7pm Leg 3 - First Edition

7pm Leg3 - Block Community Hub

7pm Leg 3 - Bocanova

CELEBRATION OF QUEER POETICS
Celebration of Queer Poetics        -    Summer Lounge

A Celebration of Queer Poetics @ Beast Crawl 2024

A space that embraces love & radical tenderness--Celebration of Queer Poetics recognizes the
miraculous of the queer BIPOCX tongue. From the margins of hxstory we have continuously
broken open lung redefining poem & her purpose over & over again making your larynx in our
image. We are thousands/ upon thousands years old, we are the queer at the tip of your tongue
sculpting the language of each other's bodies. This summer the Pocho Chicanx Poetxs Lourdes Figueroa & soledad con carne team up to chew lung within the Beast. We seek to tremble your vagus nerve.

When the body alchemizes into word/when revolución alchemizes into poem revolting back
again to breath & we peer into the vastness of our animalito self we are a kaleidoscope.

The POETS

Hilary Cruz Mejia is a queer Guatemalan poet residing in the SF Bay Area. You can find their
latest published poem & as if revolution is made of puddles in sPARKLE & bLINK 115, an
anthology of Quiet Lightning/Better Ancestors.

Jessica Ke’mani (pronounced Keh-Mani) is a queer Oakland-born poet. Ke’mani self identifies as
a reunified adoptee, meaning they are back in connection with their birth family. Ke’mani is the
author of the new poetry chapbook, Power of Our Wombs, released by Nomadic Press
Publishing, edited by Tureeda Mikell- spring of 2023. It is a collection of reflections on early
childhood separation and traumas, mother wounds, and intimacy difficulties. 

Syd Staiti is the author of Seldom Approaches (The Elephants, 2023) and The Undying
Present (Krupskaya Books 2015). Staiti is a member of Light Field, a collective that presents an
annual film festival of recent and historical moving image art on celluloid.
Maria Guerrero is a queer, Chicanx femme who is proud of her Mexican raíces while being
born in San Francisco and raised in Bayview Hunters Point. She is an educator by day and a
poeta at 3am when the musas won't let her sleep.

Evelyn Donají is an artist and folk musician based in the San Francisco Mission District. She
leads the all femme son jarocho group, Corazón de Cedro, and forms part of the son jarocho
collective, Colectivo CalleSon. As a migrant, her participation in Mexican folk musical traditions
is one of healing empowerment, joyful resistance and reconnection to her Zapotec, Oaxacan
(Papaloapan, Sotavento) and southern Jaliscan roots. Evelyn has performed at Galeria de la
Raza’s Lunada, Accion Latina's Paseo Artistico, Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore and
Gallery, SOMArts, 924 Gilman, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, and the SF
International Flor Y Canto Literary Festival. 

Camellia Boutros is a Palestinian-Lebanese American composer and multi-instrumentalist based in San Francisco. Having performed as a trumpet player with a diverse array of Bay Area world music projects, such as Mission Delirium, Alaturca Connection, Inspector Gadje, and Banda Sin Nombre, Camellia approaches the music she writes with a custom modified fretless 12-string
electric guitar, enabling her to write and perform music using the quarter-tone Maqam system.
Her music and lyrics defy genre definition, forming an experimental blend of rock, folk, Arab,
jazz, and brass music, all of which can be found on her first solo album Refuge. 

The hosts-- these pocho chicanx poets:

soledad con carne is a casually queer, intergalactic Oakland, Ohlone-based chicanx punk poet,
working, poor multiple high school drop-out bookstore lackey, poet laureate of the San Fernando Valley, and blatant smoker sharing-trauma-with-their-mother.

Lourdes Figueroa is a chicanx oral poet & an award winning poetry filmmaker whose work is a dialogue of her lived experience when her family worked in el azadón—tilling of the soil under
the blistering sun. She is the author of the chapbooks yolotl, Ruidos =Learn Speak and Vuelta.
Forthcoming later this year in Mexico is her long verse poem I will kiss your mouth b/w the
overgrown Milpa. You can find their latest poetry film Las Marimacha Fragments made in
collaboration with Filmmaker Peggy Peralta within 3rd Thing's Press A Good Symptom: A Serial
Anthology of Time Based Disturbances. Lourdes celebrates your pocha marimachita tongue. A
native of limbo nation, she continues to believe in your lung & your throat. Lourdes celebrates
your pocha marimachita tongue & continues to believe in your lung & your throat.

7pm Leg 3 - Summer Lounge

Apocrypha Press - Theory Oakland


Daphne Gottlieb is the award-winning author of ten books including the collection of short stories, Pretty Much Dead. Daphne is the winner of the Acker Award for Excellence in the Avant-Garde, the Audre Lorde Award for Poetry, and is a five-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. 


