Hear readings by award-winning Los Angeles-based poets William Archila, Victoria Chang, and Lynne Thompson, and a performance by celebrated musician Joanna Wallfisch. Reception to follow.
William Archila earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon. His first collection of poetry, The Art of Exile (Bilingual Review Press, 2009) won an International Latino Book Award in 2010. His Second book, The Gravedigger's Archaeology (Red Hen Press), won the 2013 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. He has been published in American Poetry Review, AGNl, The Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner and the anthologies Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States.
Victoria Chang's fourth book of poems, Barbie Chang, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2017. The Boss (McSweeney's) won a PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. Other books are Salvinia Molesta and Circle. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellowship in 2017. In 2018, she was awarded the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award for her manuscript-in-progress, OBIT. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches within Antioch's MFA Program. You can find her at www.victoriachangpoet.com.
Lynne Thompson's forthcoming collection Fretwork was just selected by Jane Hirshfield for the Marsh Hawk Press Prize. Her other books of poems include Start with a Small Guitar (What Books Press, 2013) and Beg No Pardon (Perugia Press, 2007). She received an Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles in 2015.
Joanna Wallfisch, hailed by pianist Fred Hersch as "a real discovery—a first-rate musician in every way," is a London born singer-songwriter. She has emerged as an important voice, combining "the intimate purview of a singer-songwriter with the technical liberties of a jazz improviser" (The Boston Globe). With a classical and jazz background her music combines post-folk and art-song with a poetic lyricism which The New York Times described as "sensitive and deep." She is a master in the art of live vocal looping and creates beguiling vocal soundscapes to accompany her songs. The Telegraph called her virtuosic performance "sublime and unique."
Co-presented by the Poetry Society of America, Red Hen Press, and City of Santa Monica Beach=Culture series.
Free and open to the public.
Annenberg Community Beach House
415 Pacific Coast Highway
Santa Monica, CA 90402
