Unruly Bodies: A Community Reading

This page is for tickets for the live, in-person event in LA.

“All of us live in unruly bodies that we’re all trying to take care of as best we can." —Roxane Gay

Readers will share a story about their relationship with a body that refuses to act “as it should.” In a world that controls and punishes bodies that are queer, trans, disabled, mad, sick, fat, and/or racialized, how can we begin to celebrate our unruly bodies?

Feat. readings from:

• Amanda Choo Quan
• Arianne Ayu Alizio
• Ashna Ali
• Carolyn Collado
• Fariha Roisin
• Kai Cheng Thom
• Lupita Limón Corrales
• Margeaux Feldman
• Raechel Anne Jolie
• Tamar Bresge

Full bios below!

Location: PIETER Performance Space (2701 N Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90031)

Date & Time: Friday March 28, 2025 – 8-10 PM PT (Doors at 7:30pm)

Accessibility Information:

The space is located on the 2nd floor, up one flight of stairs or via a password-protected elevator. The dance studio and restrooms are gender neutral and free of steps and other mobility barriers. Please note that there are no automated doors in the building. We also ask that you help us keep the space scent-free.

We are currently looking for ASL interprets to volunteer for the event. As two MFA students, we are unable to pay for ASL ourselves. If ticket sales exceed the amount we're paying for the space, we'd love to pay interpreters. Please email [email protected] if you're able to volunteer.

COVID Safety: We recognize that one person's access needs can be another person's access barrier and are imperfectly trying to figure out how to keep our disabled community as safe as possible. We ask that everyone mask up for the event (wearing a KN95 or higher, as cloth and surgical masks are ineffective at stopping transmission). If masking creates an access barrier for you, please reach out to [email protected] and we'll discuss other options. We will also have air purifiers going in the space. Please stay home if you’re feeling the slightest bit unwell.

Parking info can be found here.

Poster design by Stepfanie Aguilar

Raised in Italy and based in Brooklyn, Ashna Ali is a queer and disabled child of the Bangladeshi diaspora. They are the author of The Relativity of Living Well (Bone Bouquet, 2024) and the Substack PAIN BABY. They have work featured in The Margins, Brooklyn Poets, Sun Dog Lit, Zoeglossia, and beyond. They hold a PhD. in Comparative Literature from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and are earning their MFA in poetry and nonfiction at Randolph College. They serve as the poetry editor at Epiphany Magazine and on the editorial team at Dead End Zine. They live in Kensington with their hairless feline familiar, Kubo Avatar.

Arianne Ayu Alizio is a poet, filmmaker, and capricorn many times over. They are pursuing a dual MFA in Film Directing and Creative Writing at CalArts, and hold a BFA in Film & TV Production from NYU Tisch. Arianne received The Poetry Project’s 2022 Brannan Prize and was a top 10 finalist for Palette Poetry’s 2023 Rising Poets Prize. They’ve screened and performed at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, Institute of American Indian Arts, BLUM, Philosophical Research Society, Garel Fine Art Gallery, plus many rooftops, farms, bookstores, and bars. You may also know them as the founder of Film Spells, a workshop and screening series for psychic storytellers.

Tamar Bresge is an artist, writer, and educator working in experimental poetry, literary art, and the intersection of text-image-language-sound. Much of her work is influenced by her being low-vision and low- hearing, but she is also interested in high fantasy video games, the weave of catharsis through Sophoklean theater, and maintaining an active, spectral dream life. She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from Tufts University in 2022, where she followingly taught in the Experimental College. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Creative Writing program at the California Institute of the Arts, working on an epic poem about the body, fantasy, and play. She is the Head Poetry Editor of Strip Mall Magazine.

Carolyn Collado (they/them) is a podcaster, writer, coach, decolonial dreamer, and founding steward of Recovery for the Revolution. They are a queer, non-binary, Afro-Indigenous neurodivergent, disabled human in long-term recovery and believe recovery from a decolonized, liberatory lens can point the collective towards liberation. Carolyn's writings and podcast Recovery for the Revolution: The Podcast explore individual and collective healing from colonization, racial capitalism, and other forms of systemic oppression and aim to support others in their journey of healing from and dismantling these systems.

Lupita Limón Corrales is a poet, interpreter, and organizer. Born in Sinaloa, Mexico and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, she comes from a long line of arboleros, theologians, homemakers, peasant farmers, criminals, factory workers, and cashiers who party on the weekend. Her first full-length poetry book ESTA BOCA ES MIA was published by nueoi press in Spring 2024.

Margeaux Feldman is a multidisciplinary artist who uses creative writing, visual art, and social technologies to promote mental health and disability justice. Their artistic practice focuses on experiences of living with complex trauma and chronic illness, and the struggles they've faced forming the kinds of intimacy that they've always desired. Margeaux is completing their MFA in Creative Writing at California Institute of the Arts and also holds a PhD in English Literature and Sexual Diversity Studies from the University of Toronto. They are the author of the book manuscript, Touch Me, I'm Sick: A Memoir in Essays, forthcoming with Beacon Press (September 9, 2025). Margeaux’s essays and book reviews have been published in GUTS Magazine, The Ex-Puritan, and Rabble, amongst others. They run the popular instagram meme account @softcore_trauma as well as the .

Raechel Anne Jolie is a writer and educator based in Cleveland, Ohio on Erie and Mississauga land. Her writing has appeared in The Baffler, Bitch, Teen Vogue, In These Times, among other publications. Jolie is also the editor and co-creator of The Pr*son Arcana tarot zine, made in collaboration with incarcerated artists. Her memoir Rust Belt Femme (Belt, 2020) received recognition in NPR's Favorite Books of 2020, was a finalist in the Heartland Bookseller's Award, and was the winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction. She is also: a cat mom, an anarchist, and a forest witch. Follow her at @rebelgrrlraechel. Her newsletter, radical love letters, can be found here: https://raechelannejolie.substack.com/

Amanda Choo Quan is a Trinidadian and Jamaican writer living in Los Angeles. She’s currently a nonfiction candidate in USC’s PhD in Creative Writing. Formerly, she was a Truman Capote scholar at CalArts. She’s been published in Harper’s Bazaar, Teen Vogue, NYLON, LitHub, Huffington Post, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Fariha Róisín is a writer, culture worker, and educator.Born in Ontario, Canada, and raised in Sydney, Australia, they are based in Los Angeles, California. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, they are interested in the margins, liminality, otherness, and the mercurial nature of being. Their work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam, degrowth and queer identities and has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Vice, Village Voice, and others. Róisín has published a book of poetry entitled How To Cure A Ghost (Abrams), a journal called Being In Your Body (Abrams), and a novel named Like A Bird (Unnamed Press). Their first work of non-fiction Who Is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who it Leaves Behind (HarperWave) was released in 2022, and their second book of poetry Survival Takes A Wild Imagination came out Fall of 2023. They are a member of Writers Against The War on Gaza.

Kai Cheng Thom is an award-winning writer, performer, and creative arts facilitator based in tkaronto/Toronto whose work delves deeply into the themes of revolutionary love, transformative justice, and healing from collective trauma. Kai Cheng’s work has received multiple literary awards, including the Stonewall Honor Book Award, the Publishing Triangle Award, and the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Writers.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Pieter Performance Space, 2701 North Broadway, Los Angeles, United States