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
BookSwell is proud to support the Los Feliz Writers Festival, a free, neighborhood-built celebration of local writers returning for its second year, August 19–23, 2026. Thirteen free events, twenty volunteers, and one clear idea: that a writing community can be inclusive, human, and rooted right where you live. We asked co-director Sammy Ginsberg a few questions about how it all comes together. (See the full schedule and RSVP →)
Is there a conversation you’re hoping the festival starts, or continues?
Ooooh this is a good question! The answer is yes!! I’m hoping to talk about how we can make the writing community inclusive, human, and grounded in the neighborhood! Many MFA programs and the writing industry are based in NYC or ask writers to leave their communities and either move or drive to institutions to teach writers, workshop their writing, and participate in the writing community.
This festival is asking:
Who are the writers who live in your neighborhood?
What do they write about?
What can you learn from them?
How can you be in community with them especially when they are different from you?
What is the role of the neighborhood council and council district representative in this work given the role that writing plays in upholding democracy, teaching values, and accessing our education system — you can’t graduate high school without being able to write!
What does it mean to be human in the 21st century (the humanities!!) and how can we design a culture and city around that as well as create and maintain policies that protect our humanity?
The festival grew out of a communal writing practice. How does that shape the mission and programming?
Writing every week together (now twice a week!) affects our programming deeply. Most of the writers who are performing or facilitating writing workshops at the festival I met and got to know because I host the Shut Up and Write every week! Our communal writing practice isn’t about giving feedback. It’s about meeting every week to eat dinner (if you want — which I always do!), focus on whatever you want to focus on for one hour, share community updates (by word of mouth! Like the old days!!), and hang out (if you want! You can also leave!)
Since this happens every week, there is no urgency to get someone’s number or you’ll never see them again! Just come back next week.
This has allowed our relationships to develop slowly, as well as to create a communal third space. We are working to move community organizing from individuals and private corporations that can disappear if you stop paying or a single person burns out — and to find out who are the people who need what you need and to create infrastructure that can be maintained for generations (we’re dreaming but also why not! Central Library just turned 100!).
This means we can get to know each other as humans who love writing rather than writers who are competing for attention, awards, and publishing opportunities!
My favorite thing about writing (unlike other artforms!) is that most writers peak in their 50s and onward! It takes decades of work and reflection to create something that can speak to generations for centuries!! One of my favorite writers Dr. Edith Eger published her first book The Choice at 89, and was a New York Times Bestseller!
In addition, we created a public planning committee meeting for the festival that has met twice after our Shut Up and Write where we share updates and ask for feedback.
This festival is for our community and led by our community. And anyone who lives, works, or plays in Los Feliz is welcome to be part of it! By showing up and becoming a regular!
What do you want Angelenos from other neighborhoods to know?
I want Angelenos from other neighborhoods to know that given the commuter culture of Los Angeles, they too are part of our neighborhood and we are so excited to write alongside them and learn about their writing! At the same time, I would be so excited if you left this festival inspired and empowered to set up your own festival, Poet Laureate, and weekly writing group in your neighborhood — and would love to attend your festival and learn about the writers who live in your neighborhood! When I lived in the UK (I was there for seven years!!) I spent my weekends volunteering at wee literary festivals all over the UK! From Bradford to Teignmouth to Tamworth, I was there and it was magical!! Teignmouth has 15,000 people living in it! Los Feliz has 40,000! What is the population of your neighborhood?!
What’s different this year, the second time around?
Last year, the festival was two volunteers (Dawn Socha and I!) and 6 events. This year is 20 volunteers and 13 events!!! We kept our Voices of Los Feliz Celebration (hosted by the Voice of Los Feliz Phil Leirness) and made it even more special by publishing a neighborhood zine with the theme Radically Human paid for by a grant from the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council and printed at our local print shop Copy Cat featuring 37 writers who live and commune in Los Feliz!!!! Check out our zine here! All the other events are new!!
About Sammy
Sammy Ginsberg is third-generation Angeleno and dual citizen with the UK who loves writing, believes in the transformational power of the word (a word after a word after a word is power — Margaret Atwood), and would love to write alongside you! Follow her at @literarypixie.
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 13 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.
One event puts that commitment front and center. 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.”
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, several 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.
