Red Light Lit: SF
Red Light Lit presents: Lions Like Us
Join us for an evening of poetry, storytelling, and live music exploring themes of love, sex, and relationships in celebration of Hollie Hardy’s newly released poetry collection, published by Red Light Lit Press.
Featuring:
Peter Bullen
Liz Cahill
Miah Jeffra
Loria Mendoza
Christine No
Kelechi Ubozoh
Matthew Zapruder
Hollie Hardy
Live Music:
Sass N Harmony
Hosted By: Jennifer Lewis
Sunday, June 9, 2024
7pm
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd ST.
San Francisco, CA
Tickets $15 at the door
Author Bios
Hollie Hardy is a writer, educator, and author of the newly released Lions Like Us (Red Light Lit Press) and How to Take a Bullet: And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press) winner of the Annual Poetry Center Book Award at San Francisco State University. She holds an MFA in Poetry from SFSU, teaches private writing workshops online, and hosts the long-running monthly reading series Saturday Night Special: A Virtual Open Mic. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in numerous anthologies and literary journals including Bay Area Generations, Cobalt Poets, Colossus, The Common, Dispatches from Quarantine, Eleven Eleven, Fourteen Hills, Migozine, Milvia Street Journal, Mixed Bag of Tricks, Parthenon West Review, Passionfruit Review, sPARKLE & bLINK, Transfer, and elsewhere. She lives in Austin, TX. Learn more at: holliehardy.com
Matthew Zapruder is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently I Love Hearing Your Dreams, forthcoming from Scribner in September 2024, as well as two books of prose: Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017) and Story of a Poem (Unnamed, 2023). He is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine, and was the Editor of Best American Poetry 2022. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Peter Thomas Bullen cuts hair by day and writes by night. He could use more sleep. His book Wallflower was described by Joshua Mohr this way: \This strange bullet of a book reads like a lovely mash-up of John Barth and Gary Lutz. Bullen has a keen eye for bringing the pathos of our age to light./ His many live readings for the Quiet Lightning series can be found on YouTube. His work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books and sPARKLE & bLINK, among other places.
Liz Cahill is a poet, producer and curator based in the Mission. Her writing explores the impacts of late stage capitalism, income inequality and waste, while trying to find beauty in the garbage age. She’s the co-founder of Decentered Arts, a non-profit building resilient community through art of all mediums. She’s the co-host of Decentered at The Center weekly open mic and co-founder of the Poolside Poets reading series. Her writing can be found on her instagram @liz.cahll
Miah Jeffra is author of four books—most recently The Violence Almanac (finalist for several awards, including the Grace Paley and Robert C Jones Book Prizes) and the novel American Gospel, finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award—and is co-editor of the anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart. Work can be seen in StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The North American Review, Barrelhouse, DIAGRAM, storySouth and many others. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches writing and decolonial studies at Sonoma State University.
Loria Mendoza is a queer Chicanx writer, curator, and performance artist from Austin, Texas. Their book, Life’s Too Short (Fourteen Hills Press) won the Michael Rubin Book Award and their debut book of poetry, The Body Can Tolerate is forthcoming in 2025. They are the curator and host of Red Light Lit Austin, Director of Events for the South Austin Art Project, COO of the Austin Arts Foundation, and a big time believer in the healing power of art, community, storytelling, and love. Follow them @textualseduction.
Christine No is a Korean American poet, filmmaker, and daughter of immigrants. She is a Sundance Alum, VONA Fellow, two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee. She has served as Assistant Features Editor for the Rumpus, as Fellow, then as a Program Coordinator for VONA. Currently, Christine is board member with Quiet Lightning, a Bay Area literary nonprofit and works as the Advocacy Program Manager at ARTogether, an organization committed to using art and storytelling to build and empower newcomer immigrant and refugee communities; and to promote healing, cultural humility, and intercommunity connection.
Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American writer and mental health advocate. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she was the first undergraduate published in The New York Times. Her book with LD Green, We’ve Been Too Patient, elevates marginalized voices of lived experience who have endured psychiatric mistreatment. Her work is featured in Argot Magazine, Multiplicity, Essential Truths, sParkle & bLINK, Trauma, Tresses, & Truth, and When We Exhale. She co-hosts the Bay Area reading series MoonDrop Productions with Cassandra Dallett and has received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Learn more at kelechiubozoh.com.