Holding Court

March 2025 brings the AWP Conference to Downtown Los Angeles. Poet Laureate Jen Cheng is producing a literary salon open to all Los Angeles community members and conference attendees: Holding Court, in LA Chinatown.

Get your tickets! Thursday, March 27th 6pm-9pm. Doors open at 5:30pm. Come for all of it, some of it, but most of all there will be food, drink, music, and joy to celebrate our poets and writers! Buy your tickets now on our ticketing site, before we sell out at 200 attendees: bit.ly/holdingcourt27. If you have a group coming, please email Jen for a special group discount.

Holding Court features two rounds of literary luminaries at an outdoor venue, with amenities such as food and drink specials, parking, accessible entrances, and easy access to public transportation (and only 10-minutes drive from the LA Convention Center).

Preorder your books here from our Bookshop list to support the authors and our indie bookseller. Buy a book as a gift!

More about the featured poets and writers:

• KB Brookins is a Black queer and trans writer, educator, and cultural worker from Texas. KB’s chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their debut collection Freedom House won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best First Book of Poetry. KB’s memoir Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024) won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Follow them online at @earthtokb. 
• Chen Chen is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (2017), published by BOA Editions and by Bloodaxe Books in the UK. His latest chapbook is Explodingly Yours (Ghost City Press, 2023). A Kundiman community member, his honors include the Thom Gunn Award, two Pushcart Prizes, the National Book Award longlist, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists.
• Edgar Gomez (all pronouns) is the author of High-Risk Homosexual, which received a 2023 American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir. Gomez’s second book, a darkly-comic memoir about growing up poor in early 2000’s Florida titled Alligator Tears, will be out in 2025 from Crown. 
• Muriel Leung is the author of the novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnamable Disaster (W.W. Norton & Company) as well as other titles that include Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books), Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) with Kristine Thompson. She is permanent faculty at California Institute of the Arts.
• Blas Falconer is the author of Rara Avis; Forgive the Body This Failure; The Foundling Wheel from Four Way Books. as well as other titles A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press); and The Perfect Hour (Pleasure Boat Studio). He teaches in the MFA program at San Diego State University.
• Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel Sea Change, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a 2023 B&N Discover Pick, ​an APALA Adult Fiction Honor Book, and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book, and the short story collection Green Frog, which was a Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick, named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2024, and longlisted for the 2024 New American Voices Award. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. She is a faculty member of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Lasell University.
• Penehuro Williams is a Samoan poet and spoken word artist from Las Vegas, NV. He is a regional finalist in slam poetry, with work featured at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, Washington.
• Alejandro Heredia is a writer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from LAMBDA Literary, Dominican Studies Institute, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Loca is his debut novel.
• Kai Coggin (she/her) is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Hot Springs AR, and author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions 2024). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. She lives with her wife in peaceful valley, where they tend to wild things and each other.
• Dylan McKeever is a comedian, writer, artist, musician, and video maker. Her work revolves around her queer identity, trans issues, race, politics, sex and dating. She has collaborated with brands including HBO, Instagram, TikTok, GIPHY, ATTN, Instrument, Health-Ade, Billie, and Millie. As a double earth sign, she enjoys dim sum, dog watching and late afternoon naps. She lives in California.

Meet the Emcees:

• Jen Cheng. She is the current Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, a California Arts Council Fellow, author of a poetry collection Braided Spaces, and a writer with the Tin House Winter Workshop. Jen is producing and hosting this event. She has gained media coverage of her projects in KPFK radio shows (Feminist Magazine, Poets Cafe), Spectrum News, and print media such as Beverly Press and WeHo Times.
• Kim Shuck (Poet Laureate Emerita of San Francisco, multidisciplinary artist). Kim Shuck co-emceeing the feature round with Jen Cheng and performing work. Shuck is widely published in journals, anthologies and a number of solo books such as Deer Trails. She enjoys volunteering in SFUSD elementary school classrooms to share her loves of origami, poetry and basket making… in other words, math of various kinds. In 2019 Shuck was awarded an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and a PEN Oakland Censorship Award.
• Ruben Quesada. Ruben Quesada is co-emceeing the lightning round with Jen Cheng and performing his work. Ruben Quesada is a poet, translator, and editor. He edited the award-winning anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry. His writing appears in The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Believer, and Harvard Review. His new collection of poetry, Brutal Companion, won the Barrow Street Editors Prize.

Other poets and writers performing include: Ching-In Chen, Alison De La Cruz, Jalen Jones, Olga García Echeverría, Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, Mimi Gonzalez, Dorothy Randall Gray, Mona Ghannoum, Henry Medina, Angela Peñaredondo, José Rios, Sydney Rogers, Danielle P. Williams, Victor Yates, and Maestro DeSean.

Community Partners

VCP SoCal Poets is our nonprofit sponsor of this event, providing hosting committee and leadership.
Justworks is a stellar community partner, supporting our production costs.
New Delta Review is a community partner with our outreach efforts.
Studious Coworking Space is a local coworking and event space in Chinatown, providing complimentary day passes to writers visiting our event.
Golden Guide is a community + collaboration platform that drives support and builds connection for asian american, native hawaiian, and pacific islander communities helping to bring new community attendees to this literary event.
Mixed Asian Media (MAM) is a space for mixed Asian Pacific Islanders to find their community and see themselves in mainstream media. MAM is supporting with community outreach.
Book Soup is our local indie bookshop supporting our authors with a book sales table.
Get Lit – In our mission to bring together intergenerational audiences and increase opportunities for underserved youth, a cohort of youth from Get Lit will be attending with their reserved complimentary tickets.

Thank you to our Supporters: Mercy Street, Anonymous donation for performer support, Anonymous donation for a number of youth attendees’ complimentary tickets.

Sponsorship and Community Partner Opportunity

Supporters of this event are invited to inquire about Early VIP tix and group sales (email JenCvoice@gmail.com) or donate directly to the event producer Jen Cheng (note “Holding Court” in memo). All contributions at any level are greatly appreciated and will be acknowledged in the Supporters list in program signage.

Host Committee

Host Committee includes Mito Aviles (West Hollywood Arts Commissioner), Nancy Lynée Woo (GASHER Press, California Creative Corps), Camille Hernandez (Poet Laureate of Anaheim), Jason Magabo Perez (Poet Laureate Emerita of San Diego), Jalen Jones (New Delta Review, Lambda Lit Fellow), Jose Rios (Catamaran, San Pedro River Review), Henry Medina (Rattle, LA Review), James Evert Jones (Altadena Poetry Review, VCP SoCal Poets), Jen Cheng (Poet Laureate of West Hollywood), Kim Shuck (Poet Laureate Emerita of San Francisco), Ruben Quesada (Brutal Companion, Barrow Street Prize).

Thank you for your support of indie-artist produced literary events and celebrating diverse stories of cultural leaders!

Please contact Jen Cheng (or email JenCvoice at gmail) for ways to get involved.