Celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Red Hen Press at This Year’s Annual Benefit
Can you believe that Red Hen Press is thirty years old!
From the dawn of inception, Red Hen had dreamt of becoming a home for publishing diverse literature. Fast forward thirty years and we have climbed the ropes within the literary community as a prominent press on the west coast. However, that’s not the only reason I’ve stopped by here.
Every year we host a benefit champagne luncheon with our authors and supporters toasting an afternoon away with readings, a live auction, and the opportunity to chat with our esteemed hosts. This year is dear to our hearts because of our milestone anniversary. There will be glasses of champagne ready to be clinked, a special menu hand picked by our team, and a full regency themed decor fit for an elegant occasion.
We hope you get to join us during this grand affair and participate in this special event.
To prepare for what’s to come, this post will share our honored hosts for the afternoon. For more information on the 30th Benefit Champagne Luncheon, please visit our website https://redhen.org/benefit/
Featured Gold Table Hosts:
Aliah Wright — Author of Now You Owe Me
Aliah Wright’s debut novel Now You Owe Me is officially out on September 10th. As shared in her bio, Aliah worked her way through college simultaneously as an editorial assistant for the Philadelphia Daily News and as a stringer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. A successful journalist, she spent her career working for a variety of news outlets. Those include the Associated Press, where she was a political correspondent, and the USA Today Network as the former entertainment editor for Gannett News Service.
Aliah is active on her social media, sharing writing tips and spreading positivity to the literary community. Check out her website to stay up to date with her author journey,
For more Aliah Wright, check out her writing advice on Tik Tok,
Douglas Manuel — Author of Trouble Funk and Testify
Douglas Manuel wrote two books of poems published by Red Hen Press, Trouble Funk and Testify. 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. Much congratulations to his first collection of poems, Testify, which won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. 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 a Bayard Rustin Fellow at Whittier College and teaches at the Spalding University’s low-res MFA program. Go ahead and keep in touch with Douglas’s poetry journey on his website,
http://douglasmanuelpoetry.com/
For more Douglas Manuel, check out the Poetry LA Interview with Genevieve Kaplan,
Florencia Ramirez — Author of Eat Less Water
Florencia Ramirez is a trained researcher at the University of Chicago’s School of Public Policy. She won the sixth Gift of Freedom Creative Nonfiction Award from the A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO). Her articles appear in Edible Communities Magazine, the San Jose Mercury News, among others, and contributes to her highly admired blog, https://www.eatlesswater.com/about/.
For more Florencia Ramirez, check out her interview with Organic Valley’s Rootstock Radio here, https://www.organicvalley.coop/blog/florencia-ramirez-how-much-water-do-you-eat/
Jason Schneiderman — Author of Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire and Hold Me Tight
Jason Schneiderman is the author of four books of poems: Hold Me Tight (Red Hen Press 2020), Primary Source (Red Hen Press 2016), Striking Surface (Ashland Poetry Press 2010), and Sublimation (Four Way Books 2004). He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press 2016). His poetry and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Poetry London, Grand Street, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. He is an Associate Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. Follow Jason’s poetry on his website, https://jasonschneiderman.net/.
For more Jason Schneiderman, check out this interview with Zócalo Public Square’s In The Green, https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2023/07/07/july-poetry-curator-jason-schneiderman/personalities/in-the-green-room/
David St. John — Author of The Last Troubadour
David St. John is the author of twelve collections of poetry including Study for the World’s Body, nominated for The National Book Award in Poetry; The Last Troubadour: New and Selected Poems; and, most recently, Prayer for My Daughter. A past chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, David St. John is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The University of Southern California.
For more David St. John, catch the conversation with the LA Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-question-in-the-mirror-a-conversation-with-david-st-john/.
Featured Silver Table Hosts:
Kate Gale & Mark Cull — Founders of Red Hen Press
Kate Gale and Mark Cull are the founders of Red Hen Press. They started the press in 1994 while in their San Fernando Valley home. Now they run a thriving publishing press in Southern California. Kate is also the author of several poetry collections and debuted her novel UNDER A NEON SUN in April 2024. Keep up to date with Red Hen Press here, https://redhen.org/.
