Wednesday, March 22, 2023 | 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. PT

Creating new truths through storytelling and putting women at the center of literature with Natashia Deón, Toni Ann Johnson, Malia Márquez and Laura Warrell.

The stories we carry with us are malleable. Writers shape their own understanding of cause and effect, heritage and progeny, inspiration and revelation. During this event, we’ll explore the steps writers take on their journeys to shape their legacies.

Natashia Deón is a two-time NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature, Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Nominee in Fiction, a practicing criminal attorney, and author of the critically acclaimed and widely-reviewed novels, The Perishing (Counterpoint 2021) and GRACE (Counterpoint 2016). Toni Ann Johnson is the winner of the 2021 Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction with her linked collection Light Skin Gone to Waste (UGA Press 2022). Malia Márquez is a teacher and author of work that has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Hobart, Coffin Bell Journal, and elsewhere and of her award-winning first novel, This Fierce Blood (Acre Books 2021). Laura Warrell is a writer and teacher whose work has appeared in HuffPost, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. Her first novel is Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm (Pantheon 2022).

The event is free and you can watch via YouTube Live on the WeHo Arts channel. Learn more at www.weho.org/wehoreads/

WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood. More information and events at www.weho.org/wehoreads. BookSwell, a literary events and media company dedicated to lifting up writers from historically excluded communities, is producing the WeHo Reads 2023 season. Additional support is provided by UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and Poets & Writers as well as media partnerships with Bookshop.org, Book Soup, and Los Angeles Review of Books.