The Feminist Bookstore Reading Series and Open Mic

Our series celebrates diverse voices alongside a featured reader. Before or after the main reading, we have a generative workshop where attendees get a prompt and write for 10 minutes. This helps generate new material that attendees can share at the open mic portion. After that, the microphone is open for attendees to share up to 3 minutes of prose, poetry, or music in an inclusive, welcoming space. Tickets are free, and we invite all to participate and amplify their voices. Hosted by Jaded Ibis Press, a nonprofit feminist press dedicated to socially engaged literature by marginalized voices, this series promises an inspiring night of creativity and community.
Feature: Anel I. Flores is a trans-, queer Latina/x writer, artist, activist, entrepreneur, and coach; whose extensive body of work captures the essence of LGBTQIA+ experiences across professional and community spaces. Their most recent novel, Curtains of Rain, is available for sale at The Feminist Bookstore.
Emcee: Elizabeth Earley is the author of two novels: A Map of Everything, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and Like WIngs, Your Hands, which won the Women's Prose Prize at Red Hen Press. Little Deaths all in a Row, Essays on Sex and Death is forthcoming in September and is available for preorder. Earley is also the owner of The Feminist Bookstore and the president of Jaded Ibis Press.

Our series celebrates diverse voices alongside a featured reader. Before or after the main reading, we have a generative workshop where attendees get a prompt and write for 10 minutes. This helps generate new material that attendees can share at the open mic portion. After that, the microphone is open for attendees to share up to 3 minutes of prose, poetry, or music in an inclusive, welcoming space. Tickets are free, and we invite all to participate and amplify their voices. Hosted by Jaded Ibis Press, a nonprofit feminist press dedicated to socially engaged literature by marginalized voices, this series promises an inspiring night of creativity and community.
Feature: Michelle Tea is the author of over a dozen books of memoir, fiction, poetry and children's lit — including her latest, Knocking Myself Up. Her memoir Valencia won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction, even though it was obviously all true. It was also made into a sprawling, feature-length art film using nearly 20 different directors and different Michelles. Her recent-ish essay collection, Against Memoir, was awarded the PEN/America Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the recipient of the legendary Rona Jaffe Awards, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.
In addition to her writing, Michelle has instigated many cultural interventions aimed at increasing access and visibility for queer writers and artists. She is the founder of RADAR Productions, the Bay Area literary non-profit, and worked as Executive Director for over a decade, running a monthly reading and conversation series at the San Francisco Public Library, organizing a free, queer literary retreat in the Yucatan, operating an annual poetry chapbook contest, and many other events. Michelle's last move as ED was to conceptualize Drag Queen Story Hour, the kid's lit event that has since become a global sensation. She is the co-founder of the international performance tour Sister Spit, and founding editor-at-large for the online parenting zine Mutha.
Michelle produces and hosts the mystical Spotify podcast Your Magic, and fronts a weekly live tarot show on Spotify Live. Her 30-plus years as a tarot reader is encapsulated in her popular how-to book, Modern Tarot.
Emcee: Elizabeth Earley is the author of two novels: A Map of Everything, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and Like WIngs, Your Hands, which won the Women's Prose Prize at Red Hen Press. Little Deaths all in a Row, Essays on Sex and Death is forthcoming in September and is available for preorder. Earley is also the owner of The Feminist Bookstore and the president of Jaded Ibis Press.