Sunday, April 10, 2016, 1:00pm

North Neighborhood Library - Long Beach Public Library
5571 Orange Ave
Long Beach, CA 90805

The event is FREE, but donations are accepted

Featuring

	Stephen Blackburn's biopic screenplay Fatty & Buster and his short story “Orion’s Belt” won him an endowed James Michener Fellowship. His ancient Greek murder mystery THE ROCK OF ABANDON was lauded by Backstage as “a Grecian extravaganza...always engrossing and fun to watch,” while Examiner.com’s Bob Leggett praised the stage drama as “a masterpiece” “with twists and turns worthy of Hitchcock himself.” His 20-minute one-man play “Douglass,” starring Rif Hutton, comprised one-third of LINCOLN ADJACENT, which won a Producers Encore Award at the 2014 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Both plays were produced by his wife, Consuelo Flores.
	Art Currim, is a Los Angeles based poet, writer, and composer. His work has appeared in the Angel City Review, Yay!LA Mag, Dryland Literary Magazine, The Women Group, and the San Gabriel Valley Poet’s Quarterly. His poetry will also appear in the Tia Chucha Press “Coiled Serpent” Anthology, 2016. He can be found online at: www.quattrain.com, www.facebook.com/quattrain,  and quattrain.tumblr.com
	Poet and performance writer, Consuelo Flores is a multidisciplinary artist from East Los Angeles. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Antioch University, is a member of Fierce Backbone Theater Company (FBTC) in Hollywood and is known for her Day of the Dead altars, performances, lectures and presentations. Consuelo produced the plays “The Rock of Abandon” in 2012, FBTC's inaugural production; and “Lincoln Adjacent,” which received the Producer’s Award at the Fringe Festival in 2014. She’s written, produced and directed two one-act plays for the Frida Kahlo Theater 10-Minute Play Festival in 2014 & 2015. She writes about family relationships and stories of her community. She lives with playwright husband Stephen Blackburn in the historic West Adams District.

Open Mic follows the features. Share your story, poem, monologue, song. Get there at 1p to sign up. Reception with light refreshments follows the open mic.

liz gonzález, host and organizer, is a poetry, fiction, and memoir writer who
lives Uptown/North Long Beach. www.lizgonzalez.com

Uptown Word & Arts mission is to promote literacy and the arts, feature underrepresented writers and artists, foster artistic expression, support local writers and artists, engage the North Long Beach community in the arts, and draw people to North Long Beach. More info: www.uptownword.lizgonzalez.com/

Sunday, March 13, 2016, 1:00pm

North Neighborhood Library - Long Beach Public Library
5571 Orange Ave
Long Beach, CA 90805

The event is FREE, but donations are accepted

Featuring Three Poets

	Michael Datcher is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Raising Fences—a TODAY Show Book Club Pick—and the acclaimed historical novel Americus. He co-hosts the weekly public affairs news magazine Beautiful Struggle on 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles and is a professor of English at Loyola Marymount University. Datcher attended Long Beach's Lincoln Elementary on the Eastside.
	Li Yun Alvarado, Li Yun Alvarado is the author of Words or Water (forthcoming) and Nuyorico, CA. A Nuyorican poet and scholar, her work has appeared in New Madrid; Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education; The Acentos Review; and PALABRA, A Magazine of Chicano and Latino Literary Art among others. She was recently awarded the Lee & Low Books 2015 New Voices Honor for her picture book manuscript. Her work received an honorable mention for The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize in 2012. She is currently the Senior Poetry Editor for Kweli Journal and is an alumna of VONA/Voices Writing Workshop and AROHO. She holds a BA in Spanish and sociology from Yale University and an MA and PhD in English from Fordham University. Li Yun is a native New Yorker living in Long Beach, California who takes frequent trips to Salinas, Puerto Rico to visit la familia. You can find Li Yun on Facebook and learn more at www.liyunalvarado.com
	Robin Dawn Hudechek received her MFA in creative writing, poetry from UCI. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have recently appeared in Caliban Online, Silver Birch Press, Chiron Review, Poemeleon, Verse-Virtual, Then & Now: Conversations With Old Friends and The Hummingbird Review. In October, 2015 her chapbook, Ice Angels was published in IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks. Robin lives in Laguna Beach with her husband, Manny and two beautiful cats. More of her poetry can be found at robindawnh.wordpress.com

