4 to 4:45 PM

¡Speaking Axolotl; El Fresno Edition!

Reading Venue: Fresbrew (810 E Olive Ave)

  • Mimi Tempestt (she/they)

  • Lourdes Figueroa (she/her)

  • Norman Zelaya (he/him)

  • Maria Guerrero (she/her)

¡La Area Bahia’s long running Latinx reading series makes it to Fresno for a chingon evening of Spanglish Spoken Word, Latinx Literatura, y Pocho Poesia!

Black Freighter Press

Reading Venue: Fresno Music Academy and Arts: Vista Theatre (1298 N Wishon Ave)

  • Darius Simpson (he/him)

  • LadiRevolutionary (LadiRev) (she/her)

  • Tongo Eisen-Martin (he/him)

  • Alie Jones (she/her)

Black Freighter Press is a platform for Black and Brown writers to honor ancestry and propel radical imagination. Black Freighter Press is excited to be curating a LitHop Fresno reading featuring a few of our favorite creative minds: Landon Smith, LadiRevolutionary, Alie Jones, and Tongo Eisen-Martin.

Exploding "I": Poets Navigating Identity & Self

Reading Venue: Fresno Music Academy and Arts: Doris Gallery (814 E Olive Ave)

  • Mariah Bosch

  • Hermelinda Hernandez (turtle)

  • Aidan Castro

  • Shelby Pinkham

Four poets & friends reading work involving selfhood and its many dimensions. Their poems span identity, queerness, dreamwork, the imagined and real, and offer room for more. These poets are concerned with how "I" drives a poem, how it lets a reader in and conceals, too.

Poetry--Beyond and Back

Reading Venue: Hart's Haven Used Bookstore (950 N Van Ness Ave)

  • Megan Bohigian (she/her)

  • Kirk Stone (he/him)

  • Angela Chaidez Vincent (she/her)

  • Victor Trejo (him/he)

Four accomplished poets explore the bounds of memory through imagery, rhythm, sound, lyric, and narrative.

Where We've Been and Where We Belong

Reading Venue: Labyrinth Art Collective (1470 N Van Ness Ave)

  • Jacob Simmons (he/him/his)

  • Juan Gilberto Huerta (they/them)

  • Samina Najmi (she/her)

  • Kathryn Neves (she/her/hers)

Four academics approach their creative work with varied schemas, formed by diverse experiences and senses of home. Overlapping themes in their readings will include what it means to belong to someone, something, or somewhere and a shared desire to create a more welcoming world. Their writing is both a window and a looking glass, and serves to examine our unique relationships with whomever, wherever, and whatever to which we’ve given so much of ourselves.

Inland Ghosts: Writing the Central Valley

Reading Venue: Spectrum Art Gallery (608 E Olive Ave)

  • Brigitte Bowers

  • Christa Fraser

  • Jeremy Mumford

  • Paula Treick DeBoard

Four UC Merced writers consider the personal and public hauntings that overlay the Central Valley landscape and wrestle with the continual impact of the past on the present.

In Praise of Our Stories

Reading Venue: The Alchemist (1306 N Wishon Ave)

  • Rooja Mohassessy (she/her)

  • Marcelo Hernandez Castillo (they/them)

  • Chad Sweeney

Four California poets with friends and family in Fresno come together to read from their recent works. These poets pay homage to heritage and family with praise and elegies. Each unique voice summons the past, against absence and erasure, and holds it accountable to the present.