Poetry Reading: Orange by Noel Quiñones

Please join us on Thursday, June 18th to celebrate the debut poetry collection . The author will be reading with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona, Rob Macaisa Colgate, I.S. Jones, and Paul Martinez Pompa.

Please note: this is a mask required event. We have free masks available for everyone at the door, several large air purifiers, and ceiling fans for circulation.

A bold and tender portrait of family, identity, and truth in the North Bronx.
Through narrative poems and innovative forms inspired by color theory and elementary school, Orange explores the ripple effects of queerness, lies, and finding yourself in a family. In this visceral new collection, however, the scope of “family” expands well beyond the nuclear unit; Noel Quiñones’s poems center relationships between friends, cousins, partners, and many other family members. Painting a vivid and fraught portrait of the North Bronx, Quiñones unflinchingly confronts the contradictions at the heart of love, divorce, gender, religion, and community, unpacking the complexities of coming out, divorced parents, and generational trauma. Orange ultimately argues that truth resembles color: something real, yet elusive, and impossible to prove.

Noel Quiñones is an Emmy award-winning writer of all genres. Noel is the author of the interactive poetry collection Orange (CavanKerry Press, May 2026) and has been published in Poetry, Boston Review, Poem-a-day, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT anthology, as well as the Michigan Quarterly Review, for which they won the 2025 Jesmyn Ward Fiction Prize. Noel’s short story "This Time and the Next" will be included in The Best Short Stories 2026: The O. Henry Prize Winners. Noel has also written for, narrated, and acted in several films, including the Emmy nominated documentary Takeover, recounting the Young Lords’ 1970 takeover of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx to fight for better healthcare. A graduate of the University of Mississippi's MFA program and founder of Project X, a Bronx-based spoken word poetry organization, Noel is currently a poet in residence at the Chicago Poetry Center and working on their first TV show as a JFMS Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab Fellow. Follow Noel at www.noelpquinones.com.

Dawn Angelicca Barcelona is a Filipina-American poet from New Jersey. Her debut chapbook, Roundtrip, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2025. Her work appears in BRINK, Tampa Review, Reed Magazine, Atlanta Review, and elsewhere. She likes to run, dance, and travel via public transportation.

Rob Macaisa Colgate (he/she/they) is the author of the poetry collection Hardly Creatures (Tin House, 2025), winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award and longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the verse drama My Love is Water (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2025). A 2026 Creative Capital, 2025 NEA, and 2024 Ruth Lilly fellow, he serves as the managing poetry editor at Foglifter and lives in Chicago.

I.S. Jones is the author of Bloodmercy and the chapbook Spells of My Name. Along with the poet Yazud Brito-Milian, she is the founder and co-organizer of Canto-Kójo, a monthly open mic and featured reading series based on the southside of Chicago at Call & Response Books. Currently, she is a Senior Editor for Poetry Northwest, where she runs her column, The Legacy Suite, a three-part interview documenting the journey of writers publishing their debut poetry collections. In 2025, The New York Times Review of Books named Bloodmercy one of the Best Poetry Books of 2025. While she has lived in many places across the U.S., she gratefully calls Chicago home.

Paul Martinez Pompa is the author of the poetry chapbook, Pepper Spray (Momotombo Press). His first full length book, My K*ll Adore Him, was selected for the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and published by University of Notre Dame Press. His most recent book, Domestic Corpse, was published by Match Factory Editions. His poetry has been widely anthologized and was commissioned for a Chicago Public Radio project called "In Verse," which aimed to explore the emotional weight of gun violence. He is a Canto Mundo fellow and currently edits for Packingtown Review.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is wheelchair accessible. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you need a reserved seat, ASL interpretation, or have other access needs, please email [email protected] (2 weeks notice is required for interpretation).

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Women & Children First