Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026 | 6:30–8 p.m. (PT)

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 and educator who was the inaugural City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood and author of A Quilt for David, which explores the life of David Acer, a Florida dentist wrongfully vilified during the height of the HIV/AIDS panic, and Outliving Michael, which received the ‘Best in Literature’ 2025 Poz Award.
• 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.

West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Jen Cheng will open the event with the reading of a poem.

RSVP on Eventbrite

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.

Learn more at katemaruyama.com.

Steven Reigns

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.

Learn more at StevenReigns.com.

Mike Sonksen

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.

Learn more at linktr.ee/mikethepoetla.

Désirée Zamorano

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.

Learn more at desireezamorano.com and on Instagram @ladeziree.

Jen Cheng (Special Guest)

Jen Cheng is the 5th West Hollywood City Poet Laureate and the author of Braided Spaces. A Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets and a California Arts Council Fellow, she merges multilingual and multicultural influences through her concept of Feng Shui Poetry.

Learn more at JenCvoice.com and on Instagram @jencvoice.