Meliza Bañales aka Missy Fuego
Author, Root for the Underdog (Dodsworth Books)
At AWP Bodies Beloved Booth T11157: Fri & Sat
Official Book signing, Booth T11157: Friday 11am

Meliza Bañales aka Missy Fuego (she/they) is the author of six books, a Lambda Literary Finalist, & a Slam Champion. They have written for On Our Backs Magazine, Razorcake, Washington Square Review, Ladybox, Lodestar Quarterly, & Encyclopedia Brittanica. She was a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of California, San Diego from 2015-2020 and has served as a teaching-artist in LA since 2014. They were a 2024 Tin House Summer Resident in YA and a 2024 LA LGBTQIA Summer Resident as a member of the championship WeHo Slam Team. They are the current LA Erotica Slam Champion as well as the Slammaster & co-founder of CULTURE Slam Team. She has new fiction in Made in LA and new poetry in JOTA: An Anthology. They are an advocate & cause radical trouble in their hometown of LA.

With Support from LA Poets Society

Jessica Wilson
Author, Serious Longing (Èditions du Cygne/ Swan World)
At Bodies Beloved Booth T11157:
Thurs all day, Sat afternoon

Panel: Strength in Numbers: SoCal Women & Femme Organizers in Action Sat 3/29 1:45-3pm

Booth 422 and 424: UCLA Extension The Writer’s Program

Jessica M. Wilson (she/they) is a Chicana poet from East Los Angeles, California. She has an MFA in writing from Otis College of Art and Design and a BA in creative writing and art history from the University of California, Riverside. She began the Los Angeles Poet Society and is a poet teacher and activist.

Leroy F. Moore Jr.
Author, Krip Hop, Vol 1 & 2, and Black Disabled Ancestors. (Poor Press)
Speak Wild’s Bodies Beloved - Booth T11157: Saturday
Official Book signing, Booth T11157: Saturday, 2pm

From Harvard to The Whitney Museum to Media Engagement for Disability in Johannesburg South Africa, Leroy F. Moore (he/him) has more than twenty years of activism, journalism, writing, lecturing on race and disability. 2021 Emmy award-winning, he. is the founder of the Krip-Hop Nation, a movement that uses hip-hop as a means of expression for people with disabilities. Moore is a writer, poet, community activist, and a hip-hop and music lover. He is currently a doctoral student in linguistic anthropology at UCLA. He writes and delivers lectures and performances that reflect the intersections between racism and ableism in the United States and abroad. Moore's most recent books are Krip Hop, Vol 1 & 2, and Black Disabled Ancestors.

Kelsey Bryan-Zwick
Author, Here Go the Knives (Moon Tide Press)
Speak Wild’s Bodies Beloved - Booth T11157:
Throughout weekend
Panel: Strength in Numbers: SoCal Women & Femme Organizers in Action Sat 3/29 1:45-3pm

Kelsey Bryan-Zwick (she/they) is a Pushcart Prize–winning poet, published across many genres. Their debut book of poetry, Here Go the Knives, focuses on their decades surviving with debilitating scoliosis. As The Poetry Lab’s assistant director, Kelsey leads poetry workshops that are virtual and accessible.