Events
With support from the Center for the Art of Translation, Two Lines Press regularly programs public events and tours our authors and translators to create opportunities for English-language readers to connect directly with our books and the work of literary translators. Browse our upcoming author and translator tours.
Read Trans Poets: A Community Event Series in Celebration of Splendor
Bookstores in Belmont, Bozeman, Brooklyn, Decatur, Denver, London, Missoula, Pittsburgh, Quebec City, and San Francisco celebrate the release of Splendor: Trans Poets.
Twelve bookstores across the US and internationally celebrate the launch of Splendor: Trans Poets with events featuring trans and nonbinary poets
To celebrate the release of Splendor: Trans Poets on September 1, Two Lines Press invited bookstores across the US and internationally to organize creative readings and events featuring trans and nonbinary poets. These “authorless tour” events–ranging from readings, to workshops, drag shows, open mics, and more–are taking place throughout the months of September and October to uplift trans voices and build international trans solidarity through poetry. See the full tour schedule below and click through for more details on each event.
Tour Schedule
Tuesday, September 1
Fact & Fiction — Missoula, MT
Gender Queer Open Mic
7:00 pm | 220 N Higgins Ave, Missoula, MT | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Friday, September 4
White Whale Bookstore — Pittsburgh, PA
TRANS-SPLENDOR: Community Book Launch of Splendor: Trans Poets!
7:00 pm | 4754 Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Saturday, September 12
Shop at MATTER — Denver, CO
Trans Means Transcendence: An Evening of Trans Poetry and Prose
5:00 pm | 2114 Market St, Denver, CO | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Tuesday, September 15
Charis Books & More — Decatur, GA
Splendor: Trans Poets — A Writing Workshop with Samuel Ace
7:00 pm | 184 S Candler St, Decatur, GA | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Wednesday, September 16
Charis Books & More — Decatur, GA
Cliterati Open Mic — In Celebration of Splendor: Trans Poets
7:30 pm | 184 S Candler St, Decatur, GA | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Thursday, September 17
Green Apple Books on the Park — San Francisco, CA
Splendor: Trans Poets Book Launch with Andrew Wilson, Jana Vourgourakis, Alexis N. Garcia, and Mukethe Kawinzi
7:00 pm | 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco, CA | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Tuesday, September 22
Belmont Books — Belmont, MA
Trans Poetry Night featuring Stephanie Burt, Trace Peterson, Catherine Rockwood, Miles Taylor, and more
7:00 pm | 79 Leonard St, Belmont, MA | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Brick Lane Bookshop — London, England
Trans Poetry Reading in Celebration of Splendor: Trans Poets
Time TBC | 166 Brick Lane, London | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Tuesday, September 29
Country Bookshelf — Bozeman, MT
Trans Poetry Showcase with Bozeman Poetry Collective
7:00 pm | 28 W Main St, Bozeman, MT | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Hive Mind Books — Brooklyn, NY
In Celebration of Splendor: A Trans Poet Open Mic
7:00 pm | 219 Irving Ave, Brooklyn, NY | More Info(opens in a new tab)
The Common Press Shoreditch — London, England
The Common Press Poetry Night featuring Splendor: Trans Poets
7:00 pm | 118 Bethnal Grn Rd, London | More Info(opens in a new tab)
Friday, October 2
Librairie Pantoute Saint-Roch — Québec City, Canada
Soirée de poésie trans / Trans Poetry Night with Pascale Bérubé
5:00 pm | 286 Saint Joseph E, Québec, QC | More Info TBA
Sunday, October 25
Frenchmen Art & Books — New Orleans, LA
Sunday Morning Splendor: A Morning of Poetry Readings with Rickey Laurentiis
10:00 am | 600 Frenchmen St, New Orleans, LA | More Info TBA
Splendor: Trans Poets Book Launch
Translators Andrew Wilson and Jana Vourgourakis read from Splendor: Trans Poets alongside original poems from Alexis N. Garcia and Mukethe Kawinzi
In celebration of Splendor: Trans Poets (September 1, Two Lines Press), Green Apple Books on the Park is hosting a trans poetry night featuring the work of Québécois poet Pascale Bérubé, read by her translators Andrew Wilson and Jana Vourgourakis. Their readings from the collection will be complemented by readings from Alexis N. Garcia and Mukethe Kawinzi, as well as an introduction from Sarah Coolidge, editor of Splendor and of the Calico series from Two Lines Press.
