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.
This June, BookSwell was proud to be a sponsor of the 38th Annual Lambda Literary Awards. For more than three decades, the Lammys have celebrated and championed LGBTQ+ writers, and getting to stand with that community — our name up on the sponsor wall beside houses like Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Hachette — was one of the proudest moments of our year.
We put our heart and soul into BookSwell, and giving back to the writers who have shaped so many of us is the best part of this work. Being in that room was a reminder of exactly why we do it.
Southern California showed up
Among this year’s honorees were writers close to home and close to our hearts:
Ben Kline won Gay Poetry for It Was Never Supposed To Be. We were lucky enough to host Ben for a reading, and you can still watch it here.
Gustavo Hernandez was a finalist for Gay Poetry with Bachelor (FlowerSong Press). Hernandez is the Orange County Poet Laureate, born in Jalisco and raised in Santa Ana.
José Enrique Medina, a Whittier poet and PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, won the Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50 — a reminder that it is never too late to claim your place on the page.
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes was a finalist for Lesbian Poetry with Wayward Creatures. A queer, disabled poet of the Colombian diaspora, she lives in Southern California and teaches at Pomona College.
Mac Crane was a finalist for Lesbian Fiction with A Sharp Endless Need, a tender, propulsive novel about a queer teenage basketball prodigy. Crane writes from San Diego.
Milo Todd won Transgender Fiction for The Lilac People, a novel of trans survival and chosen family in the shadow of Nazi Germany that reads as urgently now as ever.
Keep celebrating with us
Our June Read Local SoCal pick, Before You Can Fly by Jase Peeples, was just named a finalist for the inaugural 2026 Kirkus Indie Awards in Romance. We’re celebrating queer SoCal lit all year long. Subscribe to the BookSwell newsletter to read our full Lammys feature and keep up with everything we’re reading.
The Eaton Fire in January 2025 greatly disrupted life in Altadena and Pasadena with a tragic loss of life, property, community, and safety. As the community begins work to recover and rebuild, BookSwell is sharing information and marshaling resources to aid these efforts.
The WeHo Reads 2025 series was envisioned as an exploration of the potential for literary arts to act as a transformative force in the pursuit of social justice. Our Feb. 26 WeHo Reads event, “Power and Progress During Black History Month,” is a moment to focus on the perspectives and needs of Black communities in Southern California.
Alongside this event, BookSwell and participating writers are highlighting organizations, projects, and funds aiding Eaton fire recovery and relief efforts and encouraging attendees to take action by learning about, amplifying, volunteering, and/or donating to these causes. In January, BookSwell and its founder and executive editor, Cody Sisco, donated $2,500 to the Women Who Submit Fire Fund. Now, we’re expanding our efforts to include additional organizations as described below.
The WeHo Reads: Power and Progress During Black History Month event features Angela M. Frankin, Jenise Miller, Romaine Washington, and Pam Ward. It will also include a performance by and discussion with special guest Reggie Myles, whose family was impacted by the fires and who is working with the Pasadena Black Equity Project, which is a community-based organization that organizes a network of resources for Black Pasadena residents through mutual aid funding, community archiving, and political education.
Special Guest: Reggie Myles
Reggie Myles is a spoken word poetry artist and community organizer from Pasadena, CA. He has performed at local poetry slams and events throughout L.A County and is currently writing his first poetry book. He centers his artistry in writing, exploring, and speaking to the Black experience. Specifically, through themes and concepts of joy, healing, resistance, identity, and love. Above all, Reggie is a wordsmith, invoking the radical imagination, change, and connections in his garden of poems.
The Pasadena Black Equity Project is a community-based organization that organizes a network of resources for Black Pasadena residents through mutual aid funding, community archiving, and political education.
The Altadena Library Foundation is partnering with the LA County Library Foundation to support Altadena. Your gift for the LA County Library Foundation and the Altadena Library Foundation will fulfill crucial needs for the children, teens, and adults whose lives have been upended by the fires.
The Pasadena Community Foundation is committed to collaborating with residents and key stakeholders in the immediate relief, mid-term stabilization, and the long-term recovery and rebuilding of Altadena.
