BookSwell

WeHo Reads: Writing Together—Pomodoros, Marinara, and Friendship
2026-03-11 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Five women of color reflect on what it meant to build a creative practice rooted in friendship.

WeHo Reads: Writing Together—Pomodoros, Marinara, and Friendship will take place on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., online. Writing a book is often imagined as a solitary act: thousands of quiet hours, alone with a blinking cursor. But for five friends—Jade Chang, Angela Flournoy, Aja Gabel, Jean Chen Ho, and Xuan Juliana Wang—that myth unraveled in a corner booth at Little Dom’s, an Italian American restaurant in Los Feliz where they gathered week after week to write together.
Using an adapted Pomodoro method—40-minute stretches of focused work followed by breaks over meatballs, marinara, potatoes, and salad—the group wasn’t there to workshop pages or critique drafts. All of them were working on second books. While productivity and accountability were factors, the main point was companionship.
This moderated literary conversation brings these five women of color together to reflect on what it meant to build a creative practice rooted in friendship. They’ll talk about skepticism and structure, motherhood and momentum, finishing hard books, and how showing up—at the same restaurant, at the same time, with the same people—changed their relationship to writing itself. With several new novels published this fall, the group looks back on the communal labor and friendships that made these books possible.
At its core, this is a conversation about art, discipline, and the sustaining power of community—and a reminder that sometimes the most radical thing a writer can do is not write alone.
This event will feature: Jade Chang, author of two critically acclaimed novels, What a Time to Be Alive and The Wangs vs. the World, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award; Angela Flournoy, author of The Wilderness, a national bestseller that was long-listed for the National Book Award; Aja Gabel, author of the novel Lightbreakers and The Ensemble and a screenwriter; Jean Chen Ho, author of Fiona and Jane; and Xuan Juliana Wang, author of the short story collection Home Remedies, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction.
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 season 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.
