Tag: Fiction

L.A. Book Launch: Todos Somos Sagrados by Rey M. Rodriguez

Rey M. Rodriguez, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Jose Hernandez Diaz, and William Archila in The Wanda Coleman Theater

Join us for the L.A. Book Launch of Rey M. Rodríguez’s poetry collection, Todos Somos Sagrados (El Martillo Press, 2026). A meditation on the daily community work of neighborhood projects like Proyecto Pastoral in East Los Angeles aiding the unhoused, immigrant, and violence-plagued communities, this body of work collects the many voices that share their pain, joy, and experiences navigating the many battles in life.

The author will be joined by Lorna Dee Cervantes, William Archila, and Jose Hernandez Diaz in The Wanda Coleman Theater.

“A treatise in poetry about one of the most important stories of our time—the formation and work of Proyecto Pastoral in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. Violence, drugs, and death plagued these streets, which in the 1990s and into the 2000s were the most gang-inflicted in the country. But mothers stood up for healing, peace, for saving the children. Projects arose to help youth but also the unhoused and migrants. People in need. God’s work. Powerful figures like Father Greg Boyle met the call. Here, Rey M. Rodríguez uses poems to carry their voices, stories, pains, and joys. In Spanish and English, in any language, it’s a work of art, a work of action.”

—Luis J. Rodríguez, former Los Angeles Poet Laureate, author of Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.” and It Calls You Back: An Odyssey through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing

Doors Open: 6:30 PM Readings: 7:00 PM

Rey M. Rodríguez is a writer, advocate, and attorney. He lives in Pasadena, California. He is working on a novel set in Mexico City. His poetry collection, Todos Somos Sagrados/All Are Sacred (El Martillo Press), released May 2026. He has attended the Yale Writers’ Workshop and Palabras de Pueblo workshop. He participated in Story Studio’s Novel in a Year Program. He graduated with an MFA in fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts. His poetry is published in Huizache, Anger is a Gift, and Altadena Poetry Review. His many interviews and book reviews can be found at La Bloga, Chapter House’s Storyteller’s Corner, Full Stop, Pleiades Magazine, and the Los Angeles Review. He is a graduate of Cornell, Princeton, and U.C. Berkeley Law School

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of Emplumada, From the Cables of Genocide, Ciento, DRIVE, and April on Olympia. Awarded NEA Fellowships, Pushcart Prizes, a Lila Wallace, state arts grants and best book awards, the founder of Mango Publications (first to publish Sandra Cisneros), Cervantes presented at the Library of Congress, Dodge Poetry Festival, Walker Art Center, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and others. Former Prof. of English and Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder for 20 years, she writes in Seattle.

William Archila is the winner of the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for his collection S is For, a finalist for the California Book Award. He is the author of The Art of Exile and The Gravedigger’s Archeology. His new collection, Canícula/Dog Days, is a bilingual selection of his first two books of poetry. He was awarded the 2023 Jack Hazard fellowship. His work has appeared in AGNl, APR, Copper Nickle, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, TriQuarterly and the anthology Latino Poetry: The Library of American Anthology. He is an associate editor at Tía Chucha Press.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024) The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025) Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025) and the forthcoming, The Lighthouse Tattoo (Acre Books, 2026). He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California at Riverside, and Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee.

About Beyond Baroque

Beyond Baroque is one of the United States’ leading independent Literary | Arts Centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding the public’s knowledge of poetry, literature and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine, Beyond Baroque is based out of the original City Hall building in Venice, California. The Center offers a diverse variety of literary and arts programming including readings and workshops. The building also houses a bookstore with a large collection of new poetry books for sale.

Livestream: If you can’t join us in person the event will be livestreamed on Beyond Baroque’s YouTube channel at the scheduled time of the event. If you are tuning in this way, no ticket purchase is necessary.

If you are attending in person, ticket purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the Beyond Baroque bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. Please arrive early.

Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, staff, fellow attendees, or performers.

Poetry Book Launch: Made from Midnight: Delirium

Contributors from the new poetry anthology Made from Midnight: Delirium read and discuss their work.

Join us from the launch of Made from Midnight: Delirium, a new anthology from Poets in the Pines!

Anthology editor and Poets in the Pines co-founder Anne Ramallo and local contributors Daniel Gonzales, Andy Huy Le and Christina Connorton unite for a book launch celebration featuring author readings and a panel discussion exploring how these writers translate dreams into compelling words, images, and insight about who we are–perfect for writers, dreamers, and anyone curious about the transformative power of midnight.

About the book:

Enter a dreamhouse where form and structure fragment, threads unravel, and reality blurs at watercolor edges. Sixty-eight writers from around the world explore the winding corridors of delirium, where the mind unlocks old memories and opens doors to strange and terrifying worlds. These poems and short stories inspired by dreams pose questions about language, identity, memory, and the different ways we carry home.

About the participants:

Anne Ramallo, co-founder of Poets in the Pines, is a writer, editor, performer, and mom working from LA. Her poetry and short fiction have been featured in journals and anthologies including Sky Island, Cosmic Daffodil, and Uncharted. Her chapbook, The Ocean In A Cup, is forthcoming.