For more of Kate and the press, read her interview with Bold Journey here, https://boldjourney.com/meet-kate-gale-2/
Carlos Allende — Author of Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love
Carlos Allende won the Red Hen Press’s 2019 Quill Prose Award for his novel Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love. Allende has written two previous novels: Cuadrillas y Contradanzas, a historical melodrama set during the War of Reform in Mexico, and Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle, a horror farce set in Venice, California. Catch Carlos Allende’s work on his website here, https://witchesandbeatniks.com/
Listen to Carlos discuss his novel at the Bureau Bookstore,
Esinam Bediako — Author of Blood on the Brain
Esinam Bediako is a Ghanaian American writer who won the Red Hen Press’s Ann Petry Award for her debut novel Blood on the Brain, which is set to be released on September 17th, 2024. Esinam holds a BA in English from Columbia University, an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MAT in Secondary English from University of Southern California. A finalist for the Porter House Review Editor’s Prize, the Frontier Global Poetry Prize, and North American Review’s Terry Tempest Williams Prize, Esinam has been a high school English teacher and administrator.
Follow Esinam’s journey on her website, https://www.esinambediako.com/
Brendan Constantine — Author of Dementia, My Darling
Brendan Constantine is a poet, educator, and author of many collections of poetry, including three from Red Hen Press, with their most recent collaboration being DEMENTIA, MY DARLING (2016). His work has inspired artists in a variety of other mediums, from the canvas to the concert hall, and he has received grants and commissions from the Getty Museum, James Irvine Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. As a popular performer, he has presented his work to audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe, also appearing on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and KPFK’s “Inspiration House.” In 2014 he headlined at the Dodge Poetry Festival with many of the nation’s most celebrated authors.
Learn more about Brendan on his website, http://brendanconstantine.com/brendan/
Catch the live reading with Brendan on Write About Now Poetry,
Jose Hernandez Diaz — Author of Portrait of the Artist As a Brown Man
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020), Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024), and The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025). He has been published in the Yale Review, the London Magazine, and in the Southern Review. He teaches generative workshops for Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, The Writer’s Center, and elsewhere. Jose actively shares on his Instagram @jose_hrz_dz
Listen in on Jose’s conversation with The Writers Center,
Kim Dower — Author of I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom
Kim Dower was the City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood from October 2016–October 2018. She is originally from New York City and has published four collections of poetry: Air Kissing on Mars, Last Train to the Missing Planet, Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave, which won the Gold IPPY Award for best poetry book from an indie press in 2019. Her poems are included in several anthologies, notably, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, (Beyond Baroque Books/Pacific Coast Poetry Series). She teaches workshops for Antioch University, UCLA Writer’s Extension, and the West Hollywood Library. Additionally, Kim’s literary publicity company, Kim-from-L.A., helps authors around the country get the word out about their wonderful books. For more of Kim Dower, visit her website, http://kimdowerpoetry.com/
Catch Kim on the Moms Don’t Have Time to Read podcast,
Jenny Factor — Author of Want, the Lake
Jenny Factor is an archaeologist of object and mind, a feminist, a mother, and a dog-lover. She enjoys helping to organize the monthly Caltech Poetry Lunch while studying eighteenth-century women’s poetry networks at Brandeis University. Her first collection, Unraveling at the Name (Copper Canyon Press), won the Hayden Carruth Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her work has been supported by an Astraea Grant in poetry and acknowledged with a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg honorable mention. Jenny serves as Lecturer in Poetry at Caltech and is the former core faculty member in Poetry at the MFA in Creative Writing program at Antioch University Los Angeles, a writing program devoted to literature and social justice. Read more about Jenny on her website, https://jennyfactor.net/
Listen to Jenny at the Annenberg Community Beach House poetry series,
Amber Flame — Author of apocrifa
Amber Flame is a queer Black poet and interdisciplinary artist whose work garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. Her first poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published through Write Bloody Press. Flame is a recipient of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture’s CityArtist grant and served as Hugo House’s 2017–2019 Writer-in-Residence for Poetry. Flame’s work featured in Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19. She is Program Director for Hedgebrook, a residency for women-identified writers.
Learn more about Amber on her website, https://www.theamberflame.com/
For more on Amber, listen to her on the CBAW podcast.
Denise Frost — Author of A Punishing Breed
Denise Frost is a second-generation Angelino. For almost twenty years, she has worked at a small private liberal arts college in the heart of Los Angeles. Denise loves and respects Southern California, a melting pot of class and culture that is often misrepresented and misunderstood in popular fiction and media. For more of Denise, visit her website, https://www.denisefrost.net/
This June A Punishing Breed was listed in the New York Times as one of their picks for the 4 Great Fictional Detectives. Catch more the article here, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/30/books/review/new-crime-novels.html
E.P. Tuazon — Author of A Professional Lola
E.P. Tuazon is a Filipino American writer from Los Angeles. He has work in several publications such as The Rumpus, Lunch Ticket, Peatsmoke, and Five South. His work was chosen by ZZ Packer as the winner of the 2022 AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. He is currently a member of Advintage Press and The Blank Page Writing Club at The Open Book, Canyon Country. Keep up to date with E.P. on his website, https://ericptuazon.wixsite.com/happybivouac
Catch more E.P. on the Berkeley Fiction Review, https://berkeleyfictionreview.org/2022/02/14/written-representation-through-shared-family-stories-interview-with-e-p-tuazon-author-of-professional-lola/
Luke Goebel — Author of Kill Dick
Luke Goebel is the author of the upcoming book Kill Dick! Goebel is also the author of Fourteen Stories, None Of Them Are Yours which was the winner of the Ronald Sukenick Prize for Innovative Fiction. Not only is Luke an author but a successful screenplay writer for the films Causeway and Eileen.