Open Mic follows the features. Share your story, poem, monologue, song. Get there at 1p to sign up. Reception with light refreshments follows the open mic.

liz gonzález, host and organizer, is a poetry, fiction, and memoir writer who
lives Uptown/North Long Beach. www.lizgonzalez.com

Uptown Word & Arts mission is to promote literacy and the arts, feature underrepresented writers and artists, foster artistic expression, support local writers and artists, engage the North Long Beach community in the arts, and draw people to North Long Beach. More info: www.uptownword.lizgonzalez.com/

Sunday, February 14, 2016, 1:00pm

North Neighborhood Library - Long Beach Public Library
5571 Orange Ave
Long Beach, CA 90805

The event is FREE, but donations are accepted

Featuring Three Poets

	Boris Salvador Ingles at his core bleeds Los Angeles. Born and raised in Boyle Heights, he finds beauty and soul in every disdain facet of life. Boris combines poetry and photography, as means for visual and emotional expression. A mixture of humor, rawness, vulnerability and a sense for dark street realism. His photos will also be exhibited at the event.
	Karineh Mahdessian, a community social worker, is interested in people and art.  She hosts La Palabra Reading Series at Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park and co-facilitates Las Lunas Locas, a womyn's writing collective.  She eats tacos. She plays chess.  She gives hugs.  She writes. She loves. She rights. She breathes. She rites. She breathes.
	Sarah Thursday is a poet from Long Beach, California. She runs a poetry website called CadenceCollective.net, co-hosts a monthly reading with G. Murray Thomas, and founded Sadie Girl Press as a way to help publish local and emerging poets. Her first full-length poetry collection, All the Tiny Anchors, and her newest CD/chapbook, How to Unexist, are available at SadieGirlPress.com. For more info: SarahThursday.com, Facebook, or Twitter.

Open Mic follows the features. Share your story, poem, monologue, song. Get there at 1p to sign up. Reception with light refreshments follows the open mic.

liz gonzález, host and organizer, is a poetry, fiction, and memoir writer who
lives Uptown/North Long Beach. www.lizgonzalez.com

Uptown Word & Arts mission is to promote literacy and the arts, feature underrepresented writers and artists, foster artistic expression, support local writers and artists, engage the North Long Beach community in the arts, and draw people to North Long Beach. More info: www.uptownword.lizgonzalez.com/

Sunday, January 17, 2016, 1:00pm

North Neighborhood Library - Long Beach Public Library
5571 Orange Ave
Long Beach, CA 90805

Featuring

	liz gonzález, host and organizer of UPTOWN WORD, is a fourth generation San Bernardinan and lives in Uptown/North Long Beach. Her poetry, fiction, and memoirs have been published widely, most recently in Inlandia: A Literary Journey, Silver Birch Press’s Series, and in the anthology Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Her awards include an Arts Council for Long Beach Professional Artist Fellowship. liz is a writing consultant and teaches creative writing through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. www.lizgonzalez.com
	Ruth Nolan, born in San Bernardino, based in the California desert, writes for KCET L.A., Riverside Press Enterprise/Inlandia Literary Journeys, News from Native California, and Sierra Club Desert Report. Her writing is published/forthcoming in New Fiction Los Angeles (Red Hen Press), Rattling Wall, New California Writing (Heyday Books), Lumen Magazine, and Desert Oracle. She teaches creative writing and Native American literature at College of the Desert, and is editor of Phantom Seed Magazine and No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California's deserts (Heyday Books). She is writing a memoir about her work as a wildland firefighter in the western U.S. during the 1980’s.
	Isabel Quintero is a fiction writer, poet, and adjunct instructor from the IE. Gabi, A Girl in Pieces (Cinco Puntos Press), her first novel, is the recipient of the 2015 William C. Morris Award for Debut YA Novel, the 2015 Tomas Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award, the California Book Award Gold Medal for Young Adult, and others. It has been included on the Amelia Bloomer Project List of Recommended Feminist Reading, one of School Library Journal's Best Books of 2014, one of Booklist's Best Books of 2014, among other lists.

