TIME: Doors & Food 5:30-6pm PT, Show 6-8pm PT, Book Signing 8-9pm PT
LOCATION: Studious Coworking Space (418 Bamboo Lane #A Los Angeles, CA 90012)
RSVP HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/holding-court-tickets-1264745420599
10% DISCOUNT CODE FOR FIRST 100 ATTENDEES: EARLYGLITTER (all caps)
BLURB:
March 2025 brings the AWP Conference to Downtown Los Angeles. Poet Laureate Jen Cheng is producing a literary event, Holding Court, in LA Chinatown featuring BIPOC poets and writers.
Holding Court features two rounds of literary luminaries at an outdoor venue, with amenities such as food and drink specials, parking, accessible entrances, and easy access to public transportation.
More about the featured poets and writers:
KB Brookins KB Brookins is a Black, queer, and trans writer, cultural worker, and visual artist from Texas. Their writing is featured in Poets.org, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Poetry Society of America, Oxford American, and elsewhere. KB’s poetry chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their poetry collection Freedom House, described as “urgent and timely” by Vogue, won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for the Best First Book of Poetry. Their debut memoir, Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf) released in May 2024.
Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (2017), published by BOA Editions and by Bloodaxe Books in the UK. His latest chapbook is Explodingly Yours (Ghost City Press, 2023). A Kundiman community member, his honors include the Thom Gunn Award, two Pushcart Prizes, the National Book Award longlist, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists.
Edgar Gomez (all pronouns) is the author of High-Risk Homosexual, which received a 2023 American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir. Gomez’s second book, a darkly-comic memoir about growing up poor in early 2000’s Florida titled Alligator Tears, will be out in 2025 from Crown.
Plus 20+ other authors!
Meet the Emcees:
Jen Cheng. She is the current Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, a California Arts Council Fellow, and author of a poetry collection Braided Spaces. Jen is producing and hosting this event. She has gained media coverage of her projects in KPFK radio shows (Feminist Magazine, Poets Cafe), Spectrum News, and print media such as Beverly Press and WeHo Times.
Kim Shuck (Poet Laureate Emerita of San Francisco, multidisciplinary artist). Kim Shuck co-emceeing the feature round with Jen Cheng and performing work. Shuck is widely published in journals, anthologies and a number of solo books such as Deer Trails. She enjoys volunteering in SFUSD elementary school classrooms to share her loves of origami, poetry and basket making… in other words, math of various kinds. In 2019 Shuck was awarded an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and a PEN Oakland Censorship Award.
Ruben Quesada. Ruben Quesada is co-emceeing the lightning round with Jen Cheng and performing his work. Ruben Quesada is a poet, translator, and editor. He edited the award-winning anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry. His writing appears in The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Believer, and Harvard Review. His new collection of poetry, Brutal Companion, won the Barrow Street Editors Prize.
Community Partners
New Delta Review is a community partner with our outreach efforts. Other community partners to be announced.
Get Lit – In our mission to bring together intergenerational audiences and increase opportunities for underserved youth, a cohort of youth from Get Lit will be attending with their reserved tickets.
