On Bending Reality to Explain It: Speculative Fiction Book Launch & Panel

Join us at Village Well Books & Coffee for a book launch and panel discussion on speculative fiction!

Fantasy, horror, sci-fi, and more coallesce in the broad world of speculative fiction, which many of the greatest authors in the world use to explore reality. In this panel, Francesca Lia Block will lead a conversation with some of the best and brightest in celebration of Malia Márquez's newest novel, City of Smoke and Sea.

About the participants:

Malia Márquez was born in New Mexico and grew up in New England. She holds a BFA in 3D Fine Arts and an MFA in Creative Writing and is the author of This Fierce Blood (2021) and City of Smoke and Sea (2025). She lives in Los Angeles with her family, where she teaches creative writing.

Barbara Fant is the author of three poetry collections, Paint, Inside Out (2010), Mouths of Garden (2022), and Joy in the Belly of a Riot (forthcoming Fall 2025). Her work has been featured in Electric Literature, McNeese Review, Button Poetry, and Def Poetry Jam, amongst others. She is a Women of the World Poetry Slam Finalist and a Healing Centered Engagement specialist.

Pete Hsu is a Taiwanese American writer based in Pasadena, California. He is the author of the short story collection If I Were the Ocean, I'd Carry You Home. He teaches creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers Program.

Tim Cummings is the author of Alice the Cat (Fitzroy Books) and the forthcoming The Lightning People Play (summer '25, Black Rose Writing). Tim is an octopus and spider enthusiast. He goes wild for anything with eight legs. He possesses enviable collections of stickers, labradorite, night-sky projector lights, and vintage vinyl. timcummings.ink for credits and info.

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel is HOUSE OF HEARTS now out in paper back. https://www.francescaliablock.com/

About City of Smoke and Sea:

Queenie Rivers was raised by her grandparents in coastal Los Angeles. As she approaches thirty, her erratic lifestyle is forced back on course by a car accident and her grandmother’s intervention. But her recovery is interrupted by a break-in and Gran’s death. Gran’s last act was to set Queenie up with a job at an upscale seaside bistro with a shady reputation—the owner of which, it turns out, was once a close friend. As Queenie digs into Gran’s past for answers about the break-in, the M**der, and the unnerving circumstances surrounding the restaurant and her new boss, she discovers that her grandmother, a Romani Holocaust survivor, kept many secrets, some of them otherworldly—secrets that become hers to unravel when she becomes a suspect in Gran’s M**der case.

Host or Publisher Village Well Books & Coffee