Sober Writers: An NA Reading at The New Bar

Sober Writers

An NA Reading at The New Bar

Join the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College for a sober reading at the New Bar, featuring mocktails and other NA beverages to enjoy!

We’re delighted to welcome writers Melissa Faliveno (TOMBOYLAND), Marcelo Hernandez Castillo (CHILDREN OF THE LAND) & Hannah Sward (STRIP) for this sober micro-reading and AWP off-site event. Enjoy unlimited mocktails, mingle with fellow writers, and try NA brands like Ghia, Hop Wtr and more. Whether you’re a longtime member of seltzer club or just taking a break from booze for the night don’t miss this fun event! We’ll also have snacks on hand and books for sale. All writers welcome!

Friday, March 28, 2025

8:00pm to 10:00pm (doors open at 8:00pm; micro-reading at 8:30pm)

The New Bar

8363 W 3rd. St., Los Angeles, CA 90048

Tickets are $20 and include unlimited mocktails, natural NA wine, Hop Wtr and snacks. Additional menu items available for purchase. A portion of proceeds will go to LA Wildfire Relief via MALAN (Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network).

Featured Readers:

Melissa Faliveno is the author of the essay collection Tomboyland, named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Oprah Magazine, and Electric Literature, and recipient of a 2021 Literary Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Esquire, Paris Review, Kenyon Review, Brevity, Bitch, Literary Hub, and Brooklyn Rail, among others, and in the anthology Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown's Cult Classic (Harper Perennial, 2022). Her debut novel, Hemlock, is forthcoming in 2026 from Little, Brown. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the author of Children of the Land: a Memoir (Harper Collins); Cenzontle (BOA Editions), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. prize; Dulce (Northwestern University Press), winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize; and, most recently, he is the co-editor of the anthology Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial). He is the 2025 guest editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review and has also curated the Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day Series. His work has been long listed for the California Book Award, the Foreword Indies Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award, among other recognitions.

He was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan and co-founded the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the U.S., and for which he was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award.

He served as distinguished fellow for the Marshall Project’s Art For Justice initiative from the University of Arizona which advocates for Pr*son reform and is an inaugural recipient of the Writing Freedom Fellowship from Haymarket Books and the Mellon Foundation. He currently serves as faculty in the MFA program at St. Mary’s College of California and at Ashland University’s Low-Res MFA program.

Hannah Sward, daughter of the late poet Robert Sward, is the IPPY gold winning author of Strip: A Memoir.

For the past 25 years, Sward’s work has been widely published in literary journals in the US, Canada. and the UK. Her most recent work can be read in the LA Times, HuffPost, NY Times (Tiny Love Stories) and The Rumpus (Voices on Addiction).

Sward is on the board at Right to Write Press, a nonprofit that supports emerging incarcerated writers. She lives in Los Angeles where she is working on her next book.

Event Venue

The New Bar WeHo, 8363 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles, United States