L.A. Book Launch: S is For by William Archila

Celebrate the launch of S is For, the newest poetry collection by poet, William Archila.

S is For is an investigation of the Central American migrant crisis haunted by the past of the civil war in El Salvador, the meanings of family spirits, and trees disappearing to urban sprawl—always wielding the voice of the immigrant, the refugee, and the ever-present exile as a weapon against invisibility and displacement.

The author is joined by other notable writers of the SoCal region, including Doug Manuel, Arthur Kayzakian, and Cynthia Guardado.

Praise for S is For

"S is for: every letter never uttered, but evoked.

Searing—not merely how I’d describe William Archila’s gaze at the desperation and depredation attendant in power’s abuse, the violence dogging the migrant, the slayings of those who stay. No, also, searing in the sense of that which burns a mark into a surface, how the poet’s prosody scorches language into the line, into the throat, into the air. Heat, here, that makes light, signal visible even from exile, even to a distracted North who may not/may only notice that “Yesterday a cutthroat carved a copper/who carved a cutthroat, 224 wounds/for the smallest of spoils.” Archila tallies these wounds and those that set fire to the heart. Here, S is for searing, for song, for sorrow. S is for sunlit, for shot, for shattered. S is for sublime. Stunning. Staggering."

—Douglas Kearney

Doors Open: 6:30 PM I Readings: 7:00 PM

William Archila is the winner of the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for his collection S is For. His first collection The Art of Exile was awarded the International Latino Book Award, an Emerging Writer Fellowship Award from the Writer’s Center and was selected for The Fifth Annual Debut Poets Round Up” in Poets & Writers. The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, Archila’s second book, received the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize.

He has been awarded the Alan Collins Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Fighting Fund Fellow Award from the University of Oregon. He was also awarded the 2023 Jack Hazard fellowship.His work has been published in Poetry Magazine, The American Poetry Review, AGNl, Copper Nickle, Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, TriQuarterly and the anthologies Latino Poetry: The Library of American Anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. He has work forthcoming in Ploughshares. He is a PEN Center USA West Emerging Voices fellow and has received an MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon.

He is an associate editor at Tía Chucha Press. He lives in Los Angeles, on Tongva land.

Cynthia Guardado (she/her/hers) is a Los-Angeles born queer Salvadoran poet and professor. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Cenizas, (University of Arizona Press 2022) and ENDEAVOR, (World Stage Press 2017).

Arthur Kayzakian is the finalist for the 2023 Kate Tufts Award, and the winner of the 2021 inaugural Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series for his collection, , which was also selected as a finalist for the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. He is the recipient of the 2023 creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is also the winner of the Open Chapbook Competition for his chapbook, . He has been a finalist for the Locked Horn Press Chapbook Prize, Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize, the C.D. Wright Prize, the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and the Black River Chapbook Competition. He is a contributing editor at Poetry International and a recipient of the Minas Savvas Fellowship. He serves as the Poetry Chair for the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA). His work has appeared in several publications, including The Adroit Journal, Portland Review, Chicago Review, Cincinnati Review, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Witness Magazine.

Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana and now resides in Whittier, California. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, an MFA in poetry from Butler University, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Testify (2017) and Trouble Funk (2023). His poems and essays can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and websites, most recently Zyzzyva, Pleiades, and the New Orleans Review. He has traveled to Egypt and Eritrea with The University of Iowa's International Writing Program to teach poetry. A recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, he is an assistant professor of English at Whittier College and teaches at Spalding University’s low-res MFA program.

Livestream: If you can’t join us in-person the event will be livestreamed on at the scheduled time of the event.

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.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

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