L.A. Book Launch: Saints of Little Faith by Megan Pinto

Join us for the exciting book launch of Little Saints of Faith (Four Way Books) at Beyond Baroque! Meet the author and grab a signed copy of Megan Pinto's debut poetry collection. The author will be joined by poets Bryan Byrdlong and James Fujinami Moore for a poetry reading in The Wanda Coleman Theater. Following the readings, enjoy a reception with light refreshments.

The energies animating Saints of Little Faith, Megan Pinto’s electrifying debut in poetry, are a forceful quiet, a loud stillness, the caesura between a lightning strike and the sound of thunder. Everywhere, the speaker sees the numinous power of language, the incipience of things to come, even a kind of catastrophic grace in desolation and destruction — as if within the terrain of her own obsession, she recognizes the familiar, ever-changing seasons. Fierce and intimate, this poet’s meditative transformations engage with South Asian experiences of addiction, domestic violence, and mental illness, refusing to ignore narratives treated as unspeakable and overlooked by the English canon. Mapping the collision of abuse, psychosis, and rage, Pinto sees beyond them, buoyed by an inscrutable but abiding faith in the holiness of life itself. Once, “desire was an arrow, but now desire / is the field.” Pinto presides over this expanse, deciding, “I have three choices: to drift through life / anesthetized, to soften. . .” In that unspoken “or,” the merciful lacuna of that ellipsis, reside the lyrical mystery and medicine that feed this astonishing collection.

Doors Open: 6:30 PM I Readings: 7:00 PM 

Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith, her debut collection, just out from Four Way Books. Her poems can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, Lit Hub and elsewhere. She has won the Anne Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Review and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, as well as scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference and Storyknife. Megan lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College.

Bryan Byrdlong is a Black poet from Chicago, Illinois. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Zell Writers Program. He has been published in Guernica Magazine, The Kenyon Review, and Poetry Magazine, among others. Bryan received a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at USC in Los Angeles.

James Fujinami Moore’s debut poetry collection is indecent hours (Four Way Books, 2022), winner of the 2023 GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry and the 2024 AAAS Outstanding Achievement Book Award in Poetry, and finalist for the Golden Poppy's Martin Cruz Smith Award & the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Asimov's Science Fiction, Barrow Street's 4x2, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, Jet Fuel Review, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude. He has received fellowships from Poets House, Bread Loaf, and the Frost Place, and received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016. He lives in Los Angeles.

Livestream: If you can’t join us in-person the event will be livestreamed on at the scheduled time of the event.

Tickets will be available at Beyond Baroque's bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. No one turned away for lack of funds.

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

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, fellow attendees, or performers.

Host or Publisher Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center