Tag: Fiction

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].

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.

Literary Fiction Book Talk: Out Clause by Ernest Thompson

Academy Award winner Ernest Thompson presents his new novel in conversation with filmmaker Robert Greenwald.

Join us for a conversation with Ernest Thompson, author of the new novel Out Clause!

Ernest will be joined by filmmaker Robert Greenwald to discuss this powerful thriller about second chances and the courage required to live one’s better life. Especially when there are consequences for failing to do so.

About the participants:

Ernest Thompson’s work has won an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, Writers Guild and Broadway Drama Guild Awards and been nominated for a Tony, an Emmy and a British Academy Award. His plays have been seen in theatres around the world, his most enduring, On Golden Pond, translated into 30 languages and presented in more than 40 countries. Current projects include an On Golden Pond Broadway revival, directed by and starring the author, true also of his new one-man play, Archie Parish’s Parting Words, now on tour in the Northeast, the short film The Constituent, and the long-awaited sequel, Home On Golden Pond. His novel Out Clause arrives on May 5, 2026. With his writer wife Kerrin Thompson, he established Rescind Recidivism, a prison writing program giving inmates a chance to feel creative as well as human, capable and worthy.

Robert Greenwald is the founder and president of Brave New Films, a nonprofit production company that creates and distributes investigative political and social justice documentaries.

About the book:

What if you could leave your life? Oxton Paris, the ultimate misfit, disfigured and ostracized, years ago left his and repurposed his angst into helping others escape their own entrapments, bad marriages, poor choices, compromising positions. He created Out Clause, providing thousands of Travelers a new life, a second chance, a smoother fit.

The compact, though, comes with caveats: one, a commitment to discontinue all contact with what’s been left behind, no texting, no coded messaging on social media, no burner phone calls, no keepsakes tucked in backpacks. And, two, a promise to live a better life, predicated on honesty and kindness, not only to others but to oneself. Could you do that, become the better angel you perhaps have always longed to be?

If Travelers fail in their mission, their bodies will be discovered where they went missing, near a bridge, on a Caribbean beach, stumbled over by hikers or exposed when a glacier recedes, a house torn down, a subway tunnel reactivated. There’s a vast network of spirit guides ensuring that Travelers reach their destinations. And stay true to the Out Clause ethic.

Enter a New York detective obsessed with suicides, especially those he calls No Bodies, and determined to find out where they’ve gone, setting up a human chess game with Oxton Paris and putting the entire sweet construct of Out Clause in jeopardy.