Nepantla & Red Hen Press @ USC

Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color celebrates the release of Issue Two! Co-hosted by our friends at Red Hen Press our West Coast regional event will be held on Friday, August 21, at 7pm at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives (909 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles) and will feature readings by four outstanding poets: Ryka Aoki, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Imani Tolliver, and Margaret Rhee; emceed by Myriam Gurba!!!! ------------------------------ Margaret Rhee is the author of chapbooks Yellow (Tinfish Press, 2011) and Radio Heart; or, How Robots Fall Out of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2015). She co-edited Glitter Tongue: queer and trans love poems and Mixed Blood, a literary journal on race and innovative poetics edited by CS Giscombe. She is a Kundiman Fellow and the Kathy Acker Fellow at Les Figues Press. In 2014, she received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in ethnic and new media studies. Currently, she teaches at UCLA and is a visiting assistant professor in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Oregon. Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in California. She is gay as hell and totally cool with it. Her work has been published in The Offing, The Feminist Wire, and variously online. Her first book I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It was released by Boost House in 2014. Imani Tolliver is the Cultural and Fine Arts Supervisor for the City of Buena Park. She has been a featured poet across the country, including the Smithsonian Institution, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, The World Stage Performance Gallery, University of Southern California, and more. She was awarded with a Lannon Literary Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. and the John J. Wright Literary Award first prize for poetry at Howard UniversityAs an editor, curator and advocate of the arts. She has been honored with a Certificate of Appreciation by the City of Los Angeles for her work as a promoter, host and publicist in support of the literary arts in Southern California. She was also honored to serve as a Poet Laureate for the Watts Towers Arts Center in Los Angeles, California. Ryka Aoki is the author of Seasonal Velocities, He Mele a Hilo (A Hilo Song) and the forthcoming Why Dust Shall Never Settle upon this Soul. She has been honored by the California State Senate for her “extraordinary commitment to free speech and artistic expression, as well as the visibility and well-being of Transgender people.” Ryka also appears in the recent documentaries “Diagnosing Difference” and “Riot Acts” she has MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University is the recipient of a University Award from the Academy of American Poets. In 2012, Ryka was named an Outstanding Volunteer by the LA Gay Lesbian Center’s Child, Youth, and Family Services. Ryka is a former national judo champion, the founder of the International Transgender Martial Arts Alliance, and is a professor of English at Santa Monica College and of Queer Studies at Antioch University. She also really likes donuts and peas, though not at the same time. www.rykaryka.com Myriam Gurba is the author of the books Dahlia Season, Wish You Were Me, and Painting Their Portraits in Winter. She has toured with the legendary literary roadshow Sister Spit. She lives in Long Beach, California. ----------------------------------- Nepantla is edited by Christopher Soto at The Lambda Literary Foundation