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Another incredible lineup joining us at Pilsen Community Books for an evening of readings and community!!!

Artist Bios

Temperance Aghamohammadi is an Acolyte of the Exquisite. A trans Iranian-American poet, medium, and critic, she is the author of BATTALION SHAPED GIRL (DISCOUNT GUILLOTINE, 2025) and Behnt (New Delta Review, forthcoming), selected by Dorothea Lasky as the winner of The New Delta Review Chapbook Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She is an associate editor at RHINO Poetry and received the Claudia Emerson scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Hailing from the Northeast, she currently haunts the Midwest while pursuing a PhD in Literature.

Stephen Patrick Bell is a writer, editor, and producer raised in New York by Jamaican immigrants, currently based in Chicago where he has produced shows for The Moth StorySLAM and 2nd Story. A 2022 Lambda Literary Fellow in fiction, a Summer 2023 Tin House fellow, and a 2025 Kenyon Review Writers Workshop Peter Taylor Fellow, Stephen serves as the Interviews Editor at Foglifter Journal and Press. His work has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, Interview Magazine, Bomb, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a novel.

Yazud E. Brito-Milian (they/them) is a Chicane poet, impatient collagist, abolitionist, and eldest sister. Born in Winston-Salem, NC, and based in Chicago, IL, they are working on their first chapbook, crossfade, dedicated to their dad’s black and yellow KORG M50 and the musicians who raised them. Yazud has received fellowships from The Watering Hole, Periplus, and CantoMundo. Their work appears in Muzzle Magazine, Voicemail Poems, The Poetry Project, and Huizache Magazine. They also co-host a new reading series and open mic on the South Side called Canto-Kòjo. In Spanish, canto means “to sing,” and in Yoruba, kòjo means “together.”

Diego Báez is a writer, educator, and abolitionist. He is the author of Yaguareté White (Univ Arizona, 2024), named Best New Poetry Collection by the Chicago Reader, and finalist for a Chicago Review of Books Award. He lives in Rogers Park and teaches at the City Colleges.