homo-centric: Pen Pals

Pen pals were an everybody thing when I was a kid. My pen pal was a boy named Shelby who lived a million miles away in Texas. It doesn't matter if you had a pen pal growing up because this month's homo-centric features four Pen pals--specifically four Pen Center USA Emerging Voices alumni. John Boucher, Eduardo Santiago, S.A. Sukop & Victor Vazquez will be at Stories BooksandCafe this month to share their words. Please join us Thursday August 21st at 7:30pm at Stories Books & Cafe in Echo Park. Stories is located at 1716 Sunset Blvd. between Le Moyne and Logan. Metered parking is available in the lot behind the store on Le Moyne St. Map and directions are on the link of this event. Stories is a very cool bookstore so come early and support the store & cafe! * Order a coffee or tea & have a sandwich. * Hang out & meet writers & other lit types. * Wander the aisles & buy a book. Remember--we depend on the word of mouth so tell a friend, bring two or three. John Boucher started writing in HIV+ writing workshops sponsored by AHF, APLA, and the LA Gay & Lesbian Center. He was a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow in 2009 and was the recipient of a 2009/2010 Community Access Scholarship to UCLA, where he began working on Dichondra, his collection of humorously dark nonfiction stories. John was a 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation Fellow. His first published piece “Speaking in Tongues” appeared in Washburn University’s inscape literary journal, where it won the 2009 Best Nonfiction award. It was republished by PEN Center USA in Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology. John attended Corcoran College of Art and Design and earned his MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Born in 1962 and raised in Los Angeles, John lives in West Hollywood. Eduardo Santiago's first novel Tomorrow They Will Kiss was an Edmund White Debut Fiction Award finalist and a Latino Book Award finalist. Mr. Santiago’s highly anticipated follow-up novel, Midnight Rumba, won the New England Book Award - Best Fiction and took top honors at the Beverly Hills Book Awards 2013 and the Latino International Book Awards. His short fiction has been published in ZYZZYVA, Slow Trains, and The Caribbean Writer, and his nonfiction has appeared in Los Angeles Times, The Advocate, and Out Traveler Magazine. Mr. Santiago earned a BFA degree from the California Institute of the Arts and a Creative Writing MFA from Antioch University. He has taught novel writing for UCLA's extension program for the past seven years, and memoir writing at the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program. He is the founder of the Idyllwild Authors Series, and a two-time PEN Center U.S.A. Fellow Emerging Voices(2004)The Mark (2008). Nonfiction writer and photographer Sylvia Sukop is a 2009 recipient of the PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship. Her essay "Pioneers on the Frontier of Faith" will be published in the anthology Latitudes: An Angeleno's Atlas (forthcoming in 2015 from Heyday in Berkeley). Her work has also appeared in Flaunt, The Huffington Post, and the photography journal Exposure. She is currently working on a memoir, The Passing Light. She serves as editorial director at Art Center College of Design and volunteers as a writing tutor for high school students through the Posse Foundation. Victor Vazquez is a Southern California native. He received two bachelor degrees in English and Drama from the University of California, Irvine. He is a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices fellow, a playwright in Los Angeles, works as a Community Organizer in the Artistic Department at the Pasadena Playhouse, and was recently selected to participate in LAMBDA Literary’s Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices. He is writing a book of poems titled Men.