Join us for a special Grand Performances Friday night show of Poetics of Pride + Legacy with Jen Chen!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) Read More ...

Join us to celebrate the launch of Karl Dunn's memoir, How to Burn a Rainbow, the first book about gay divorce.Imagine being married to your dream partner, owning a gorgeous house in LA, being at the top of the global advertising industry, and leaving it all to figure out who the hell you actually really are. That’s what happened to Karl Dunn, whose divorce from his husband in California became his crisis of identity. It’s an Eat Pray Love style, riches-to-rags journey from LA to Europe that Karl chronicled in his book How To Burn A Rainbow, an intimate, honest, and revealing story about divorce and self-love that questions and reframes the entire institution of marriage. As Karl says in his book, “My marriage didn’t make me whole, my divorce did.”About the author:Karl Dunn is a multi-award-winning advertising Creative Director who has lived and worked in eleven cities throughout Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe, and America. A global citizen, Karl speaks on a broad section of topics such as Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and Self-love — a culmination of his 25 years in international business, his personal experience of divorce, and his passion for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. He Read More ...