Category: Events

The Sumarr Reading Series — hosted by Diana Arterian — returns this week for its 2016 season. I’m honored to be reading — Please come by!

What: Sumarr 1, 2016
When: Sunday, April 17 at 3 pm
Where: The Pop-Hop, 5002 York Blvd, Los Angeles

I’ll be reading with Wendy C. Ortiz (author of Excavations and the woman behind the former Rhapsodomancy series), poet Noah Warren, and Margaret Ross.

Hope to see you there —

It was early but people came anyway: Thanks to everyone who woke up in time to make it to our our AWP Conference panel, the The Flash Sequence: A Reading and Discussion!

The panel was born out of the just-published flash sequence anthology Nothing to Declare, edited by Robert Alexander — who unfortunately couldn’t make it to AWP. Fortunately, Nickole Brown stepped in to moderate.

I read along with fellow contributors  Sonia Greenfield (Boy with a Halo at the Farmer’s Market), Irena Praitis (Straws and Shadows), Jenn Koiter, and Debra Marquart (The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere). And two other contributors, Kathleen McGookey and Lucas Southworth, joined us in the audience.

Hope everyone had as great an AWP as I did — See you next year in DC!

Thanks to everyone who came to our AWP Conference offsite event, the Best of the West Reading!

We had a full house at Villains Tavern — even though that meant leaving the official AWP events early to get over to the arts district. I got to read with Corinne Manning (founding editor of The James Franco Review), Catherine Pond, Daniel Riddle Rodriguez, Madgalawit Makonnen, Jeff Walt, William Camponovo,  and Caleb Tankersley. Some of the readers left before we could take the group photo!

The event was presented by The Los Angeles Review (Thanks to Alisa Trager and Rebecca Baumann!), Pacifica Literary Review, and Cutbank!

Thanks to everyone who came to our Bindercon LA panel, How to Build a Writing Community!

And thank you to my fellow panelists — Michelle Franke of The Rattling Wall and Pen Center USA, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo of Women Who Submit, Neelanjana Banerjee of Kaya Press, and poet Lauren Eggert-Crowe — for sharing valuable tips and tools and for acting as community-builders in the Los Angeles literary community.

The entire two-day event was fun and practical and aspirational and motivational. I especially got a lot out of Glendaliz Camacho and Grace Sobrenome’s panel on applying to residencies — and was inspired  by Pamela Redmond Satran‘s talk about pursuing a diverse writing career. A big thank you to the Bindercon LA organizers — Leigh Stein, Kima Jones, Andrea Guevara, and many others for putting all of this together.

Coming to the AWP Conference in Los Angeles? Wake up early and come to the flashiest panel of the weekend: The Flash Sequence: A Reading and Discussion. I’ll be one of the panelists, reading fiction and discussing tiny works of prose —

What: The Flash Sequence: A Reading and Discussion at AWP Conference
When: Friday, April 1, 2016, 9 am – 10:15 am
Where: Los Angeles Convention Center (Room 406 AB, Meeting Room Level), Los Angeles

The panel was born out of the just-published flash sequence anthology Nothing to Declare, which contains a story of mine. The other panelists — Sonia Greenfield (Boy with a Halo at the Farmer’s Market), Irena Praitis (Straws and Shadows), and Jenn Koiter — also have work in the anthology. Debra Marquart (The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere) will moderate.

Please come by and say hello — and if you’re free the Thursday night before this panel, join me at the Best of the West Reading.

The AWP Conference is coming to Los Angeles in a couple weeks, along with a crush of literary panels, readings, and other shenanigans happening both on and offsite. I’m on a panel at the actual conference (more on that later) but the night before that happens, I hope you’ll come hear me read some of my new fiction at an offsite reading:

What: Best of the West Reading (AWP Conference offsite event)
When: Thursday, March 31, 2016, 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Where: Villain’s Tavern, 1356 Palmetto St, Los Angeles

The event’s presented by The Los Angeles Review, Pacifica Literary Review, and Cutbank! I’ll be reading with Corinne Manning (founding editor of The James Franco Review), Madgalawit Makonnen, Jeff Walt, William Camponovo, Catherine Pond, Daniel Riddle Rodriguez, and Caleb Tankersley.

Hope to see you there — and say hello when I see you at AWP!