Daniel Gonzalez earned his MFA in Creative Writing from CSULB, where he served as senior editor of Fiction for RipRap Journal. He has written an award-wining short film and published short fiction & poetry. He enjoys eating with friends and writing about those small human moments which we all share.

Andy Huy Le is just some guy who teaches. He was the poetry slam captain for UCSB’s first CUPSI team in 2019. His published poems can be found in The Catalyst, Word Magazine, WILDsound Writing Festival, MoonLit Getaway, The Love Yourself Foundation (LYF), eMerge Magazine, Blood+Honey, and Poets in the Pines.

Christina Connerton is a disabled writer and filmmaker with published works in Eunoia Review and Frontier Poetry. In her Substack, The Wayside Times, she unpacks and critiques her internalized ableism. She is currently working on her first chapbook, The Last Will & Testament of [Redacted].

READ LIKE A WRITER w/ Rasheed Newson

Join Permission To Write at Rep Club for a book-club-meets-writers-group with There’s Only One Sin In Hollywood author Rasheed Newson

WHO & WHAT: Join Permission To Write at Rep Club for a book-club-meets-writers-group with ‘There’s Only One Sin In Hollywood’ author Rasheed Newson.

Read Like a Writer invites participants to slow down and study how Black authors build their books — examining structure, voice, point of view, and form, not just theme and feeling.

WHEN: Sunday, August 30th from 10:00-11:30am (doors open at 9:45)

WHERE: In-Person at Reparations Club (3054 S. Victoria Ave. LA, CA 90016)

HOW: FREE ticket with book purchase through Rep Club – (duh) for 10% off with code: BOOKCLUB10

$10 GA ticket (book purchased elsewhere)

ABOUT THE BOOK

A CINEMATIC, RAZOR-SHARP NOVEL FOLLOWING A BACKLOT FIXER’S DARING INVESTIGATION INTO THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A CLOSETED BLACK ACTOR WITHIN THE GLAMOROUS WORLD OF HOLLYWOOD, FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MY GOVERNMENT MEANS TO KILL ME

Xavier C. Barlow, one of Hollywood’s young Black stars taking the industry by storm in the late 1950s, is Skyline Studios’s ambitious attempt to rival Sidney Poitier’s burgeoning success. His arrival into the industry is calculated, his charm is magnetic, and his seductive screen presence appeals to both audiences and celebrities across generations.

But years later, after Xavier dies at the height of his fame, Aaron Touissant—Skyline’s designated backlot fixer who helps the studio’s stars stay as deep in the closet as humanly possible—is finally ready to expose the powerful culprits responsible for his untimely death.

Written as part-confessional, part-cris de coeur from Aaron’s panoramic lens, There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood is a searing portrait of the movie industry as a manicured minefield and a compelling journey into the queer history of Los Angeles.

RASHEED NEWSON is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was selected as a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. He is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. He codeveloped Bel-Air and worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series. Newson is a 2025–26 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. He currently lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.

ABOUT PERMISSION TO WRITE

ASHLEY M. COLEMAN is the author of GOOD MORNING, LOVE (Simon & Schuster, 2022) and a music industry executive with over a decade of experience. Her work has appeared in Essence, The Cut, Apartment Therapy, and GRAMMY.com. A Torch Literary Arts and Kimbilio fellow, she founded Permission to Write, a community for Black writers.

A Juneteenth Poetry Reading: Poetry in AfroDiaspora & Chamorrita Song

A Reading celebrating Audrey Shipp’s debut poetry collection and Danielle P. William’s Chamorrita Song

Join us on Juneteenth for a double book launch celebrating Audrey Shipp’s new collection Poetry /Poes´ía/ Poésie in AfroDiaspora and Danielle P. Williams’s Chamorrita Song.

In this stunning collection, writer Audrey Shipp resucitates the poems of her poetic voice, Adriana––a young poet who resists the alienation of her bith city, Los Angeles. Using multilingual diction, from Caló to French and English, for an acercamiento towards an African/Black diaspora she perceived as distant the time, she offers “poetry/poesía/poésie” that “cascades from las caderas / pushing from the thighs / como recién nacido.”

For poet and spoken-word artist Danielle P. Williams, Kantan Chamorrita is more than just the ancient craft of Chamorro folk song. It is also a return and a homecoming. This impromptu style of communal call-and response performance art forms the spokes for Williams’s debut collection. Rooted in oral tradition, Chamorrita Song pays homage to Black and Chamorro cultures, honoring the artistic expressions that these communities have created to reconcile lifetimes of imposed trauma. Williams intertwines spoken word poetry and gospel music with Chamorro storytelling, weaving together the nuanced histories of queer, Black, and Indigenous existence and literature.

The poets will be joined in The Wanda Coleman Theater by guest co-features Maestro Gamin, Nicole J. Evans, and Naomi Nightingale.

Reception and book signings to follow in the Scott Wannberg Bookstore & Lounge.

