This August, Read Local SoCal is reading The Killing Spell, the debut fantasy from Shay Kauwe. Two centuries after a catastrophic flood drowned the Hawaiian islands, the surviving clans have built a new homeland on the edge of Los Angeles. When LA’s most prominent Filipino activist is killed by a death spell that can only exist in Hawaiian, young clan leader Kea Petrova becomes the prime suspect. It’s a murder mystery built from ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. Read along with us all month.
“I tore through this book and loved every second. Shay Kauwe is a talent to watch.” — Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author
Four Los Angeles writers return to the past, through fiction and poetry, to understand where we came from.
WeHo Reads: Reimagining History
West Hollywood Library Community Room, 625 N San Vicente Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Free, RSVP Requested
Why do we keep returning to history? And what changes when we recover what was buried, silenced, or forgotten?
WeHo Reads returns in September with four acclaimed Los Angeles writers whose work reaches back into personal, political, and civic histories and reshapes how we see it. Through historical fiction and poetry, Kate Maruyama, Steven Reigns, Mike Sonksen, and Désirée Zamorano explore why the past still shapes the present, and what we can learn from seeing it through new lenses. In an evening of reading and discussion, they ask how memory, imagination, and the craft of writing become tools for reimagining where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.
Featuring:
Kate Maruyama is a professor of writing and an author of realist and fabulist novels, short stories and essays set in and about Los Angeles.
Steven Reigns is a poet, educator and was appointed the first Poet Laureate of West Hollywood.
Mike Sonksen, aka Mike the PoeT, is a poet, professor, journalist, historian & tour guide with work in publications like the Academy of American Poets, Alta, PBS, Poetry Foundation & Westways.
Désirée Zamorano, author of the historical fiction novel Dispossessed and the collection of short stories, Amarisa’s Cooking Pot, delights in writing about the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Free parking is available in the 5-story Public/Park Parking Structure at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd.
WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood. For more information and events, visit www.weho.org/wehoreads. The 2026 program is produced by BookSwell, a literary media company amplifying historically excluded voices. Additional support is provided by media partnerships with Book Soup and Los Angeles Review of Books. Attendees are advised that the program may include mature language and themes.
Authors
Kate Maruyama
Kate Maruyama is the author of Alterations, The Collective, Bleak Houses, and Harrowgate. Her novella Family Solstice was named Best Fiction Book of 2021 by Rue Morgue Magazine. She serves on the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee of the Horror Writers Association and on the Board of The Shirley Jackson Awards. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles.
Steven Reigns is a Los Angeles poet and educator and was appointed the first Poet Laureate of West Hollywood. Alongside over a dozen chapbooks, he has published the collections Inheritance and Your Dead Body is My Welcome Mat. Reigns holds a BA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida, a Master of Clinical Psychology from Antioch University, and is a sixteen-time recipient of The Los Angeles County’s Department of Cultural Affairs’ Artist in Residency Grant. He edited My Life is Poetry, showcasing his students’ work from the first-ever autobiographical poetry workshop for LGBT seniors. Reigns has lectured and taught writing workshops around the country to LGBT youth and people living with HIV. Currently he is touring The Gay Rub, an exhibition of rubbings from LGBT landmarks, and is the board president of the Anaïs Nin Foundation. His collection A Quilt for David was published by City Lights and is the product of over ten years of research regarding dentist David Acer’s life. His newest collection Outliving Michael is a memorial memoir in poetry, chronicling Reigns’s profound friendship with Michael Church, who died of AIDS in 2000.
3rd-generation Angeleno Mike Sonksen, aka Mike the PoeT, is a poet, professor, journalist, historian and tour guide whose work has appeared in publications like the Academy of American Poets, Alta, PBS, Poetry Foundation & Westways. Sonksen’s read poetry at over 100 academic institutions, appeared on radio and television and hosted events at the Grand Performances and Getty Center. His latest book, Traces, Places, Faces debuts this Fall.
Los Angeles native Désirée Zamorano is the author of the groundbreaking historical novel, Dispossessed, as well as the highly acclaimed literary novel, The Amado Women. An award-winning and Pushcart prize–nominated short story writer, Zamorano’s work explores invisibility, injustice, and inequity. A selection of her work can be found in Alta, The Kenyon Review Online, and Akashic’s South Central Noir. She teaches linguistic and cultural diversity at California State University Long Beach and is a senior fiction editor at Silk Road Review.
The Los Feliz Writers Festival returns for its second year on Wednesday, Aug. 19 through Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026, with 14 events staged across bars, diners, taco stands, a park, and a street corner in Los Feliz. Every single one is free.
A neighborhood celebrates
“The mission of this festival is to celebrate, empower, and engage writers that live, work, and play in Los Feliz!”
Co-directors Sammy Ginsberg and D.W. Socha met at Skylight Books’ Coyotes Book Club and through Los Feliz Neighborhood Council committees, and started the festival in 2025 with a specific idea of what they were representing. In their own words from last year’s press release, they “wanted to organize a festival that represented what they think of as Los Feliz- fun, creative, and a little weird.”
Why we’re highlighting it
BookSwell exists to amplify Black, Indigenous, and writers of color alongside LGBTQ+, female, nonbinary, and indie writers, so we look closely at whether a festival’s inclusion is structural or decorative. Los Feliz built theirs into the schedule.
Two of the 14 events are explicitly about who gets heard. Local POC Voices (Sun., Aug. 23) gathers five writers of color, Laura Sermeño, Joshua-John Judah Ivory, Ten-Headed Skeleton, Jacqueline Vitela, and Jaimé Korima Rodriguez, for performances and a conversation the organizers describe this way:
“Together, the panel will explore the ways in which POC writers are currently silenced, historical context, and how to make change.”