Sunday, December 13, 2015, 1-3:30p

Uptown Business District
5643 Atlantic Ave
Long Beach, CA 90805

Featuring

	Eric Loya is a poet and English instructor. He earned an MFA from the University of California, Riverside, and his poems have been featured in Verdad Magazine, Black&White, Trajectory, White Pelican Review, and Pearl among others. He lives in Long Beach and is working on his first manuscript of poems.
	Suzanne Lummis'most recent collection, Open 24 Hours, won the Blue Lynx Poetry prize. With Henry Morro she is the co-editor of The Pacific Coast Poetry Series/Beyond Baroque Books and editor of the anthology Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. Individual poems have appeared in The New Ohio Review, Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Normal School, Miramar and The New Yorker, and in the new anthology, Monster Verse: Poems Human an Inhuman. She teaches for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
	Mehnaz Sahibzadawas born in Pakistan and raised in Los Angeles. She is a 2009 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow in Poetry. Her poetry chapbook, Tongue-Tied: A Memoir in Poems, Finishing Line Press was published in 2012, and her second chapbook, Summer Forgets to Wear a Petticoat, Finishing Line Press, is forthcoming in January 2016. Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Asia Writes, The Rattling Wall, and Pedestal Magazine.

Art exhibit by Jamil Gonzalez, Illustrator/Cartoonist http://jamilsart.tumblr.com

Sponsored by JAM Productions and Uptown Business District

Sunday, November 8, 2015, 2-4p

Long Beach Community Action Partnership (LBCAP)
117 W Victoria St
Long Beach, CA 90805

Featuring

	Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico and raised in suburban Los Angeles. He’s the author of the novels Still Water Saints and The Five Acts of Diego León, both from Random House. His non-fiction and stories have appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Huizache, The Southern California Review, the American Book Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” A recipient of a fellowship in fiction from the NEA and an American Book Award, Alex is visiting associate professor at Cal State LA and is working on his next novel. www.alexespinoza.com
	Cynthia Guardado is a Salvadorian-American and Professor of English in the Los Angeles area. Her poems have been published in The Acentos Review, The Packinghouse Review, PALABRA: A Magazine of Chicano and Literary Art, Crate Literary Magazine, bozalta, The Normal School, and ING: An Inglewood Anthology. She translated The Madrid Conversations by Adam Braver & Molly Gesser, from University of New Orleans Press, and she was a semi-finalist for the Andres Montoya Prize out of Norte Dame University. https://cynthiaguardado.wordpress.com
	Michelle Brittan Rosado’s poems have been published in Calyx, The Los Angeles Review, Nimrod, The Packinghouse Review, and Poet Lore, and was the title poet for the anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25. In 2011, she won the Academy of American Poets/Ernesto Trejo Poetry Prize at CSU Fresno. Currently, she lives in Long Beach and is a doctoral candidate and Transpacific Studies Graduate Fellow in the PhD program in Creative Writing & Literature at USC. She is at work on her first collection of poems titled The Numerology of Us.

Sponsored by JAM Productions and Long Beach Community Action Partnership

Sunday, October 11, 2015, 2-4p

Ricardo's Nursery
6850 Atlantic Ave
Long Beach, CA 90805

Jerry Garcia is a poet, photographer, and filmmaker from Los Angeles, California who is too old to have been named after The Grateful Dead guitar hero. His poetry has been seen in Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, among others, and his chapbook Hitchhiking with the Guilty. Jerry is a past-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets and former president of Beyond Baroque’s Board of Trustees.  www.gratefulnotdead.com

Irene Suico Soriano is a Filipina American poet, independent literary and film/video curator, and Shelter/Animal Rights advocate. Her poetry has appeared in the LA Times, Flippin': Filipinos on America, Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina, among others. Disorient Journalzine published her first collection of poetry, SAFEHOUSES. Irene lives in Silverlake with three rescued dogs, Cadi, Papoo & Maxon and is finishing a poetry manuscript entitled, “Employees In Primate Labs Keep Quitting.”

