February 26, 2025 · 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. PT
How do writers use their imaginations to empower themselves and their audiences? How do their stories shape the future?
WeHo Reads: Power and Progress During Black History Month
Wednesday, February 26 · 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. PT
How do writers use their imaginations to empower themselves and their audiences? How do their stories shape the future?
The series opener for WeHo Reads 2025 will feature four dynamic writers whose work delves into untold histories, urgent social issues, and enduring legacies of resilience during Black History Month.
Participating writers will include: Angela M. Franklin, whose poetry and essays confront topics often left unspoken and who recently won an Honorable Mention Award from the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest for her poem “Unbroken Habit”; Jenise Miller, a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of The Blvd, whose work explores intersectional history and geography; Pam Ward, a California Arts Council Literary Fellow and author of Want Some Get Some, Bad Girls Burn Slow, and Between Good Men & No Man At All; and Romaine Washington, editor of These Black Bodies Are… A Blacklandia Anthology and author of the poetry mini-memoir Purgatory Has an Address and the artivist collection Sirens in Her Belly.
The event is free and available to watch via YouTube Live on the WeHo Arts channel. Learn more at www.weho.org/wehoreads.
WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood. For more information and events, visit www.weho.org/wehoreads. The 2025 season is produced by BookSwell, a literary media company amplifying historically excluded voices. Additional support is provided by Poets & Writers and media partnerships with Book Soup and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Authors
Angela M. Franklin
Angela M. Franklin is a poet and essayist who does not shrink from controversy. Her work explores humanity involving race, mental health, domestic violence, social injustice, and subjects people are too squeamish to discuss.
She holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles, and recently won an Honorable Mention Award from the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest for her poem Unbroken Habit. Other publications include: Transformation, Women Who Submit Anthology; These Black Bodies… an anthology; The Fire This Time: When Rage Fired up the Fed up, 4-29 LA Riots; Black Poets Speak to America, and more.
More information: http://angelafranklin.com
Jenise Miller
Jenise Miller is a Black Panamanian, Compton-based writer, poet, and urban planner whose work explores art, archives, geographic mapping, and intersectional history. She is a 2021 California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellow and PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow. She coordinates the Compton Arts Oral History Project and co-produced “Reading the City” with Sēpia Collective, a conversation series with artists and cultural producers from Compton. Her words have been published in the Acentos Review, Boom California, Cultural Weekly, KCET Artbound, Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New York Times. A Pushcart-nominated poet and Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA) alumna, she is the author of the poetry chapbook “The Blvd.”
More information: http://www.jenisemiller.com/
Pam Ward
LA native, UCLA graduate, California Arts Council Literary Fellow, and Pushcart Poetry nominee, Pam Ward has penned poetry, stories and novels Want Some Get Some and Bad Girls Burn Slow, (Kensington.) Her poetry book, Between Good Men & No Man At All, was recently released on World Stage Press. She’s currently working on a non-fiction book about The Watts Writers Workshop and a third novel, I’ll Get You Pretty, featuring her family’s role in the Black Dahlia Murder.
More information: https://pamwardwriter.com/
Romaine Washington
Romaine Washington is an Inland Empire educator, writer, and the editor of These Black Bodies Are… A Blacklandia Anthology. Her work has been anthologized and has garnered both Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. She is the author of Purgatory Has an Address, a poetry mini memoir, and the artivist collection, Sirens in Her Belly. Washington believes faith and place helps define who we are through the stories we inherit, which then impact the stories we become and tell. She has presented her poetry on Inside Socal CBS2/KCSL9, NPR, and KPFK.
More information: www.romainewashington.com
