Adi x Kaya Reading

ADI Magazine and Kaya Press present an evening of new works from contributors to ADI Magazine’s Inagural volume, Omens. Readings by K-Ming Chang, Ruxandra Guidi, Cynthia Dewi Oka, Taz Ahmed, Mahtem Shiferraw, Jason Magabo Perez. MC’ed by D’Lo.

Enjoy a reception before and after the readings.

Doors open: 7:00 pm. Readings: 7:30 pm.

K-Ming Chang is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree. She is the author of the New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice novel BESTIARY (One World/Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2021, her chapbook BONE HOUSE was published by Bull City Press. Her most recent book is GODS OF WANT (One World/Random House, 2022). Her next books are a novel titled ORGAN MEATS (One World, 2023) and a novella titled CECILIA (Coffee House Press).

Ruxandra (aka Rux) Guidi has been telling stories for over two decades. Her reporting for public radio, podcasts, magazines, and various multimedia outlets has taken her throughout the United States, the Caribbean, South and Central America, as well as Mexico and the US-Mexico border region. She is the president of the board of Homelands Productions, a journalism nonprofit cooperative founded in 1989, and a contributing editor for the 50 year-old nonprofit magazine High Country News. She’s an assistant director of the Bilingual Journalism Program at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism, where she teaches audio storytelling, feature writing, and freelancing to undergraduate and graduate students.

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the editor-in-chief of Adi. Originally from Bali, Indonesia, she is the author of four books of poems, most recently A Tinderbox in Three Acts (BOA Editions, 2022) and Fire Is Not a Country (Northwestern University Press, 2021). An alumnus of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, she has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College, New Mexico State University, Blue Stoop, and Voices of Our Nations (VONA). For 15 years, Cynthia worked as an organizer, trainer, and fundraiser in social movements for justice that center the experiences of the global majority. She lives in Los Angeles.

Taz Ahmed is a political strategist, storyteller, and artist based in Los Angeles. She creates at the intersection of counternarratives and culture-shifting as a South Asian American Muslim 2nd-gen woman. She’s turned out over 500,000 Asian American voters, recorded her #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast at the White House and makes #MuslimVDay cards annually. Her essays are published in the anthologies Pretty Bitches, Whiter, Good Girls Marry Doctors, Love Inshallah, and numerous online publications. In Spring 2019 she was UCLA’s Activist-in-Residence at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy and in 2016 received an award from President Obama’s White House as a Champion of Change in Art and Storytelling.

Mahtem Shiferraw is a writer and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Poets.org, The 2River View, Luna Luna Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Numero Cinq, and more. Her short story “The River” received an Honorable Mention at Glimmer Train’s Open Fiction Contest. In 2016, she won the Sillerman Prize for African Poets and her full-length collection, Fuschia, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her poetry chapbook, Behind Walls & Glass, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her most recent collection, Your Body Is War, is out now from the University of Nebraska Press. She has served as editor for Atlas and Alice, The Bleeding Lion, The Hunger Mountain, and more. She is the founder of Anaphora Arts, a nonprofit organization working to advance the works of writers and artists of color. She is a Pushcart prize nominee, and her work has been anthologized widely. In 2018, she received the Imani Award for Artistic Excellence from Harvard University. As of 2020, she also serves on the Editorial Board of World Literature Today. She holds an MFA from Vermont College.

Jason Magabo Perez serves as San Diego Poet Laureate 2023-24. Perez is the author of Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016) and This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017). Perez's work has also appeared in Witness, The Feminist Wire, Entropy, Marías at Sampaguitas, Interim, and recently on NPR's Here and Now. Perez is an Associate Editor of Ethnic Studies Review, Community Arts Fellow at Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies, and a core organizer with The Digital Sala. Currently, Perez is an Associate Professor and Director of Ethnic Studies at California State University San Marcos.

This event is Free & In-Person at Beyond Baroque. Masks are encouraged while inside our center.

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.

If you can’t join us in-person the event will be livestreamed on Beyond Baroque’s YouTube channel at the scheduled time of the event.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles, United States