Ecology of the hood Book Reading
About this Event
Join Reggie Edmonds Vasquez and company as they share some poems in honor of their debut chapbook, Ecology of the Hood, out now through Foglifter Press.
ORDER YOUR COPY HERE:
WINNER OF THE 2025 Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize
Ecology of the Hood is a love letter to streets. It asks the question; What if the hood was not a collection of problems, but a complex ecosystem of living organisms, all mirroring the same survival against an inherently hostile world? The politics of environmentalism and Black Liberation collide with each other in cycles of extraction, survival, decay, and regeneration. This collection seeks to refute the idea that the rose growing from concrete is misplaced or forgotten. The gardens we grow belong here. They are proof of life in a world obsessed with our deaths.
About the Author:
Reggie Edmonds-Vásquez (they/them) is a poet, educator, and cultural curator from Richmond, CA. Their work explores Black, queer, and gender-diverse identities and has earned recognition from Nomadic Press, Afro Urban Society, and the Museum of the African Diaspora. A three-time Berkeley Grand Champion and national finalist, they direct programming at Rich Oak Events. Their debut chapbook Ecology of the Hood (Foglifter Press) was selected for the 2025 Start a Riot! Chapbook Prize.
About RichOak Events:
RichOak Events is a spoken word and literary arts organization based in the East Bay region of the SF Bay Area, primarily working in Oakland and Berkeley. We are dedicated to providing equitable platforms for self expression to underserved and intentionally silenced communities both through virtual media and in person interactive engagements. Our top priority at RichOak Events is to facilitate a space to empower people of all genders, sexualities, ethnicities, abilities and ages to tell their own stories in ways that will produce positive change on a local, national, and global level.
About the Readers:
Nia Pearl is an award-winning poet, writer, and environmental justice advocate working at the intersection of art, activism, and public engagement. She is an established host and event curator passionate about creating participatory spaces for creative expression and literary dialogue. Nia’s writing has been published in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, The Town: An Anthology of Oakland Poets, Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in the Time of Rebellion, When We Exhale: An Anthology of Black Women: Rooted in ancestral medicine, and terra:soul: echoes from the future ancestors. She is one of the recipients of the 2023 Nomadic Press/San Francisco Foundation Literary Awards.
Baruch Porras-Hernandez has featured and competed in Poetry Slams all over the country, and Canada. The Berkeley Slam changed his life. He has been doing this for so long, most of those Slams don’t even exist anymore. He has been the headliner three times at the legendary Berkeley Poetry Slam, was one of the first features at The Capturing Fire National Queer Slam in Washington D.C. back in 2010, he is one of the only three winners of the Radar Poetry Slam, and won The Moth Slam, in LA 2014. Other credits include The Northbay Slam, BawdySlam, Oakland Slam, UCSanta Cruz Poetry Slam, The Coast Slam, and is one of the winners of the LitSlam in San Francisco. He has been called a “Multi Hyphenated Artist!”, and “Daring, candid, inventive!” by the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s the author of the small poetry collections I Miss You, Delicate and Lovers of the Deep Fried Circle from Sibling Rivalry Press, and has been published in several journals and anthologies, like Split This Rock, The Racket, Foglifter, Assaracus, The Tusk, Bold Italic, QuietLighting, and Write Bloody. He has received fellowships and taken part of residencies from Banff Center for the Arts, Berkeley Rep, Carolyne Moore Writers House, and the Lambda Literary Foundation. He’s performed all over North America including shows with the Rumpus, BusBoys and Poets, SF SketchFest, RADAR Productions, Writers with Drinks, LitQuake, has won the MOTH in LA, and is a two time winner of Literary Death Match.
Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Spanglish speaking Pocho y left handed callejero de Aztlán who has been part of La Area Bahia’s spoken word scene for over twenty years. He is the curator and host of the long running Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl. He is the author of two books of poetry “Baby Axolotls & Old Pochos(Black Freighter Press 2021) and the chapbook “Fuchi Faces de los Estados Jodidos”(For The Pueblo 2023). This year he has the honor of being the Poetry Center’s Mazza Writer in Residence at San Francisco State. Along with his bookstore sister Tân Khanh Cao,Josiah tends the portal known as Medicina Para Pesadillas Bookstore y Galeria on 24th street in La Mission.
Kevin Madrigal Galindo (he/they) is a first generation hijo de su ch!#g@$a madre from South San Francisco by way of Zapopan, Jalisco. You can find Kevin's work in The Boiler, Bozalta, Foglifter, and KQED. When Kevin isn't writing, he teaches nutrition and cooking to elementary school students and seniors en La Misión. Kevin helps organize When The Smoke Comes, a free creative writing workshop in Oakland that seeks to not only imagine an end to oppression, but to better prepare us to bring it about. Feed the people! Feed the land!"
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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