AN INTERVIEW WITH XOCHITL-JULISA BERMEJO
From: Sundress Press
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the author of the forthcoming collection of poetry Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications, 2016). Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge is a feminist collection of poetry straddling borders, and arose when daughter of Mexican immigrants, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, traveled from Los Angeles to the Tucson-Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border in August 2011 to volunteer with the humanitarian aid organization, No More Deaths. She hoped to gain a concrete understanding of the “wall,” and the result was a book illustrating a speaker driven to activism by a need to honor her family’s journey.
Bermejo spoke with our Editorial Intern, Kristin Figgins, about her influences, her family, the work that helped inspire the collection, and more.
Concha Y Café Workshop at Junipero Serra Branch Library 
In Posada: Offerings of Refuge and Witness, author Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo takes us on a journey that begins with the story of her grandmother’s stolen “black lava” metate. The narrator in the poem is stitching together a past full of gaps. Like many of us, Bermejo is hungry for knowing the stories of those who came before her.
Join us for a public reading by Rodrigo Toscano, poet and author of Explosion Rocks Springfield. Raised in southern California, poet, playwright and labor activist Rodrigo Toscano’s experimental work often takes the form of conversation and physical movement that interrogates, and crosses borders: the border between poetic and political action, between the made thing and its making, between speech and theater, between languages, between social change and its provocation.
In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the following is a celebration of Los Angeles’ rich Latino literary tradition. These are writers that have called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula home. They have explored its streets from Pacoima to, East L.A., to Commerce, to El Monte and Hollywood and Pershing Square. These writers usually write about a Los Angeles completely alien to Hollywood, the movie industry, to the famous neighborhoods like Brentwood, Bel Air, The Hollywood Hills, etc., the famous L.A. landmarks (Hollywood sign, Venice Beach, Pinks Hot Dogs, celebrity sightings, etc.) and capture the everyday of working class Latinos/as living in the Barrios. Away from depictions of cholos and cholas, gang violence and “illegals.” As the seminal anthology of contemporary Latino/a Southern California literature says: “Spanning sixty years…brings to life [a] complex and diverse group of people who are the Latino denizens of Los Angeles…young and old, gay and straight, rich and poor, the newly arrived and the well established.” The following authors speak to this breadth of experience proving they are not a monolith, stories that are often hidden in plain sight amidst the famous Los Angeles stereotypes of Hollywood, reinvention, dreams deferred, paradise etc. that proliferate around the world.
The poet laureate of Los Angeles had just taken a seat at a Pacoima cafe when he was approached by two young men.
Ross Gay at Claremont Public Library 
A busy industrial thoroughfare is an unusal place for an enchanting coffee house but that’s not the only distinguishing feature of El Sereno’s Holy Grounds Coffee & Tea. The garden, a splashing fountain, a tiny performance stage, add to the oasis-flavored ambience for this week’s Hitched reading.
Los Angeles Literature 