Tag: LGBTQ+

WeHo Reads: No Apologies

Four local writers dare to break the rules, raise their voices, and refuse to compromise.

What does a writer sacrifice when they soften their work to fit the mold? And what becomes possible when they refuse?

On Nov. 4, four local writers confront subjects many books shy away from: race, desire, class, the messy moments when life stops making sense. They decline to sand off the rough edges. Their work runs from punk-inflected inter-genre prose to memoir, from poetry to historical fiction, but the nerve is the same: they write without asking permission and without apology. In an evening of reading and discussion, they talk about writing hard truths, the pressure to make difficult material palatable, and what a writer stands to gain by holding the line.

Featuring:

Marcus Clayton is a multigenre Afrolatino writer from South Gate, who has a collection of inter-genre prose, ¡PÓNK!, with Nightboat Books.

Joshua Escobar is a poet, novelist, and screenwriter from Southern California’s Inland Empire and author of the Bo Huston Award-winning novel Demons of Eminence.

Novelist Rasheed Newson is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was named one of The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022, and the critically-acclaimed There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood, which explores Black LGBTQ+ life during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Kaila Yu is a Los Angeles-based author and journalist whose debut memoir, Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty, was published by Crown, with bylines in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times and Condé Nast Traveler.

This event is free to attend, and RSVPs are requested. A Zoom link will be provided to those who RSVP, and the livestream can be watched on the WeHo Arts YouTube channel (youtube.com/wehoarts).

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.

BOOK LAUNCH: Stellar Smoke w/ Tanaïs & Chantal Aida Gordon

Join Rep Club for a discussion on ‘Stellar Smoke’ by author Tanaïs & moderator Chantal Aida Gordon

WHO & WHAT: Join Rep Club for a discussion on ‘Stellar Smoke’ by author Tanaïs, in conversation with Chantal Aida Gordon.

A hypnotically original and lush speculative novel from award-winning author Tanaïs about family secrets and the mother–daughter bond across generations—ultimately blurring the boundary between past and present, human and machine.

WHEN: Doors at 6:30pm, event promptly at 7pm.

WHERE: Reparations Club, 3054 S. Victoria Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90016

HOW:

TICKET w/ BOOK: This ticket guarantees a seat including a signed book available for pick up at the event.

FREE RSVP (No Book Included): This Free RSVP DOES NOT include a copy of the book and entry is based strictly on capacity at the door. Books may be available for purchase in-store.

SIGNED BOOK ONLY: Can’t make it IRL but still want a signed copy? Order directly from our site!

Please email us at questions@reparations.club if you have any additional needs, questions, or accessibility concerns.

About the Book:

Qamar is a musician hustling in a near-future metropolitan city. Struggling to pay rent and heartbroken after a breakup, she decides to return to the island ashram of her childhood. It’s time to finally settle the rift she has with her estranged mother, Veda—a brilliant scientist, actress, and one of the leaders of a now-dissolved cult called the Endless Temple.

But when Qamar arrives, the land is verdant yet neglected, and, most troubling, there are no signs of her mother or sister, Palo. Behind a retina scan–locked door, Qamar encounters her mother’s last opus, a machine consciousness called VEDA (Virtual Experiences, Dreams and Afterlife), designed to reveal the story of Veda’s life. The descent into VEDA’s technoscape forces Qamar to confront the taboos and tragedies of their past, while bracing herself for the wild, unexpected possibilities that await.

Tanaïs (née Tanwi Nandini Islam) is a multidisciplinary artist, novelist, memoirist, and perfumer. They are the author of In Sensorium: Notes for My People, which won the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction, and offers an alternative history of South Asia through the lens of scent. Their critically acclaimed queer coming-of-age debut novel, Bright Lines, was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize. They studied at Vassar College and Brooklyn College, and founded the independent artisan perfume house Studio Tanaïs. Their writing and perfumes have been featured in Vogue, Vogue India, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, The Cut, The Nation, and more. They live in New York City with their husband, Mojo.

Chantal Aida Gordon is an award-winning writer and gardener. Her fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction and Vassar Review, and her journalism in T Magazine, Shondaland, Teen Vogue, and others. She’s the co-author of houseplant book How to Window Box, a guide to bringing nature into your home. Born in Brooklyn and raised in the suburbs of DC, she now lives in Northeast Los Angeles.

Horror author Eric LaRocca in conversation with Brian Evenson

Two authors. One Stage. The release of We Turn Gruesome at Night. Join us for an evening of horror, fantasy, and splatterpunk!

Join us for a conversation between two horror masters Eric LaRocca and Brian Evenson, for the release of the second installment of the nightmarish queer horror Burnt Sparrow Trilogy, We Turn Gruesome at Night, by Eric LaRocca.

Friday, Sep 11 — 6-8pm

at the Last Bookstore downtown

453 S Spring St – Ground Floor

Los Angeles, CA 90013

Attendance is free, but reserve a seat for $10, a seat and signed hardcover for $32, or a seat and signed book bundle of LaRocca’s hardcovers or softcovers (limited # available).

Eric LaRocca (he/they) is a 3x Bram Stoker Award® finalist and Splatterpunk Award winner. He was named by Esquire as one of the “Writers Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age” and praised by Locus as “one of the strongest and most unique voices in contemporary horror fiction.” LaRocca’s notable works include Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats, and At Dark, I Become Loathsome. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, with his partner.

Brian Evenson is the author of two dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Good Night, Sleep Tight. His collection Song for the Unraveling of the World won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times’ Ray Bradbury Prize. His novel Last Days won the ALA-RUSA award for Best Horror Novel. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into two dozen languages. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. A new novel, Phantom Limb, will be published in October of 2026.

WeHo Reads: Into the Unknown

October 14 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

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.

Details

Online (virtual event)

Related Events

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.