Double Book Launch: Michelle Bitting, Lynne Thompson, & James Meetze

Beyond Baroque presents a double book launch celebrating Ruined Beauty (Walton Well Publishing) by Michelle Bitting and The Long Now (White Stag Publishing) by James Meetze. Both authors will read from their sixth poetry collections, exploring themes of grief, family, and the emotional depth of the lyric. They will be joined by former Los Angeles Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson in The Wanda Coleman Theater.

Doors Open: 7:00 PM Readings: 7:30 PM

About the authors

Michelle Bitting was named a 2026 City of L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs Individual Master Artist Project Fellow. She has won Quarter After Eight’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, and is the author of seven poetry collections, including Nightmares & Miracles, winner of the Wilder Prize. Recently, her Poem-Play was named runner up in The Pomegranate London Poem-Play Contest and was performed at The Cockpit Theater in London by Théâtre Volière. Her poem “Twyla” was commissioned by the City of L.A. Department of Cultural Affairs for the Paris/L.A. Olympiad cultural exchange. She won the 2025 Banyan Review Poetry Prize, and her latest collection Ruined Beauty was published by Walton Well Press in 2026. Poetry appears on the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, 2026. Bitting is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature at Loyola Marymount University.

Lynne Thompson is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently, Blue on a Blue Palette (BOA Editions, 2024). She served as Los Angeles Poet Laureate in 2021 and 2022 and represented the City at the Marathon Poetique at the Olympic games in Paris in 2024. Thompson serves on the Boards of Scripps College, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Poetry Foundation, and is the current President of Cave Canem. Her poems have recently been published or is forthcoming in Catamaran, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review, The Common, and the forthcoming anthology 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer.

James Meetze [pronounced Metz] is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, The Long Now (White Stag, 2026). Previous books include Dayglo (2011), winner of the Sawtooth Poetry Prize, and Phantom Hour (2016), both from Ahsahta Press. He is editor, with Simon Pettet, of Other Flowers: Uncollected Poems by James Schuyler (FSG, 2010). His poetry has been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Finnish, Serbian, and Croatian. He is Professor of Writing and Chair of Honors at the University of Arizona Global Campus and teaches in the Depth Psychology & Creativity Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. For much of the past decade, he lived on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and just recently returned to California, settling in Santa Barbara County. 

Doors Open: 7:00 PM I Readings: 7:30 PM

About Beyond Baroque

Beyond Baroque is one of the United States' leading independent Literary | Arts Centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding the public's knowledge of poetry, literature and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine, Beyond Baroque is based out of the original City Hall building in Venice, California. The Center offers a diverse variety of literary and arts programming including readings and workshops. The building also houses a bookstore with a large collection of new poetry books for sale.

Livestream: If you can’t join us in person the event will be livestreamed on at the scheduled time of the event. If you are tuning in this way, no ticket purchase is necessary.

If you are attending in person, ticket purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the Beyond Baroque bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. Please arrive early.

Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, staff, fellow attendees, or performers.