Red Light Lit: LA
Beyond Baroque presents: Red Light Lit with Hollie Hardy
Join us for an evening of poetry exploring themes of love, sex, and relationships in celebration of Hollie Hardy’s newly released poetry collection, Lions Like Us published by Red Light Lit Press.
Featuring:
Jeffrey Bryant
Dennis Cruz
Natasia Dennerstein
Rich Ferguson
Hollie Hardy
Traci Kato-Kiriyama
Rick Lupert
K.R. Morrison
Linda Ravenswood
Dig Wayne
Hosted By: Jennifer Lewis
Friday, June 14, 2024
8pm
Beyond Baroque
681 N. Venice Blvd.
Venice, CA
Author Bios
Jeffrey Bryant is a Pushcart-nominated queer poet/writer who lives in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Poetic Diversity, the New Verse News, Poetrysuperhighway.com, Synchroniciti Magazine and Quill and Echo. His work has also appeared in the anthologies The Coiled Serpent from Tia Chucha Press; the 2020 Altadena Literary Review from Shabda Press; Shadowplay Literary Journal from the University of Arkansas and Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts from Mystic Boxing Commission Press.
Dennis Cruz is a vital poet who inhabits the voice of the perpetual outsider and the purely American dissident. He has been writing, performing and publishing his work for over 30 years. His latest collection of Poetry THE BEAST IS WE is out now via Punk Hostage Press.
Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne, Australia. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University. Natasha has had poetry published in many journals internationally, including The North American Review and Spoon River Poetry Review. Her collections Anatomize (2015), Triptych Caliform (2016) and her novella-in-verse About a Girl (2017) were published by Norfolk Press in San Francisco. Her trans chapbook Seahorse (2017) was published by Nomadic Press in Oakland and is now available through Black Lawrence Press. Broken: A Life of Aileen Wuornos in 33 poems was published in 2021 by Be About It Press. She lives in Alameda, California, where she is a freelance editor. She was a 2018 Fellow of the Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat and writer-in-residence there in fiction in 2023. Forthcoming in 2024 is Apps Poetica from The LA Press
L.A. poet/spoken-word performer Rich Ferguson has shared the stage with Patti Smith, Wanda Coleman, Moby, and other esteemed poets and musicians. He is a featured performer in the film, What About Me? featuring Michael Stipe, Michael Franti, k.d. lang, and others. His poetry and award-winning spoken-word music videos have appeared in numerous anthologies and festivals. He is the author of the novel New Jersey Me (Rare Bird Books), and two poetry collections 8th & Agony (Punk Hostage Press), and Everything is Radiant Between the Hates (Moon Tide Press). Most recently, Ferguson is the lead editor of an anthology of CA poets entitled Beat Not Beat (Moon Tide Press).
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
traci kato-kiriyama (they+she) is an award-winning multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary artist, recognized for their work as a writer, performer, theatre deviser, cultural producer, and community organizer. Their recognition & support includes the Art Matters Foundation; the CA State Senate Breaking Silence Award; ONE Archives Pride Publics; and the NEFA National Theatre Project for TALES OF CLAMOR and PULLproject Ensemble. tkk’s writing, commentary and work appears in numerous media and print publications (including NPR; PBS; Elle.com; Entropy; Chaparral Canyon Press; Tia Chucha Press; Bamboo Ridge Press; Heyday Books; Temple UP).
Rick Lupert is the recipient of the 2017 Ted Slade Award, the 2014 recipient of the Beyond Baroque Distinguished service award for service to poetry in Southern California, and a 3-time Pushcart and one time Best of the Net nominee. He created Poetry Super Highway the daily haiku site Haikuniverse and hosted the weekly Cobalt Cafe reading for almost 21 years. (Which lives on as a Zoom series.) He’s authored 28 collections of poetry (most recently It’s Spritz O’Clock Somewhere). He writes a weekly Jewish poetry column for JewishJournal.com and created the daily web comic Cat and Banana with Brendan Constantine.
K.R. Morrison is a Bay Area poet, drummer, and teen educator who since the pandemic, splits her time between San Francisco and a place she calls Mermaid Town, in Southern California. Morrison is a two-time Pushcart nominee and has featured for several curations and podcasts for her first collection of poetry, Cauldrons, published by PaperPress Books. Morrison seeks to cocreate with other artists and educators to construct fresh new communities that liberate families and their youth from old toxic forms of patriarchy. These days she engages this through writing workshops, teen life coaching, and divine feminine cultivation within the juvenile hall injustice system, in Southern California. Morrison’s poetry can be found in several publications, and in 9 anthologies in 2023. She plans to release a new collection soon titled, “From her Wrist.”"
Linda Ravenswood BFA MA, PhD, is a poet and performance artist from Los Angeles. Her accolades include an Oxford Prize in Poetry (2022) and the Edwin Markham Prize in Poetry (2023). She is the founding editor of The Los Angeles Press, est. 2018, and the co-founder of the Poet Laureate program in Glendale, California. Her recent collections include Cantadora—letters from California (Eyewear London/The Black Spring Press Group, 2023), The Stan Poems (Pedestrian Press, 2022), Tlacuilx—Tongues in Quarantine (HINCHAS Press, 2021), and XLA Poets (HINCHAS Press, 2020). Find her at thelosangelespress.com
Los Angeles poet Dig Wayne teaches Method Acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in West Hollywood. Originally from Ohio, Dig has lived, worked, and practiced his art in New York City and London. He has published two books of poetry, Hip Pockets and Bongo Skin. His recent collection, One Fell Swoop was published by innateDIVINITYbooks. His poetry has been featured in the literary journals, High Shelf Press XXIX, Juke Joint, Ligeia Magazine, Askew Poetry, Spillway Poetry, Abramlin Press and more recently, the Anthology of Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts.