Village Poets will host poets Mandy Kahn and William Archila for National Poetry Month at Village Poets on Sunday, April 28 at 4:30 p.m. These two writers are well known in the Los Angeles area and beyond.

Archila is the winner of the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for his collection S is For. His book, The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, won the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize and The Art of Exile won an International Latino Book Award. He was awarded the 2023 Jack Hauser fellowship and the Alan Collins Scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. He has been published in Poetry Magazine, The American Poetry Review, AGNl, Conjunctions, Colorado Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Missouri Review, Pleiades and Prairie Schooner and the anthologies The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. He is a PEN Center USA West Emerging Voices fellow. He lives in Los Angeles on Tongva land. He has work forthcoming in Copper Nickle, Southern Indiana Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Salamander and Guesthouse.

Kahn is the author of three poetry collections: Holy Doors (2023), Glenn Gould’s Chair (2017) and Math, Heaven, Time (2014). Her poems have been included in the Best American Poetry anthology series, have been read on BBC Radio, and have been featured in the national newspaper column American Life in Poetry. She has given readings at Cambridge University, the Getty Museum, MOCA and the Barrick Museum, has been profiled in the magazines Flaunt, Issue and Malibu, and has been interviewed by The Los Angeles Review of Books. She’s also the subject of Courtney Sell’s feature-length documentary Peace Piece: The Immersive Poems of Mandy Kahn. Kahn holds a degree in English from UC Berkeley. She lives in Los Angeles where she serves as writer-in-residence at the Philosophical Research Society.

Two segments of open mic will be available and refreshments will be served. Suggested donation $5 per person for the cost of refreshments and to donate to the Little Landers Society that manages the Bolton Hall Museum, 10110 Commerce Ave. in Tujunga.

Upcoming Events:

May 19 – Ceremony for new poet laureate at McGroarty Arts Center  

June 23 – Daniel McGinn & Scott Ferry