Beyond Baroque presents an immersive gathering exploring the intersection of queer identities, the avant-garde, and mystical practices. The program will feature a mix of poetry, prose, & performance by Shelley Marlow, Brooke Palmieri, Noel Alumit and K. Bradford. After the performances, the authors will be in conversation moderated by poet and scholar, Ramón García.

Doors open: 6:30 PM Readings: 7:00 PM

Shelley Marlow is a writer and visual artist whose work explores queer joy, and practical and ritual magic. In 2015, Marlow’s novel Two Augusts In a Row In a Row, was published by Publication Studio, Portland; with art editions by Publication Studio, Hudson, NY and Publication Studio, London(2017). Marlow received an Acker Award for avant-garde writing, (2017). Halloween in Edinburgh, from their new manuscript, The Wind Blew Through Like A Chorus Of Ghosts was published in Belladonna* Collective’s Lesbian All Stars series(2022). Recent artwork and writing appear in the Brooklyn Rail; Hyperallergic; Lambda Literary; Evergreen Review; Altered Bodies catalogue; and The St. Petersburg Review. Marlow has read and exhibited their work extensively. Marlow edited prose for Ping Pong Magazine, out of the Henry Miller Library. Marlow ran writing workshops for unhoused young LGBTQI adults at Arts In the Woods, Troy, NY.

Brooke Palmieri is an artist, writer, and educator working at the intersection of memory, history, and gender-bending alternate realities. In 2018 they founded CAMP BOOKS, a platform and traveling bookshop promoting access to queer history through cheap prints and zines; workshops and installations; and the collaborative construction of archives related to LGBTQIA+ activism and the long history of gender non-conformity. Their writing has recently been featured in anthologies by Pilot Press and Sticky Fingers Publishing, and their work has been exhibited at Gaada, the Glasgow Women’s Library, The Bower, and Chelsea Space. From September to November 2023 they were the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Huntington, working on a piece of creative non-fiction about witchcraft, class, and gender non-conformity: Bargain Witch, forthcoming in Autumn 2025 with Dopamine Books.

Noel Alumit is a multidisciplinary artist who wrote the novels Talking to the Moon and Letters to Montgomery Clift. His most recent book is the short story collection Music Heard in Hi-Fi and Other Stories from Rebel Satori Press. He won the Stonewall Book Award from the American Library Association and the James Duggins Mid-Career Prize. He was named one of Out Magazine’s “Out 100” and was a California State Commissioner on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs. Noel has a BFA in Drama and a Master of Divinity in Buddhist Chaplaincy. He is currently an Associate Editor at Lion’s Roar Magazine.

K. Bradford (they&them) is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, writer, and cultural innovator. K.’s public works activate imaginative world-building, radical, intersectional collectivity, and post-colonial, post-binary liberation practices. Over the last twenty years, K. has founded and directed transformational arts installations, events, and programs in Austin, Chicago, and LA, including the Qosmos Projects, One Mile, Gender Fusions, The Raw Works, & more. K. holds an MFA in Writing and in Art + Technology from CalArts and lives in Los Angeles.

Ramón García is the author of two books of poetry The Chronicles (Red Hen Press, 2015) and Other Countries (What Books Press, 2010), and a monograph on the artist Ricardo Valverde (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). The Chronicles was a finalist for the Latino International Book Award for Best Poetry Book in English in 2016. His poetry has appeared in Plume, The Best American Poetry and also published a chapbook Strays with Foundlings Press 2020. García has published poetry, fiction and scholarly work in a variety of journals, anthologies and museum catalogs. His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry anthology The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of US-Hispanic Literature, The American Journal of Poetry, Los Angeles Review and Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas. He has contributed to the art work and projects of various visual artists, including Berta Jottar, Harry Gamboa Jr., Susan Silton, David John Attyah, and Sandra de la Loza. He was born in Colima, Mexico and grew up in Modesto, California. He has a B.A. in World Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego. He is a Professor at California State University, Northridge, lives in Los Angeles and is currently serving as Vice-President of the Board of Trustees at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center.