Five queer authors open portals to spectacular new worlds and dare us to get lost in them.
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026 · 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Online via Zoom and YouTube
What can we discover in worlds that have never existed? And how does queer imagination remake the rules of magic, adventure, and belonging?
On Oct. 14, five queer fantasy and YA authors venture past the edges of the map—into imagined realms cozy, macabre, sweeping and strange. Their books conjure witches and spellwork, alternate universes, and heroes who have rarely seen themselves at the center of the story. In an evening of reading and discussion, they’ll talk about building the fantastical, the freedom of the undiscovered, and why imagined worlds can tell the truest stories about our own.
Featuring:
Georgia K. Boone is the author of the critically acclaimed YA novel And Other Mistakes and When We Almost Came Undone, both of which are Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections.
Kiri Callaghan is a best-selling author of sapphic fantasy fiction that’s both cozy and a little macabre, including The Hemlock Saga and its latest installment, The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Spite & Spellwork Spellwork.
Lizzy Ives is the author of Fat Witch Summer and Thick Witch Travels and co-designer of the upcoming cozy fantasy board game, Bookwyrm.
C.B. Lee is a New York Times bestselling author of young adult and middle grade fiction, including the Lodestone Award for Best Young Adult Book–winning Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe, A Clash of Steel, and the acclaimed Sidekick Squad series.
Shelly Page, the author of Brewed with Love and Charmed and Dangerous, writes young adult fantasy romance and horror, and practices immigration law.
WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood. 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.
In person, West Hollywood Library Community Room, 625 N San Vicente Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069
Free, RSVP Requested
Four Los Angeles writers return to the past, through fiction and poetry, to understand where we came from.
Why do we keep returning to history? And what changes when we recover what was buried, silenced, or forgotten?
WeHo Reads returns on Sept. 23 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, they 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.
WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood. 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. Free; RSVP requested. Free parking is available in the 5-story Public/Park Parking Structure at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. Attendees are advised that the program may include mature language and themes.
Additional information:
Free Parking. Attendees may park in the 5-story Public/Park Parking Structure at 625 N. San Vicente Blvd
Content warning: This program may contain explicit language or content.
Led by author Betty Cayouette in conversation with Anneliese Judge!
This event is free to attend, but we kindly ask that you RSVP so that we can get an accurate headcount!
We’re celebrating I KISSED HER FIRST by Betty Cayouette! Betty and Anneliese Judge will be discussing the book and leading a book charm making workshop. All charm materials will be provided.
About the book:
An aspiring chef and world-famous popstar cook up what starts to sound like a love song in this sapphic new adult debut from Betty Cayouette.
This is Riley’s last summer as a chef. At least, this is what she’s promised her dads, who run a Cape Cod lobster shack and don’t want their daughter to follow in their stress-ridden footsteps. So Riley decides to go big and audition as a private chef for a singer’s European tour. When she finds out she got the gig, she’s thrilled. But when she learns that the singer she’ll be cooking for is Luna Leya, she and her sister’s favorite popstar? She almost can’t believe it.
Soon enough, Riley and Luna strike up an unexpected friendship, much to Luna’s manager’s disapproval. Luna should be focused on getting her Grammy, which means pulling off this tour without a hitch and continuing to date the notorious singer/heart throb/beloved bad boy Hudson, who’s rocketed her to a new level of fame with their hit single. Luna should definitely not be sneaking off to the Eiffel Tower and private Andalucian dinners to spend time with Riley. As the two get closer, Riley thinks she might be losing her mind. Is it possible the Luna Leya is flirting with her? And is there a world where Riley could keep her dream of being a chef alive? Soon, things will reach a tipping point and both Riley and Luna will be left wondering: could their story be a love song after all?
About the speakers:
Betty Cayouette is an author and creator of viral social media account @bettysbooklist. She graduated from Brandeis University in 2019 and lives in Salem, Massachusetts. One Last Shot was Betty’s debut novel, published in 2024 and followed by her sophomore novel Tell Me How You Really Feel in 2025. I Kissed Her First is her third novel.
Anneliese is an actor, book lover, and founder of who to judge?, a community-driven media company and book club spotlighting stories, authors, and meaningful conversations. She is best known for her role as Annie Sullivan on Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias, where she has appeared across five seasons.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
