the dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Led by a brilliant but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magón, the magonistas were a motley band of journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers—and American dissidents—to their cause-ousting Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz. Taking readers to the frontlines of the magonista uprising and the counterinsurgency campaign that failed to stop them, Kelly Lytle Hernández puts the magonista revolt at the heart of U.S. history. Long ignored by textbooks, the magonistas threatened to undo the rise of Anglo-American power, on both sides of the border, and inspired a revolution that gave birth to the Mexican American population, making the magonistas’ story integral to modern American life.
NOTE: See site for book purchase and event details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside
Date: Sunday 26th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/latinx-book-club-bad-mexicans
La Palabra Reading Series & Open Mic at Avenue 50 Studio – In-Person Event
Join us for the monthly La Palabra Reading Series & Open Mic, hosted by poet Angelina Saenz, author of Edgecliff, and featuring:
Ron Baca is a poet from Boyle Heights, now in El Sereno, and he writes on issues that reflect people and events which celebrate his community’s roots. He is a former LAUSD teacher and a volunteer tutor at Homeboy Industries.
Gloria Enedina Alvarez is a Chicana poet/intermedia artist, literary translator and curator, and she teaches creative writing and works as a consultant in public schools, universities, libraries, and cultural centers. She has published widely in English and Spanish, as well as writing an epic play, libretto and opera.
Ramon Garcia is the author of two books of poetry: The Chronicles and Other Countries. He is a poet, scholar, and professor at CSUN, and has published poetry fiction, and scholarly work, as well as on artistic work. He lives in downtown L.A.
NOTE: See site for book purchase and event details.
Where: Avenue 50 Studio
Date: Sunday 26th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 131 N. Avenue 50, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: http://avenue50studio.org/la-palabra
At Skylight: Werner Herzog & The Twilight World Signing at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us for two signings (at 3 pm and at 6 pm) with Werner Herzog to celebrate his new novel, The Twilight World.
The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II.
In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda’s long war.
In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda’s years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style—part documentary, part poem, and part dream—that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Sunday 26th
Time: 3 pm & 6 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-werner-herzog-signs-twilight-world-0
Beatnik Café Poetry Night with Melissa Studdard & Peter J. Harris at Hey Hey – In-Person Event
Join Beatnik Café for a Poetry Night & Open Mic hosted by Hannah Pachman and featuring Melissa Stoddard and Peter J. Harris.
Melissa Studdard is the author of two poetry collections, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast, and Dear Selection Committee, and the chapbook Like a Bird with a Thousand Wings. Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and has also appeared in periodicals such as POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, Missouri Review, and New England Review. Her Awards include The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the Tom Howard Prize from Winning Writers, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and more.
Peter J. Harris, Altadena Poet Laureate Editor in Chief (2022-2024), 2018 Los Angeles COLA Fellow in literary arts, Fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC, and award-winning poet/essayist, is the author of Bless the Ashes, poetry (Tia Chucha Press), winner of the 2015 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and The Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right’ a book of personal essays, winner of a 2015 American Book Award. In 2022, Beyond Baroque Books will publish Harris’ book of poetry SongAgain and FlowerSong Press will publish his Safe Arms: 20 Love & Erotic Poems (w/an Ooh Baby Baby Moan), with Spanish translations by Francisco Letelier.
NOTE: See site for schedule, guidelines, writing prompt, and event details.
Where: Hey Hey Tea House & Common Room
Date: Sunday 26th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 1555 W, Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/400004822046647
Roar Shack Poetry Reading Event by David Rocklin at 826LA Echo Park Time Travel Mart – In-Person Event
Join host David Rocklin for a return of the LIVE, in-person Roar Shack Reading Series. There will be wine, snacks and community, and these amazing poets:
Aruni Wijesinghe is a poet and writer, and the author of the debut collection, 2 Revere Place, in which she unfolds her family’s first ten years in the United States. Here she charts the journey of their evolution into Americans through the eyes of a child learning what it means to hold two countries inside herself.
Arthur Kayzakian is a poet, teacher, and editor, born in Teheran, Iran, whose family sought political asylum when he was age three to escape the Iranian Revolution. He is a contributing editor at Poetry International. His chapbook, My Burning City, was a finalist for the Locked Horn Press Chapbook Prize and Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. He is a recipient of the Minas Savvas Fellowship, and his poems and translations have appeared in or are forthcoming from several publications
Bridgette Bianca is a poet and professor from South Central Los Angeles. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University and her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Otis College of Art & Design. She has performed her poetry all around Southern California, including features at The World Stage, the Southern California Poetry Festival, Los Angeles Lit Crawl, the Table Lit, LitFest Pasadena, Rapp Saloon, La Palabra, and the un::fade::able Reading Series. Her work as a writer and an educator seeks to serve the people and moments most forget or ignore. Her first book of poetry, be/trouble, was released in 2020.
Suhasini Devi Yeeda is a first generation Indian American from Dallas. Earning her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College in 2015, she has since published work with the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Indian Review, and Madcap Review. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee (XLI and XLV) for her short stories “Dream State” and “Avocado Slices.” “Dream State” was also nominated for The Best American Short Stories and Best of the Net. Her story “Not Unlike His Own” is slated for publication at Packingtown Review in fall 2020. Suhasini lives in Los Angeles and is currently at work on a collection of short stories that highlights the first days, weeks, months of the immigrant experience on US soil and raises the question, What does it mean exactly to be an American?
Nikolai Garcia is Assistant Editor for Dryland, a literary arts journal that was born in South Central Los Angeles. His first poetry chapbook, Nuclear Shadows of Palm Trees, was published by DSTL Arts.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and event details.
Where: 826LA Echo Park Time Travel Mart
Date: Sunday 26th
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm
Address: 1714 W, Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/1719377918414122
Mutual Aid Poetry Show at Midnight Books Bookstore – In-Person Event
Briana Munoz presents a mutual aid poetry show combining the poetry network and the critical need to support folks who are houseless as well as the grassroots organizations providing free resources.
Poets performing include:
Briana Munoz is a Mexican American poet who spits fire into a microphone and celebrates her indigenous roots. She is the author of the chapbook Loose Lips and her poetry collection Everything Is Returned to the Soil/Todo.
Iván Salinas is a poet based in the San Fernando Valley experimenting with words, images, and sound. His literary work has been published in a variety of journals and magazines. Salinas is a reader for the literary journal Dryland.
Kesau’c Hill is an ex-gang member introduced by a mentor to the art of poetry and the spoken word. He believes poetry literally saved his life. Hill is Executive Director for AFARY Inc Youth Mentoring (Advocates For At-Risk Youth).
Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual poet, writer and educator and author of the memoir Ask the Blue Heron, and the bilingual collection, Uprising/Alzamiento.
Karo Ska is a poet and writer, manager at the Sims Library of Poetry, and author of Gathering Grandmother’s Bones (DSTL Arts, 2020) and the full-length collection, Gathering My Salt-Drenched Bones (World Stage Press, 2022).
Julia Rae Rodriguez is a writer and author of the bilingual children’s book, Mommy Tell Me Why I’m Raidant.
We ask that all attendees bring cash for a monetary donation to support City Hall Sessions or personal hygiene products for their weekly distribution in DTLA Skid Row.
NOTE: See site for event details.
Where: Midnight Books
Date: Sunday 26th
Time: 5 pm – 7 pm
Address: 7201 Greenleaf, Suite D, Whittier, CA 90602
Website: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=mutual%20aid%20poetry%20show%20june%2026%202022
Los Angeles Literature 