Palabras Literary Salon (November 2025 edition)

Come enjoy an afternoon with Palabras Literary Salon, a BIPOC-centered literary community event co-hosted with Latinx with Plants, in the open air greenhouse in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.

Our November edition features Paola Capó-García (San Diego Poet Laureate) and her poetry from prize-winning book CLAP FOR ME THAT’S NOT ME (2018) and other writing. Our event has a guest readers circle, a curated invited list of diverse BIPOC poets, writers, playwrights, and creators to read 3-minutes of writing to celebrate the theme of "defiance." All are welcome to attend - especially bring your allies and others curious to hear BIPOC voices.

As Capó-García describes the theme:

Defiance is what keeps us grounded, accountable, and interconnected. A poem is the stage for our brattiest defiances.

Our guest readers circle is TBA.

• This event is volunteer-run and grassroots-driven.
• Please kindly help us with your early RSVP here to attend and join in the facilitated discussion. Previous events have sold out so please join the waitlist if the RSVPs are full - people do cancel! We are asking for RSVPs for priority entry due to limited capacity in the back greenhouse patio.
• Everyone is welcome. Drop-ins are welcome.
• Your donations help us get a headcount and pay for chair rentals and reception for this outdoor event. If you would like to bring cash donation to our event or send other payment, we gladly appreciate your support. *If you're challenged with limited funds and want to attend, please RSVP and join us.
• Please arrive by 1:45pm as we would like to start at 2pm and finish by 3:30pm to have time for community conversation and reception.
• Please budget for time to get your street parking in the neighborhood.
• Please message us if you would like to reserve seating for disabilities or other needs. There is a small ramp to get to the patio. We can have someone be of assistance for mobility needs.
• Books are for sale after the event. Please support our authors.

We are glad to have you celebrate with us on Sunday, November 16 at 2pm at Latinx with Plants in Boyle Heights (2208 Cesar Chavez Blvd, Los Angeles 90033).

>>> If the "Donate at the Event" tix are sold out, please select the other tix and you can donate as little as $1 to get a tix. This mechanism was created to limit the number of no-shows and so we can get an accurate number for our chair rentals.

More about Palabras Literary Salon

With a mission to create intercultural community building, Jen Cheng founded Palabras Literary Salon , inspired by our elders of civil rights consciousness raising and Maya Angelou's salons in the Harlem Renaissance. As a facilitator, Jen Cheng, brings home-cooking and light snacks to the event as we build bridges by breaking bread together. We sit in a non-heirarchical circle, without a stage. This is not an open-mic. Talk-story and witnessing are ways we can build better understanding of our humanity. More about Palabras on Jen's website: www.jencvoice.com/palabras

More about our featured writer

Paola Capó-García is a poet and educator from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She currently designs professional development opportunities for educators as part of the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, where she also teaches and mentors early-career teachers. Before this she taught English Language Arts at High Tech High Media Arts, using poetry as a vehicle for project-based learning. Prior to her work at HTH, Capó-García taught at UC San Diego and UC Davis, where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English, respectively. She graduated from Syracuse University in 2009 with a BS in Magazine Journalism and English & Textual Studies.

Capó-García is the author of CLAP FOR ME THAT’S NOT ME (2018), selected by D.A. Powell as the winner of Rescue Press' 2017 Black Box Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Volta, The Texas Review, Puerto Rico en mi corazón, Latino Book Review, jubilat, Poetry Society of America, poets.org, and others. In 2020 she served as a mentor for Latinx in Publishing's inaugural Writers Mentorship Program, and in 2021 she was awarded Teachers & Writers Magazine’s Bechtel Prize for an article detailing her experience teaching creative writing virtually during the pandemic. As a journalist her work has appeared in BOMB, Variety, Remezcla, and ELLE, among others.

She currently resides in North Park with her partner and dogs and every day dreams of new ways to make poetry feel more accessible and necessary.

Community and Healing Through Plants

Latinx with Plants is a woman of color owned business in Boyle Heights whose focus is to celebrate and uplift people of color in the plant world. While the shop began with an Instagram account that was at first dedicated to sharing fun memes, plant inspo, and plant parent goals, our community grew into something we never could have imagined. Our physical shop has been bouncing around Cesar Chavez Avenue for a couple of years, and in June of 2022, we relocated to our largest location yet. We hope that through plant parenthood, people will be able to deepen their connection with nature and the Earth, and tune into the healing that caring for plants can offer us. @latinxwithplants

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Graphic: @JenCvoice

Group photo is from July 2024 edition of Palabras Literary Salon . event graphics by Jen Cheng. Andi's photo is from the Latinx with Plants website.

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Host or Publisher Jen Cheng