L.A. Book Launch: Rogue Astronaut by Mitchell Jacobs

Join us for the book launch of Rogue Astronaut by Mitchell Jacobs. The author will be joined by Darren Donate, Maxwell Suzuki, and Jorrell Watkins for a poetry reading in The Wanda Coleman Theater. Reception & book signings to follow.

Finalist for the 2026 Miller Williams Poetry Prize, at the core of Rogue Astronaut, Mitchell Jacobs’s debut poetry collection, is a mystery: Was the poet’s father abducted by aliens as a teenager? From this uncanny family lore spins a gravitational field of theory, grief, and imagination, spurring speculations about the extraterrestrial as well as the terrestrial question of familial bonds: What are the limits of understanding between two alien anatomies, between two unlike minds? Are we, after all, finally alone?

In poems that continually veer from play to reverence, from body horror to bodily delight, encounters with bed bugs and cuttlefish appear side by side with retro gaming and phantom light. A brother living with delusions turns toward the sky. The poet also peers skyward in search of connection—across family lines, across the body’s borders, across galaxies. Outer space becomes a metaphorical terrain where queer desire and spiritual longing collide. Just as Agent Mulder’s iconic X-Files poster declares “I WANT TO BELIEVE,” so do these poems ache to trust in something more—extraterrestrial life, divine presence, intimacy.

Jacobs’s electrifying collection offers readers a singular voice attuned to the strangeness of living now—where science fiction and memory, tenderness and dissociation, belief and doubt pulse in tangled orbit. With wit, vision, and formal inventiveness, Rogue Astronaut charts a course through the mysterious and the intimate, inviting us to imagine new ways of connecting across distance, time, and the alien terrain of self.

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

Mitchell Jacobs is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California, where he served as managing editor of Ricochet Editions. His poems have won the Iowa Review Prize and the Prufer Prize from Pleiades. His debut book of poems, Rogue Astronaut (University of Arkansas Press, 2026), was selected by Patricia Smith as a finalist in the Miller Williams Poetry Series.

Darren Donate is a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. His poetry is forthcoming in The Penn Review and has been recently published in Hunger Mountain Review, issue #33. He is currently working on a small chapbook of poems.

Maxwell Suzuki is a queer writer who lives in Los Angeles. He is on the staff of The Rumpus and Split Lip Press. Maxwell is the author of the fiction chapbook, Voyager 2, This is Voyager 1, Over (Gold Line Press, 2024), and the poetry chapbook, Bust of an Athlete (Iron Horse Literary Review, 2024). His work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Craft Literary, Lunch Ticket, The Normal School, and South Dakota Review.

Jorrell Watkins is from Richmond, VA. His disability inclusive play Meet us at the Horizon was produced by Combined Efforts Theater Co. for its 2019 world premiere. His chapbook If Only the Sharks Would Bite won the inaugural Desert Pavilion Chapbook Series in Poetry (Black Rock Press, 2020). He is also the coauthor of Studies in Brotherly Love (Prompt Press, 2021), a poetry chapbook based on Malcolm Corley’s paintings, with Claretta Holsey, DJ Savarese, and Lateef McLeod. His debut full-length collection, Play|House was published by Northwestern University Press in 2024.

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.

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Host or Publisher Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center