Kevin Dublin is an educator, economic justice advocate, and the author of Eulogy (Raven & Wren Press, 2023) and How to Fall in Love in San Diego (Finishing Line Press, 2017). His work has appeared in numerous places and is the director of The Living Room SF. 


giorgia sage is a love poet, designer, and community weaver born, raised, and living in the 94110 zip code of san francisco, also known as yelamu by the ramaytush ohlone. their work explores scales of intimacy, queer utopian world-building, and ecologies of care. 


Andrew Paul Nelson is a poet living in North Beach San Francisco where he co-owns Golden Sardine Wine & Poetry Bar with his wife Caitlyn. His book of poems How to Draw A Guillotine from Apocrypha Press was released in June of 2024. 


Scott Bird is a poet, painter, musician and activist in San Francisco, California. He is the youngest member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade  of San Francisco and co-editor of their annual international poetry anthology. 

7:00pm Leg 3 - Theory Oakland

#we: Queer Perspectives - Chapter 510


From 2018-2020, #we was a bi-monthly talk and reading series focusing on writers from across the queer spectrum who had experienced marginalization both without and within the queer community. At Beast Crawl, #we celebrates this with four fantastic wordsmiths speaking their truth. These are our lives we’re talking about.


READER BIOS


EDWARD GUNAWAN (addword.com) is a Bay Area-based writer, translator & curator who authored Start a Riot! Prize-winning The Way Back (Foglifter Press, 2022) and Press Play (Sweet Lit, 2020).


JULIA SERRANO writes about gender, sexuality, science, and social justice, and has authored five books, including Whipping Girl, Excluded, Sexed Up, and her award-winning debut novel 99 Erics.


SHILPA KAMAT is a Poet, educator, and healing arts practitioner Shilpa Kamat’s writing ranges from ecopoetics to speculative/experimental. Her chapbook, Saraswati Takes Back the Alphabet, was a finalist for the Gloria Anzaldúa Poetry Prize.


RICHARD LORANGER is a queer writer and performer who has authored six books and ten chapbooks. They curated #we in 2018-20, and will read and host this event as well.

7pm Leg 3 - Chapter 510 and the Dept of Make/ Believe

Starting Points - The Punchdown


Karla Brundage’s most recent collection Blood Lies/Race Traitor was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. She facilitates cross-cultural exchanges between Oakland and West African poets and is the editor of three anthologies: Our Spirits Carry Our Voices, Sisters Across Oceans and Black Rootedness: 54 Poets from Africa to America.


Giovanna Lomanto is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and photographer who has published 2 poetry collections, 2 chapbooks, and a limited-edition art book. Her latest collection, driver’s seat echo, is available now. She currently serves as the co-publisher of the small press Game Over Books.


Ryan Nakano is an Okinawan/Japanese American poet, journalist and aspiring birder currently living in Huchiun, on the unceded lands of the Lisjan Ohlone (Oakland, CA.) His work has appeared in Riksha Magazine, Voicemail Poems and the Nichi Bei Weekly. His debut chapbook I Am Minor came out in February 2023 by Nomadic Press and will continue on through Black Lawrence Press.


Limited Open Mic to Follow!

5:30pm Leg 2 - The Punchdown Wine Bar

SF Writer’s Workshop - Binny’s


Since 1946, The San Francisco Writers Workshop has met on Tuesday nights, nurturing a wide range of local authors. Writers bring up to six double-spaced pages to read aloud and receive immediate feedback. This free, drop-in critique group currently meets at the Noisebridge makerspace in the Mission.
https://sanfranciscowritersworkshop.wordpress.com/


Oakland-based David Ira Cleary has published in Asimov's, Interzone, Persistent Visions, and elsewhere. His work is included in The Year's Top Robot and AI Stories, coming out in October 2024.


Tahirah Nailah Dean writes about the difficulties of finding love and marriage from the perspective of a Muslim woman. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera and Insider. 


Connor O’Mara is a writer from northern Colorado. He often writes about tragedy set in the Mountain-West, finding inspiration from the people and towns he loved.


Joel Streicker’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translations of Spanish-language literature have appeared hither and yon. He’s literally a prize-winning author—just ask him! Or check out his website: https://joelstreicker.com.


Madison Wilson is a fiction writer from the Bay Area. She is interested in telling stories about forgotten women and their inner lives. 


Cynthia Gómez writes horror and other types of speculative fiction, set primarily in Oakland. The Nightmare Box and Other Stories, her first collection, was released in July 2024.

5:30pm Leg 2 - Binny’s

5:30pm Leg 2 - Chapter 510 and the Dept of Make/ Believe

Red Light Lit - Theory Oakland

Red Light Lit is a small press and performance series that explores the depths of love, relationships, and sexuality through poetry, prose, and music. 


LINE-UP: 

Peter Bullen

Christine No

Rohan DaCosta 

Kim Pierce

Susan Ruykeyser 

5:30pm Leg 2 - Theory Oakland