Authors Dion O’Reilly (Sadness of the Apex Predator), Dorianne Laux (Life On Earth), and Michelle Bitting (Dummy Ventriloquist) are celebrating newly published collections and will be reading from their latest books at Beyond Baroque. Enjoy a reception and book signings after the program.

Doors Open: 6:30 PM I Readings: 7:00 PM

About the authors

Dorianne Laux’s sixth collection, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Her latest collection is Life On Earth and will be released in January of 2024.

Dion O’Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator (University of Wisconsin’s Cornerstone Press 2024), Ghost Dogs (Terrapin Books 2020), and Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition, forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, The Slowdown, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Quarterly. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

Michelle Bitting was short-listed for the 2023 CRAFT Character Sketch Challenge, the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 Coniston Prize and 2020 Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Prize. She won Quarter After Eight’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest and was a finalist for the Ruminate Magazine, Sonora Review and New Millennium Flash Prose contests. She is the author of five poetry collections: Good Friday Kiss, winner of the inaugural C & R Press De Novo First Book Award; Notes to the Beloved; The Couple Who Fell to Earth; Broken Kingdom, winner of the Catamaran Poetry Prize; and Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press), winner of the Wilder Prize and recently named one of Kirkus Reviews’ 2022 Best of Indie. Her chapbook Dummy Ventriloquist is forthcoming in 2024 from C & R Press. Recent poetry appears on The Slowdown, The Poetry Society of New York’s Milk Press, and is featured as Poem of the Week in The Missouri Review. Bitting holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University, Oregon, and a PhD in Mythological Studies, emphasis Poetry and Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is writing a novel centered around Los Angeles and her great grandmother, stage and screen actor Beryl Mercer, and is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University.

This event is Free & In-Person at Beyond Baroque. Masks are encouraged while inside our center.

Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, fellow attendees, or performers.

Because this is a free event seating is limited. Please arrive early.

Livestream: If you can’t join us in-person the event will be livestreamed on Beyond Baroque’s YouTube channel at the scheduled time of the event.