With games and multimedia performances, we celebrate poetry of LGBTQ pioneers and share a new conversation together. As we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, we discover at this event how we can shape pride and legacy.

Jen Cheng is the current Poet Laureate of West Hollywood and has a mission of sharing experiences and stories across intercultural and intergenerational groups. As a community curator and multidisciplinary artist, she asks how we can create better connections and more compassion.

From 6pm-7pm, we invite attendees to mingle and play with poetic games. An interactive sculpture, Poetry Scrabble, offers word magnets to create a site-specific collaborative poem curated by Jen Cheng. A station led by José Rios invites attendees to sit down for quick games of Poetry Bingo. A dancer duo (Julienne Mackey and Mara Hancock) navigates attendees through the games.

At 7pm, we unleash banned LGBTQ books as gifts to our audience to bring back to their communities. Our featured poets celebrate the work of earlier LGBTQ poets (such as Audre Lorde, Mary Oliver, Richard Blanco, Pat Parker, and Judy Grahn) and respond with their own poems.

With this group of LGBTQ poets, we share a diverse range of poetry to bring echoes of earlier wisdom and living out loud. Our performances are accompanied by multi-disciplinary artist and instrumentalist Shivani Desai aka Sonic Warfare.

Poets

• Jen Cheng
• Ramy Eletreby
• Steven Reigns
• José Rios
• Brian Sonia-Wallace
• Lauryn Westbrook aka Bloom
• Terry Wolverton
• Mona Ghannoum

DJ/musician @sonicwarfare

Dancers Mara Hancock, @maraanne24 and Julienne Mackey, @j.mack8

About Jen Cheng

Jen Cheng is the current Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, author of a poetry collection Braided Spaces, and a 2023 California Arts Council Fellow. She is a multidisciplinary artist who blends East-West cultural influences in a new form, Feng Shui Poetry. With stories for tween audiences, mystery detective fans, and queer love, Jen is a cross-pollinator and community curator. Find her on Twitter/IG @JenCvoice or: www.JenCvoice.com

This event has an ASL Interpreter provided as a courtesy by Pro Bono ASL.

Thank you to our community partners which include LA County Library Foundation, WeHo Pride Arts Festival, and more to be announced.

This project was made possible in part by The Green Foundation, The Norris Foundation, Liberty Hill Foundation, and with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit www.calhum.org.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of California Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.