Lines and lyrics from Litquake Nation! Enjoy line breaks during your lunch break, as some of the Bay Area’s best poets and musicians share their work in the great outdoors.

Julayne Lee is an overseas adopted Korean American poet, essayist, artivist, art curator and producer. Her debut collection of poems Not My White Savior (2018, Rare Bird) was on BitchReads: 15 Books Feminists Should Read in March. She is a Las Dos Brujas & VONA alum. Co-founder of Adoptee Solidarity Korea – Los Angeles (ASK-LA), she also volunteered with the Adoptee Rights Campaign (ARC) to ensure citizenship for all adoptees. She’s read throughout the U.S. & Korea and now splits her time between the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Brennan DeFrisco is a poet, educator, and performance artist from the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s been a National Poetry Slam finalist, a runner-up for the Drake University Emerging Writer Award, and Grand Champion of the Oakland Poetry Slam. He’s the author of A Heart With No Scars (Nomadic Press) and has served as Poetry Editor on the masthead of Lunch Ticket. He facilitates writing and performance workshops as a teaching artist through California Poets In The Schools, Bay Area Creative, Writopia Labs, and Poetry Out Loud. His work has been published in Words Dance, jmww journal, Button Poetry, Gemini, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles.

Tamer Sa’id Mostafa (pronouns: he/him/his) is an-always proud Stockton, California native whose work has appeared in over twenty various journals and magazines such as Confrontation, Monday Night Lit, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change among others. As an Arab-American Muslim, he reflects on life through spirituality, an evolving commitment to social justice, and the music of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

Denise Jolly is the creator of the Be Beautiful Project. She is a writer, performer and artist educator. Denise’s work stands at the intersection of gender, class, sexuality, and body. She likes doing great things with amazing people and being moved by art, community and how the two work together.

Musical guest Chhoti Maa was born in Guanajuato, Mexico and is based in Oakland, California. Chhoti Maa is a multidisciplinary cultural producer, working through art, music, writing, red medicine and danza. They have self-released 5 projects in eleven years as an MC/singer/producer and have performed, collaborated and taught children, teens and adults around the world. Their work deals with decolonial living, contemporary Indigenous spirituality, queerness, migrant empowerment and the reconstruction of the womyn temple. This Fall, Chhoti Maa will release a 2nd studio album Caldo de Hueso (Bone Broth).