About Splendor: Trans Poets
Introducing readers to five trans and nonbinary poets, Splendor is an ode to queer bodies, with previously unpublished translations from Argentina, Denmark, Korea, Norway, and Quebec. From the irreverent and irresponsible to the quiet and meditative, these poems decentralize our ideas of trans experience and poetics.
Splendor presents a sliver of the wide possibilities of what trans literature can offer. This is trans literature that transcends borders and binaries in order to engage with a messy world. As Camila Sosa Villada writes, “Let us keep loving one another in this swamp of contradictions.”
“I love this book, every page of it! We need more poetry, more celebration for trans lives between the bullets and bloodshed, which is also in here, the endless funerals of those taken down by heterosexual violence! When I started reading this collection, I could not stop and missed a meeting, but meetings can be rescheduled. What we cannot reschedule is the experience of reading a book without pause until it becomes your favorite anthology!” —CAConrad, author of First Light
About Read Trans Poets: A Community Event Series in Celebration of Splendor
To celebrate the release of Splendor: Trans Poets on September 1, Two Lines Press invited bookstores across the US and internationally to organize creative readings and events that feature trans and nonbinary poets. This book launch in San Francisco is one of twelve “authorless tour” events taking place throughout the months of September and October to uplift trans voices and build international trans solidarity through poetry. See the full tour schedule here(opens in a new tab).
Jana Vourgourakis has been a museum educator at BAMPFA and has studied art at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and literature at SUNY Buffalo. She is currently co-translating Olivier Bruneau’s sci-fi novel Esther with Andrew Wilson. She enjoys exploring narrative and probability by collaborating on James Bond fanfiction with AI. In her spare time, she likes to eat cake.
Andrew Wilson is a graduate of the Master of Philosophy Program in Literary Translation at Trinity College, Dublin. He is currently affiliated with the Center for Literary Translation at Trinity College, Dublin, as a creative practitioner. His published translations include works by Sébastien Brebel, Bruce Bégout, Antoine Volodine, and Pacôme Thiellement. He is currently working (with Jana Vourgourakis) on a translation of Olivier Bruneau’s sci-fi novel Esther.
Alexis N. Garcia is a t-boy poet & educator dreaming against the state. Their cross-discipline experiments glitch traditional poetic form to construct trans time & non-linear meaning-making. Their poems and hybrid experiments have been featured in The Hopkins Review, Poem-A-Day, beestung, Apogee Journal, The Slowdown, and The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNext, among others. He has received fellowships from The Outpost Foundation, Jack Jones Literary Arts, and the Tin House Summer Workshop. Garcia’s first book, IN MY FANTASY, I BELONG, is forthcoming from Host Publications in March 2027. When they aren’t teaching, you can find them at their local library or tending to a heart-shaped hummingbird feeder on their balcony.
Mukethe Kawinzi is a transsexual goatherder and land steward working at the intersection of the pastoral, modern Black agrarianism, queer identity, and contemporary rural life. He has farmed in sustainable and organic agriculture for six years, with a focus on artisanal cheesemaking, non-violent livestock handling, and regenerative grazing. He is the author of ‘touching grass’ (Porkbelly Press), ‘Koans to a Young Cowboi’ (Bottlecap Press), ‘rut’ (Ghost City Press Summer Series), and ‘saanens, nubians, one lamancha’ (Winner, Quarterly West Chapbook Contest), as well as the winner of the inaugural ALOCASIA Grant for Queer Nature Writers. He currently traverses the open range with a herd of 300 Spanish cashmere range goats to restore coastal prairie, rehabilitate degraded soils, and mitigate the effects of climate change on California native grasslands.