Thomas R. Thomas publishes the small press Arroyo Seco Press. Publications include Carnival, Pipe Dream, Bank Heavy Press, Chiron Review, Electric Windmill, Marco Polo, and Silver Birch Press. His books are Scorpio (Carnival), and Five Lines (World Parade Books). the art of invisibility is coming Fall 2015. His website is www.thomasrthomas.org

This event is sponsored by JAM Productions, Ricardo's Nursery, and Uptown Business District

UPTOWN WORD Reading Series September 2015

Sunday, September 20, 2015, 2-4p

AJ's Barber Shop
5731 Atlantic Ave
Long Beach, CA 90805

Jessica Ceballos was born east of the river, without a middle name. To fill this gap in her life she writes poetry. In her past life she designed interiors which is not unlike designing poems. She curates the literary arts programming at Avenue 50 Studio and she is 1/4 of the experiment-in-publishing known as Writ Large Press. She also holds a seat with the Highland Park Neighborhood Council. Her work has been published in various journals and a book is forthcoming. Jessica studied English and Religion at Oxy and Interior Design at FIDM. www.jessicaceballos.com

Jackie Joice writes fiction, poetry and non-fiction. She is the author of Green Grapes Black Hands and is currently working on a new poetry collection entitled Touched. She's an RH negative activist and aspiring photographer. Her essays have recently been published in Walking In The Feminine: A Stepping In Our Shoes anthology. Her photography appears in Like A Girl (Lucid Moose Lit 2015). www.jackiejoice.com

Nancy Lynée Woo is a 2015 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow and founding editor of social justice literary press Lucid Moose Lit. She is currently working on a collection of poems about her mixed heritage called The Great Divide and has released a chapbook and poetry CD. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in sociology and works in marketing. www.nancylyneewoo.com

Art by local artist, Jose Loza will be exhibited.

Sponsored by JAM Productions, AJ's Barbershop, and Uptown Business District

The kick-off of UPTOWN WORD Reading Series

Sunday, August 30, 2015, 2:00pm - 4:00pm

Uptown Business District
5643 Atlantic Avenue
Long Beach, CA 90805

Featuring

Olga García Echeverría is the author of Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas. Her work appears in Lavandería: A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Words, Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language and is forthcoming in Jota by Kórima Press. She was selected by A Room of Her Own (AROHO) as the 2013 Touching Lives Fellow. In the spring of 2015, she was also a finalist for AROHO's Orlando Literary Prize in the genre of Creative Non-fiction. She has a BA in Ethnic Studies from UCSC and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Ángel Garcia was raised in several cities but grew up primarily in Long Beach, CA. A graduate of Long Beach City College and University of Redlands, he received his MFA from The University of California, Riverside. His poems have been included in The American Poetry Review, McSweeney's, Miramar, San Pedro River Review, Verdad Magazine, and Connotation Press among others. A CantoMundo fellow and resident of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Ángel currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and is completing his first collection of poetry.

Keayva Mitchell is a twenty-two year old poet currently living in a shady part of Long Beach, California. Among the many jobs she holds she is an executive assistant at an investment firm, an assistant manager at a theater, an associate editor for a female executives magazine, as well as a monthly guest blogger for The Poetry Lab. Catch her in between much-needed naps and performances if you can. She promises to be nice.

Equally a scholar and performer, Mike Sonksen, also known as Mike the Poet, is a 3rd-generation L.A. native acclaimed for poetry performances, published articles, and mentoring teen writers. Following his graduation from U.C.L.A. in 1997, he has published over 500 essays and poems. His KCET column L.A. Letters celebrates literary Los Angeles. In June 2014, he completed an Interdisciplinary Master of Arts in English and History from the California State University of Los Angeles. His next book, Poetics of Location is forthcoming from Writ Large Press.

Artists from the ArtExchange will exhibit their work: Allyshia Davis, Kenny McBride, Tida Whitney Lek, and Veronica Dimitrov.

This event is sponsored by JAM Productions and Uptown Business District