Violets & Pansies: A Springtime Salon

We're excited to feature a special lineup of queer writers in honor of Andrea Gibson, curated by lead bookseller Ienna. We'll also feature books that inspired each writer's works, available for purchase during the event.

It's also Ienna's birthday! Here's to kicking off their 33rd year with hosting more poetry & prose events at Lofty Pigeon!

Bria Benjamin is a multidisciplinary artist, organizer and cultural worker. Through her work, she mines the tensions of race, gender, class, and forming identities and building relationships underneath and against the boot of capitalism. Her story "Ghost Hunter" was a finalist in Fugue's 2023 Fiction Contest, semi-finalist for the 2023 Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize and long-listed for Oxford American's Fall 2025 Debut Fiction Contest. She’s written with support of the Kenyon Review Online Writers' Workshop, Kenyon Review Residential Workshop, and the McCormack Writers’ Workshop. While a Texan at heart, she currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Ienna Fernandez writes every morning, then sells books on the clock and organizes for immigrant justice off the clock. Their poems are about destroying all borders imposed by imperialism and growing something beautiful in their place. They love flowers, especially sampaguitas and California poppies.

Jo G (@jo.munculus) moved to New York from Texas in 2019. They are a trans Filipino-American whose first language was prayer. They are still getting over their first fear (of confession) and working on their first collection of horror stories.

Nicole Pereira writes fiction about migration, mothers, memory, and magic. She also writes newsletters for Lincoln Center and leads programming at Writers Club. She’s working on a collection of stories set in Sri Lanka, New York, and the ghostly in-between you end up in when you leave the place you were born. In her collection, a woman on a date falls in love with the olives at a Bushwick bar; a newly-arrived ambitious immigrant finds himself trapped working at a Sri Lankan restaurant in Manhattan; and a father and a daughter try to coexist in a Colombo living room.

Bev is a sometimes artist and always organizer with Anakbayan Queens who mostly makes art about people and the body.

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