Doors Open: 7:00 PM I Readings: 7:30 PM

Audrey Shipp is an AWP Writer to Writer mentee and a PEN America Emerging Voices Workshop LA honoree whose hybrid memoir When I Was a Bilingual Writer Birthed by Black L.A. will be published by Unsolicited Press in 2027. Her writing has been published in various literary journals including Good River Review, Panorama Magazine, Isele Magazine, A Long House, Another Chicago Magazine, Litro, and A Gathering Together. Her bilingual and trilingual poetry appeared in Americas Review (Arte-Público Press) which was formerly published by the University of Houston. She holds English degrees from both UCLA and Cal State L.A. and a Certificate in Creative Writing from UCLA Extension. Her professional life has been dedicated to teaching English and ESL in public high schools in Los Angeles. Founder and Editor at Decolonial Passage Literary Magazine, you can find her at

Nicole J. Evans (she/her) is a Black woman, born and reared in Los Angeles who writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. 2024 James Kirkwood Prize nominee, with poetry being published in an upcoming FlowerSong Press anthology and a Blacklandia/Inlandia Books anthology. Pre-Matriarch, future Ancestor, Black sheep, vision alchemist, generational curse breaker, generational blessing manifestor, dream catcher, tale weaver, aspiring griot, empath, latent gardener, inherent inherited beautician, poet by heart, writer by revelation, and singer of her own songs. IG @itsnicolejeanine.

Naomi Nightingale has been writing poetry since the age of seven. Until 2023, her poems, stories, reflections, and Spirit Talks remained in notebooks, journals, and informal pages rather than in a published collection. In 2024, she published It Is I Emerging: Poetry, Prose & Short Stories, a collection reflecting on living, learning, and becoming. She is currently working on a second book of poetry and short stories. Dr. Nightingale grew up in and resides in Venice, California. She is President and Founder of Oakwood Preservation Coalition, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the Black history and culture of Oakwood-Venice.

Danielle P. Williams is a Black and Chamorro poet, essayist, translator, and spoken-word artist from Columbia, South Carolina whose work traces identity, heritage, and belonging across cultures and generations. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and fellowships from Open Mouth Poetry Retreat, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Watering Hole, and The Alan Cheuse Center for International Writers. Her chapbook Who All Gon’ Be There? was a finalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Competition and was published by Backbone Press in 2021, and her debut collection Chamorrita Song was published by University of Arizona Press in January 2026.

About Beyond Baroque

Beyond Baroque is one of the United States’ leading independent Literary | Arts Centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding the public’s knowledge of poetry, literature and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine, Beyond Baroque is based out of the original City Hall building in Venice, California. The Center offers a diverse variety of literary and arts programming including readings and workshops. The building also houses a bookstore with a large collection of new poetry books for sale.

Livestream: If you can’t join us in person the event will be livestreamed on Beyond Baroque’s YouTube channel at the scheduled time of the event. If you are tuning in this way, no ticket purchase is necessary.

If you are attending in person, ticket purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the Beyond Baroque bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. Please arrive early.

Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, staff, fellow attendees, or performers.

Historical Fiction Book Launch: Song for Another Home by Bora Lee Reed

Bora Lee Reed presents her new novel in conversation with Tracey Gee.

Join us for the launch for Bora Lee Reed’s new novel, Song for Another Home!

Bora will be joined by author Tracey Gee for a conversation on Korean history, family ties, and generational memory.

About the participants:

Bora Lee Reed was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the US as a young child. She grew up in Southern California among a vibrant Korean immigrant community. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and has been awarded residences from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and Ucross. Bora now lives in Berkeley, CA, where she works as the director of communications for UC Berkeley’s public policy school.

Tracey Gee is a certified leadership coach and consultant who is passionate about helping others lead with authenticity and self-trust. She is the author of The Magic of Knowing What You Want in which she invites readers to honor their desires and redefine success on their own terms. Raised in the Bay Area of California and now based in Los Angeles, Tracey is always up for talking coffee shops or dog stories.

About the book:

Pachinko meets Homegoing in this powerful story of family separation and reunion amid love and war from a Reese’s Book Club LitUp fellow.

When news hits in 1950 that the Americans have entered the war between North and South Korea, Oksoon and her family believe the conflict will soon end. But then China joins the war, and they decide to flee their home in Pyongyang despite the freezing temperatures and lack of food. Journeying from the barren, war-torn streets of the North in the winter to the seedy back alleys of the South Korean capital of Seoul in the summer, the family falls in with an unlikely group of miscreants.

Meanwhile, far to the south, Oksoon’s cousin Junho seeks refuge at an orphanage for abandoned children. As the institution struggles to keep its doors open, Junho, with his elementary command of English, is tasked with drafting letters to American missionaries and benefactors to ask for money. When the enigmatic director brings her aristocratic niece to the orphanage, Junho finds himself caught between his impulse for survival and his growing affections for the young woman, even though his feelings put him at risk of being expelled from the only safe place he knows.

Movingly rendered, Song for Another Home highlights the power of resilience, the tension between personal dreams and duty to family, and how choices made in a brief moment have consequences that reverberate across time and through generations.