And the Anti-Racist Workshop, A Fishbowl Demo (Sun., Aug. 23) is a live teaching demonstration led by Shannon Cain, an O. Henry Prize, Pushcart, and Drue Heinz winner and NEA fellow, informed by Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti-Racist Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom. The festival’s description:
“Set up fishbowl style with four writers and their facilitator at the center, this session will demonstrate an updated creative writing pedagogy that rejects the traditional model for one that nurtures and champions a diversity of voices.”
We’re excited about inclusion at the festival, including these featured writers:
CD Eskilson, a trans nonbinary poet and translator whose debut Scream / Queen is out from Acre Books
Karla Lamb (she/ella), “a Queer Xicana poet born in Mexico City” who hosts Verse4Verse, a monthly Sapphic and Queer-expansive poetry night in East Hollywood
lenny love, Jr., an African American filmmaker, actor, and poet who “explores the complexities of Black identity.”
Isabella Bellezza, who describes herself as “a bicyclist and a trans woman and a scientist.”
Jaimé Korima Rodriguez, “a nonbinary, jota and QTBIPOC punk, storyteller, poet and journalist,” whose forthcoming Jota Historias: Poetic Magic is due from Riot of Roses in early 2027
The presses in the mix are independent and fierce: Write Bloody, Acre Books, Sunflower Station Press, Pelekinesis, FlowerSong Press, and Riot of Roses, alongside a stack of self-published zines.
Los Feliz also now has a poet laureate. The Los Feliz Neighborhood Council, in partnership with the festival, appointed Derrick C. Brown, president of Write Bloody Publishing, the indie poetry press behind Andrea Gibson, Sarah Kay, and Clint Smith, as the neighborhood’s first. His case for why any of this matters:
“Poetry is more essential now than ever. We are in a deepening valley of loneliness. In an age of information overload and superficial connections, poetry teaches us to slow down, to truly listen, and to feel deeply. It’s resistance against a culture that values speed and cash over substance. Poetry builds empathy, and hot damn, do we need more of that.”
Schedule
When
Event
Where
Wed., Aug. 19, 6:45–9 p.m.
Opening Party: Shut Up and Write in Los Feliz, with a welcome from LA Poet Laureate Brian Sonia-Wallace
Big Bar Alcove
Thu., Aug. 20, 7–8:30 p.m.
Personal Essay Writing Workshop with Tracy Chabala
Fred 62
Fri., Aug. 21, 8–10 p.m.
Poets Are the New Pop Stars
TBA
Sat., Aug. 22, 10–11:30 a.m.
Fall in Love With Your Own Voice with Aubrey Mayne
TBA
Sat., Aug. 22, 12–1:30 p.m.
Sensory Portal: Writing Through Taste & Scent with Tayi Sanusi
The Story of You: Journaling Stroll & Integration with Laura Fuller
Barnsdall Art Park
As of July 31, six venues were still TBA. Check the festival’s RSVP pages for updates.
The centerpiece is arguably Saturday night. Voices of Los Feliz launches Radically Human, a zine featuring over 30 writers and artists, being printed and distributed around the neighborhood, with a reading under the stars at Barnsdall Art Park:
“Bring a picnic, a blanket, and friends, and come meet under the stars at the beautiful Barnsdall Art Park and meet the local writers who live in Los Feliz as they read from our zine.”
And the festival closes the way it should, with an open mic at Vermont Triangle:
“This is an open mic, feel free to bring your first drafts, your free writes, your work-in-progresses! This is about sharing your voice and is not a polished performance.”
Need to know
Everything is free. RSVPs are handled through Partiful, event by event: partiful.com/e/3fXb8NoigxCSHMPsdvtD. Several workshops are capped, so RSVP early for anything that’s calling you.
The reason it’s free is that local businesses are donating their rooms. The organizers ask one thing:
“Please support the local business hosting us by purchasing something as that’s why our event is FREE <3”
Buy the coffee. Order the tacos. That’s the whole economic model.
The festival is run by volunteers with support from the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council and, last year, 23 local organizations. If you have questions, the co-directors read their own email: seeliterarypixie@gmail.com. Follow along at @losfelizwriters and losfelizlitfest.org.
The Sunset Strip’s beloved independent bookstore is open again after a nearby water-main rupture forced a temporary closure — and the best way to say welcome back is to walk in (or click through) and buy a book.
Book Soup has anchored West Hollywood’s literary life for decades, just up the street from where BookSwell and WeHo Reads gather readers all year long. A closure like this hits a small shop hard, so we’re marking the reopening the way that actually helps: by pointing you toward titles worth owning — books by authors in the BookSwell and WeHo Reads orbit — every one of them in stock or orderable at Book Soup right now.
Click any cover to buy it straight from Book Soup. Prefer to browse in person? They’re at 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., open daily.
These are the books we’ll be talking about over the next few months.
Every title above links to its page at Book Soup. Shopping your neighborhood bookstore keeps West Hollywood’s literary community strong — thank you for showing up for them.
BookSwell is proud to be a community sponsor of PUBLISHED! 2026, Women Who Submit’s summer celebration and fundraiser lifting up the writers in our community who got their work into the world this year.
Women Who Submit has spent years helping women and nonbinary writers submit their work, support one another, and push publishing toward real parity. Standing with them is an easy yes.
PUBLISHED! 2026 takes place Friday, July 10 at 7pm at The Democracy Center (alongside the Japanese American National Museum) in downtown Los Angeles, with ten readers, a dessert reception, cake, and music. Every ticket helps WWS pay these writers for their work and keep its programs free. Reserve your spot.
Supporting organizations like WWS is core to what BookSwell is about: connecting readers and writers in celebration of books, and making sure the writers doing the work are seen and paid. Subscribe to the BookSwell newsletter to keep celebrating the SoCal literary community with us.