For more of Luke, listen to his episode with You’re Booked podcast, https://shows.acast.com/booked/episodes/ottessa-moshfegh
Aimee Liu — Author of Glorious Boy
Aimee Liu is the bestselling author of the novels Flash House, Cloud Mountain, and Face and the memoirs Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders and Solitaire. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, published as a Literary Guild Super Release, and serialized in Good Housekeeping. She’s received a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, a Bosque Fiction Prize, and special mention by the Pushcart Prize. Her essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, and many other periodicals and anthologies. Keep up with Aimee on her website, https://aimeeliu.net/
For more Aimee Liu, catch her on the podcast with Author Magazine, https://www.pandora.com/podcast/author2author/author2author-with-aimee-liu/PE:1300872033
Pete Hsu — Author of If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home
Pete Hsu is a Taiwanese American writer based and the author of the experimental chapbook, There is a Man (Tolsun Books); If I were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home; and upcoming book. His work has also been featured in several journals and anthologies, including Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, F(r)iction, The Los Angeles Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. He was a 2017 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow as well as the 2017 PEN in the Community Writer in Residence. Learn more about Pete on his website, https://peterhzhsu.com/
Catch his interview with Voyage LA here, https://voyagela.com/interview/rising-stars-meet-pete-hsu-of-pasadena-ca/
Lisa See — Author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See is the New York Times Top 10 Bestseller for Lady Tan’s Circle of Women. She is the winner of the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Association of Southern California, the History Makers Award from the Chinese American Museum and Goodreads nominee for Best Historical Fiction! Follow Lisa’s journey on her website here, https://lisasee.com/
For more Lisa See, read her interview with The Alembic here, https://alembic.providence.edu/an-interview-with-lisa-see/
Kristen Millares Young — Author of Subduction
Kristen Millares Young is a journalist, essayist, and author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by the Paris Review and positively shared on Washington Post, Seattle Times, and Ms. Magazine. Winner of Nautilus and IPPY awards, Subduction was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and named a finalist for two International Latino Book Awards and Foreword Indies Book of the Year. Her essays, book reviews, and investigations appear in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Literary Hub, and the anthologies Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Latina Outsiders, and Alone Together, winner of a 2021 Washington State Book Award. A former Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, she is the editor of Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature, a finalist for a 2021 Washington State Book Award. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. She was the 2023 Distinguished Visiting Writer for Seattle University and the University of Washington Bothell Master of Fine Arts program. Follow more of Kristen on her website here, https://kristenmyoung.com/
Read up on Kristen Millares Young here, https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/kristen-young/
Bonnie Nadell — President, Hill Nadell Literary Agency
Bonnie Nadell is the President of the Hill Nadell Literary Agency. She represents writers of both fiction and narrative nonfiction. Her clients have been winners or finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Carnegie Medal, National Book Critics Circle Award, Kirkus Prize, and numerous PEN Awards, among others. Read up on The Hill Nadell Literary Agency and Bonnie here, https://www.hillnadell.com/about-us/
Listen to Bonnie on the Jo’s Boys: A Little Women Podcast here, https://jos-boys-a-little-women-podcast.castos.com/episodes/chapter-27-literary-lessons-with-bonnie-nadell
Writing in the Schools
Since 2003, Writing in the Schools (WITS) has provided free creative writing workshops and books to over 5,000 low-income students in the second through twelfth grades. The program currently supports approximately 300 students at four Los Angeles area schools each year. Through the WITS program, an author conducts in-class writing workshops where the students write their own poems and short stories. At the end of the school year, students receive a free, professionally bound anthology of their work.
Red Hen Press are continuously bringing art and literature to the next generation. For more on the WITS program, visit the webpage: https://redhen.org/writing-in-the-schools/
That rounds up the table hosts for this year’s 30th Annual Benefit. We look forward to a wonderful afternoon with all our honored guests. As Lady Hen would say, “We are positively abuzz with anticipation for our delightful soiree, we simply cannot imagine the afternoon’s brilliance without your delightful presence.”