I love sports. Born into them actually. The day my mom went into labor and was admitted to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica—May 25, 1984 (I was born in the middle of the night on the 26th)—the Showtime Lakers beat the Phoenix Suns to advance to the NBA Finals to face their archrival, the Boston Celtics. In the waiting room, relatives were glued to the game and the OB/GYN stuck his head in a time or two to inquire about the score.

When I was a toddler and a Lakers game was on the TV, I pointed at the screen and said “Karem,” when Lakers center Karem Abdul-Jabar appeared on screen. Karem is my mother’s favorite athlete and coincidentally they took a class together when students at UCLA in the late 60s. For my mother, he combined athletic prowess and intellectualism.

And I attempted, but failed, to be good at golf, baseball and basketball. I had the passion but lacked the skills and personality to excel. I even lacked my father’s talent which led him to be awarded best defensive player on his high school basketball team at Taft, in the San Fernando Valley.

So, when the Olympics come around, I’m glued to the TV for two weeks. I watch every sport I can.

However, with the next Summer Olympics returning to Los Ángeles in 2028 for a third time, the city has an excellent opportunity to tell the world exactly who it is. For us to move past all the famous tropes and stereotypes. To tell our authentic stories, inclusively.

This is especially important for the literary community. Not only since it’s obvious that we directly engage in storytelling, but with the added tourists the Olympics will bring, it’s our chance to engage with an expanded international audience.

Not all these tourists will care about literature, but all eyes—the world—will be focused on Los Ángeles. And more literary lovers than ever before will descend on the city and Southern California.

In light of this, the far-flung literary community needs to come together inside and/or outside of the Cultural Olympiad to host a year-long series of events, all falling under the same banner, ensuring the chosen venues are important to the community and are in relevant locations to the Olympics.

According to a Los Angeles Times article, the Cultural Olympiad has not only been part of the Olympics for over a century but “seeks to highlight the depth and breadth of each city’s artistic and cultural offerings through performances, exhibitions, workshops, installations and educational activities beginning a year before the Games and culminating with the summer proceedings.” That’s why events such as readings, open mics, workshops, panels and a poetry slam are necessary to include. We need to highlight who the entire literary community truly is—its trans, Filipino, Salvadorean, gay, Black and lesbian writers, among others.

At the beginning of September, Paris handed off the Cultural Olympiad to Los Ángeles with a joint livestream poetry finale dubbed “Catch the Mic: Paris to L.A.” Now, former MOCA board chair Maria Arena Bell is the chair of the LA28 Cultural Olympiad. She said, “My plan is to meet with artists and arts organizations of every size and to really connect with people and hear what they have to say…It’s our Olympiad for the whole city, and it should feel very, very inclusive.”

In conjunction with this collaboration, each host city selects its own theme to base the art and events on. L.Á.’s theme still needs to be chosen. Whether inside and/or outside the Cultural Olympiad, the 2028 Summer Olympics marks our—the Greater Los Ángeles literary community’s—own Olympic Games. Our time to work together as a team, a community, to show the world who we are, what we do and what we can do when we let literature bring us together. Just like the Showtime Lakers did on the night I was born.