Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026 | 6:30–8 p.m. (PT) | West Hollywood Library Community Room
Ahead of WeHo Reads: Reimagining History, we asked friends of BookSwell across the Los Angeles literary community to spend time with the books of our four featured writers and tell us what they found. Reader and reviewer Michael Narkunski took on Outliving Michael (Moon Tide Press), the newest collection from Steven Reigns, West Hollywood’s first Poet Laureate. Here is what he sent us.
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My favorite and, I think, the best type of book: the kind that could speak completely for itself. It does its own work and doesn’t need me or any reviewer to make a connection between its potent memory mining and messages. But it also knows better than to totally do it for us. In the most deft, generous, and sobering way, the writing, in an ingeniously unfussy rhythm and sequence, allows us to share in the experience of queer friendship and cutting loss, casual and profound regret, and the unexpected meanings of the everyday.
It gives us so many matters of fact that you wish weren’t so, from years spent staying in grief to avoid being in grief to a simple book recommendation you wish you’d read while Michael was alive. I say “Michael” because, through Reigns’ honest and incantatory voice, Michael becomes a totem for any impactful person you may have lost. “I learned this from Michael.” “All these years later / I realize it was all about Michael.” By the time these lines come, you will feel yourself relating and, without any forethought or against any resistance, replacing Michael’s name with someone of your own.
At the same time, you will be thrilled to get to know the actual subject: an important man who lived and loved, rendered by an important poet who continues to live and love, using every aching anecdote and detail to urgently and earnestly remind us of the importance of living and loving ourselves.
Michael Narkunski, @mikenark
About Steven Reigns
Steven Reigns is a poet, educator and was appointed the first Poet Laureate of West Hollywood. He is the author of A Quilt for David and Outliving Michael, which received the 2025 Poz Award for Best in Literature.
Hear him read on Sept. 23
Steven Reigns reads alongside Kate Maruyama, Mike Sonksen, and Désirée Zamorano at WeHo Reads: Reimagining History, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026, at the West Hollywood Library Community Room, 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. with an informal reception; the program runs 6:45 to 8 p.m., and West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Jen Cheng opens the evening with a futurist poem. The writers will sign and sell their books after the program. Free, 18+, with free parking in the structure at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd.
WeHo Reads is presented by the City of West Hollywood and produced by BookSwell. Additional support from Book Soup and Los Angeles Review of Books.
