Chicago Book Launch: A Celebration of Orange

Featuring poets who supported Noel throughout their poetry journey. Orange wouldn't exist without them. Readers: Mayda Del Valle, Tara Betts, Julian Randall, and Helene Achanzar.

Hosted by Luis Tubens, a.k.a “Logan Lu”

Please note that the event is taking place at The Loft, the building with the green door right next to the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance Gallery and main office. This building's address is 3006 N Elbridge.

About the Book, Author, and Featured Readers

A bold and tender portrait of family, identity, and truth in the North Bronx.

Through narrative poems and innovative forms inspired by color theory and elementary school, Orange explores the ripple effects of queerness, lies, and finding yourself in a family. In this visceral new collection, however, the scope of "family" expands well beyond the nuclear unit; Noel Quiñones's poems center relationships between friends, cousins, partners, and many other family members. Painting a vivid and fraught portrait of the North Bronx, Quiñones unflinchingly confronts the contradictions at the heart of love, divorce, gender, religion, and community, unpacking the complexities of coming out, divorced parents, and generational trauma. Orange ultimately argues that truth resembles color: something real, yet elusive, and impossible to prove. here or get a copy at the event.

Noel Quiñones is an Emmy award-winning writer of all genres. Noel is the author of the interactive poetry collection Orange (CavanKerry Press, May 2026) and has been published in Poetry, Boston Review, Poem-a-day, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT anthology, as well as the Michigan Quarterly Review, for which they won the 2025 Jesmyn Ward Fiction Prize. Noel’s short story "This Time and the Next" will be included in The Best Short Stories 2026: The O. Henry Prize Winners. Noel has also written for, narrated, and acted in several films, including the Emmy nominated documentary Takeover, recounting the Young Lords’ 1970 takeover of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx to fight for better healthcare. A graduate of the University of Mississippi's MFA program and founder of Project X, a Bronx-based spoken word poetry organization, Noel is currently a Justice for My Sister BIPOC Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab Fellow working on their first TV show, The Telescope. Follow Noel at www.noelpquinones.com.

Tara Betts lives in Chicago and is the author of the manuscript “Refuse to Disappear,” as well as Break the Habit (Trio House Press, 2016) and Arc & Hue (Willow Books, 2009). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies and compilations such as Red Line: Chicago Horror Stories and Octavia's Brood.

Mayda del Valle was born and raised on the Southside of Chicago. She is the author of The University of Hip Hop and a winner of the 2016 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize from Northwestern University Press. Her full-length collection, A South Side Girl’s Guide to Love and Sex, was published on Tia Chucha press. She began her artistic career at the Nuyorican Poets Café, where she was the 2001 Grand Slam Champion, and went on to become the National Poetry Slam Champion in the same year. She appeared on six episodes of the HBO series Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and was a contributing writer and original cast member of the Tony Award winning Def Poetry Jam on Broadway. She has performed at venues across the world, including the White House in May of 2009, by invitation of President Obama and the First Lady. In 2024 Mayda was the recipient of the Letras Boricuas Fellowship, sponsored by Flamboyan Arts Fund and the Mellon Foundation. Most recently she was selected to be the second Poet Laureate of the City of Chicago and will begin her tenure in January of 2026.

Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. A recipient of multiple fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA from University of Mississippi. His writing appears in New York Times Magazine, POETRY, PEOPLE and The Atlantic. Julian is the author of Refuse (Pitt, 2018), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, The Pilar Ramirez Duet (Holt Books for Young Readers), and the forthcoming Shook (August 4, 2026). He can be found at @JulianThePoet. Author of Refuse (University of Pittsburgh, 2018), Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa (Holt Books for Young Readers, 2022), Pilar Ramirez and the Curse of San Zenon (HBYR, 2023), The Dead Don't Need Reminding (Bold Type Books, 2024), The Chainbreakers (HBYR, 2024) Shook (HBYR, 8/9/2026) https://juliandavidrandall.com/

Helene Achanzar is a poet and editor whose writing has been published in The Georgia Review, Sixth Finch, jubilat, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2022 New England Review Award for Emerging Writers, her work has been supported by the Mastheads, T.S. Eilot Foundation, and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. She is a senior editor for Poetry Northwest, a regional chair for Kundiman, and the director of programs at the Chicago Poetry Center.

Luis Tubens, a.k.a “Logan Lu”, is a Chicago born, Puerto Rican spoken word artist and educator. In 2014 and 2018 he represented Chicago at the U.S. National Poetry Slam. He toured the U.S., Mexico, and Puerto Rico, and was the feature poet at Spoken Word Istanbul in Istanbul, Turkey in 2022 and the Slam Colombia Festival Open Mic in 2024 and Poetry Slam Puerto Rico in 2026. As an educator with the Chicago Poetry Center, he held workshops for students in the Chicago Public Schools and residents in jails. He was awarded the “First Voice Award” from the Chicago Center for Urban Life and Culture. Currently, Luis is the resident poet for ESSO Funk (Best New Band and Best International Music Act, Chicago Reader), he is one the organizers of Slam Diáspora, and he is touring his latest production “Raíces to Roots”.

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