Two Lines Press @ Brooklyn Book Festival 2026
Stop by Booth 515 to check out the latest Two Lines Press titles and chat with staff.
Come say hi!
Visit us at the Brooklyn Book Festival Literary Marketplace on Sunday, September 27! Stop by Booth 515 to check out the latest Two Lines Press titles and chat with staff.
The Brooklyn Book Festival is New York City’s largest free literary festival and connects readers with local, national and international authors and publishers during the course of a celebratory literary week.
The mission of the Brooklyn Book Festival (BKBF) is to celebrate published literature and nurture a literary cultural community through programming that cultivates and connects readers of diverse ages and backgrounds with local, national and international authors, publishers and booksellers. To this end the Brooklyn Book Festival develops original programming that is hip, smart, diverse, and inclusive and presents free, literary, cultural events at the Brooklyn Book Festival Day & Literary Marketplace, Virtual Festival Day, and the family friendly Children’s Day. Additionally, BKBF presents Bookend events in venues across NYC and on-line, which are overwhelmingly presented free to the public.
Find more information including a schedule of the in-person and virtual events on the Brooklyn Book Festival(opens in a new tab) website.
The International Library presents Elvira Navarro with Melissa Lozada-Oliva
12:00 pm PDT | 3:00 pm EDT
The International Library presents Elvira Navarro and Melissa Lozada-Oliva in conversation to celebrate the publication of Blood Is Dripping Onto the Courtyard.
National Book Award longlisted Elvira Navarro presents her new collection, Blood Is Dripping onto the Courtyard
The International Library presents Elvira Navarro and Melissa Lozada-Oliva in conversation to celebrate the publication of Blood Is Dripping Onto the Courtyard, a new collection of stories that straddle the line between the horrific and the fantastic from the National Book Award longlisted author of Rabbit Island. Register to join us for the live online lunchtime reading, or view the recording on The Center for Fiction YouTube channel.
About Blood Is Dripping Onto the Courtyard
A young couple’s washing machine fills with blood; a man saves animals who have been hit along the highway, turning his home in a peculiar zoo; the security guard of a half-built housing development suffers from hallucinations; a young woman struggles to understand the cruel neglect of the Parisian suburbs.
This is a world of precarious jobs, towns in the middle of nowhere, abandoned buildings, and cities that are nothing more than blocks of concrete whose contours Elvira Navarro distorts to the point of giving reality the consistency of a nightmare. In an almost imperceptible way, the disturbing infiltrates the lives of these men and women until they find themselves alone at the end of a dark road, afraid to turn around.
About The International Library
This event is part of The International Library, a collaboration between The Center for Fiction and the Center for the Art of Translation. Join us for a series of conversations across time, place, language, and culture, with live audiences in San Francisco and Brooklyn, with more locations to come. This series will guide readers to think critically about how stories are told and explore the inspiration, philosophy, and craft of international storytellers.
Elvira Navarro (Huelva, Spain, 1978) has published both novels and short stories. Her novel A Working Woman, which addresses the impact of the economic crisis on the contemporary female experience, has established her as a leading voice in Spanish literature. She has been the recipient of numerous significant accolades in Spain, including the Jaén Novel Prize and the Andalusian Critics’ Prize. Additionally, Granta magazine has identified her as one of the twenty-two most distinguished Spanish writers under the age of thirty-five. Her collection of short stories, Rabbit Island, has been nominated for the 2021 National Book Award for Foreign Literature. Her most recent novel, The Voices of Adriana, has been awarded the 2023 Cálamo Special Prize.
Melissa Lozada-Oliva is the author of Dreaming of You and Candelaria, which was named one of the best books of 2023 by USA Today and Vogue. She cohosts a podcast called Say More. Her collection of short stories Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Jesus is Alive will be released Fall 2025. She holds her MFA from NYU and lives in Brooklyn.