Join Pinay Powerhouse Poets, Barbara Jane Reyes, Janice Sapigao, Aimee Suzara and Michelle Peñaloza as they come together to celebrate #allpinayeverything and the release of Peñaloza's FORMER POSSESSIONS OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE at Arkipelago Books, a cornerstone to the Filipino businesses, advocate organizations, art spaces and families in SOMA PILIPINAS, San Francisco's newest Historical District.

Barbara Jane Reyes is an adjunct professor in Philippine Studies at University of San Francisco, the author of Invocation to Daughters (City Lights Publishers, 2017), and four previous collections of poetry, including Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005) and Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010). Letters to a Young Brown Girl is forthcoming from BOA Editions, Ltd., in 2020. She lives in Oakland, CA. http://www.barbarajanereyes.com/

Janice Lobo Sapigao is a daughter of Filipina/o immigrants. She was named one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s 2017 Women to Watch by KQED Arts. She is the author of two books of poetry: Like a Solid to a Shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2017) and microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016) and three other chapbooks. She is a VONA/Voices and Kundiman Fellow, and the Associate Editor of TAYO Literary Magazine. She co-founded Sunday Jump open mic in L.A. She earned her M.F.A. in Writing from CalArts, and she has a B.A. in Ethnic Studies with Honors from UC San Diego.

Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet, playwright, and performer whose mission is to create poetic and theatrical work about race, gender, and the body to provoke dialogue and social change. Suzara has graced stages nationally, from Florida to Washington with her dynamic spoken word. Her debut poetry book, SOUVENIR (WordTech Editions 2014), a Willa Award Finalist, was lauded as “a powerful meditation on history and the legacies of race, family and identity” (David Mura), and her poems appear in numerous collections, including Phat’itude and Kartika Review. Her performance work has been supported by YBCAway Award, National Endowment for the Arts; selected for the One Minute Play Festival, APAture, and the Utah Arts Festival; and staged at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, CounterPULSE, and others. Luis J Rodriguez has said, “Aimee Suzara is a deep chronicler of our hopes, dreams, pains, and future. We need these poems more than ever.” http://www.aimeesuzara.net

Michelle Peñaloza is author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, which won the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019). She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). Her work can be found in places like Prairie Schooner, upstreet, Pleiades, The Normal School and Third Coast. She is the recipient of fellowships from the University of Oregon, Kundiman and Hugo House as well as the 2019 Scotti Merrill Emerging Writer Award for Poetry from The Key West Literary Seminar. Michelle has also received scholarships from Lemon Tree House, Caldera, Vermont Studio Center, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives, farms, and writes in rural Northern California.