Litquake is pleased to announce the curators for a new curatorial program highlighting the Bay Area’s BIPOC & LGBTQ+ writers and thought leaders—Litquake Out Loud!
Josiah Luis Alderete Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Pocho spanglish speaking poet from La Area Bahia who learned to write poetry in the kitchen of his Mama’s Mexican restaurant. He was a founding member of San Francisco's outspoken word troupe The Molotov Mouths and is also a radio insurgente whose stories have appeared on KALW’s “Crosscurrents" and whose show “The Spanglish Power Hour” aired on KPFA. He curates and hosts the Latinx reading series SPEAKING AXOLOTL in Oakland which happens every third Thursday of the month at Nomadic Press Studios. Josiah Luis Alderete's book of poems is forthcoming from Black Freighter Press.
Baruch Porras-Hernandez Baruch Porras-Hernandez a writer, performer, organizer, professional MC/Host, curator, stand up comedian, and the author of the chapbooks “I Miss You, Delicate” and “Lovers of the Deep Fried Circle” both with Sibling Rivalry Press. He had the honor of touring with the legendary Sister Spit Queer poetry tour in 2019, is a is a two-time winner of Literary Death Match, a regular host of literary shows for KQED, and was named a Writer to Watch in 2016 by 7x7 Magazine. His poetry can be found with Write Bloody Publishing, The Tusk, Foglifter, Assaracus and many more. He has been an artist in residence at The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, and Playwriting. He’s been featured in shows with The Rumpus, Writers with Drinks, has performed several times with Radar Productions, LitQuake, and Quiet Lightning. His solo show “Love in the Time of Piñatas” got a clapping man from the SF Chronicle and was performed to sold-out houses at Epic Party Theatre in December of 2019. He is the head organizer of ¿Donde Esta Mi Gente? a Latinx literary performance series, he is an immigrant originally from Mexico, and is currently the lead artist in a multidisciplinary project that will create new Queer Latino Superheroes with MACLA, which stands for Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana in San Jose. He lives in San Francisco.
Rachel Khong Rachel Khong is a writer living in San Francisco. Her debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin, won the 2017 California Book Award for First Fiction, and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for First Fiction. From 2011 to 2016, she was the managing editor then executive editor of Lucky Peach magazine. With Lucky Peach, she also edited a cookbook about eggs, called All About Eggs. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission district. She's currently at work on a novel, and will squirm if you ask about it. It’s fine, it’s all going fine!
Gabriel Cortez Gabriel Cortez is a Black biracial poet, educator, and organizer of Panamanian descent. His work has appeared in The New York Times, National Public Radio, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, and The Breakbeat Poets Anthology Volume 4. He is a VONA fellow, #BARS workshop alum, NALAC grant recipient, and winner of the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize. He is a member of the artist collective, Ghostlines, and co-founder of The Root Slam, an award-winning poetry venue dedicated to inclusivity, justice, and artistic growth, as well as Write Home, a project working to challenge public perceptions of houselessness and shift critical resources to houseless Bay Area youth through spoken word poetry. Gabriel currently works as Acting Program Director at Youth Speaks, one of the world’s leading presenters of spoken word performance, education, and youth development programs.
Aya de León Aya de Leon directs the Poetry for the People program, teaching creative writing at UC Berkeley. Kensington Books publishes her award-winning feminist heist/romance series, Justice Hustlers: UPTOWN THIEF (2016), THE BOSS (2017), THE ACCIDENTAL MISTRESS (2018), and SIDE CHICK NATION (2019) which was the first novel published about Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Aya has received acclaim in the Washington Post, Village Voice, SF Chronicle, and The Establishment. Her work has also appeared in Ebony, Essence, Guernica, Writers Digest, Huffington Post, Catapult, The Root, The Toast, VICE, Ploughshares, Bitch Magazine, on Def Poetry, and she’s an advice columnist for Mutha Magazine. In 2020, Kensington will publish her first spy novel, about FBI infiltration of an African American eco-racial justice organization. She is currently at work on a YA spy girl series featuring African American and Latina teens called GOING DARK, as well as a picture book to help talk to children about racism. She blogs and tweets about race, class, gender, culture, and social justice politics on Twitter at @ayadeleon and on Facebook and Instagram at @ayadeleonwrites.
About Litquake Words Matter. Litquake’s diverse live programs are created with the aim of inspiring critical engagement with the key issues of the day, bringing people together around the common humanity encapsulated in literature, and perpetuating a sense of literary community, as well as a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing. We believe in literature as a public good, so we work to produce events that are accessible to all. www.litquake.org
Litquake is grateful for the support of the following funders who help make our programming possible. Institutional Giving: Adobe Employee Community Fund, Bill Graham Memorial Foundation, California Arts Council, California Humanities, Fleishhacker Family Foundation, Grants for the Arts, Margaret and William R. Hearst III Foundation, Mary A. Crocker Trust, Miner Anderson Family Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The Bernard Osher Foundation, Zellerbach Foundation. Individual Giving: Frances Dinkelspiel and Gary Wayne, Margaret and Will Hearst, Scott James and Gerald Cain, Nion McEvoy, Craig Newmark, and Nicole Miner and Robert Mailer Anderson. Media Sponsors: San Francisco Chronicle, 7 X 7, KQED, Bay Area Reporter, Johnny Funcheap, and KALW 91.7
