[ Sat May 5 12 ]

Sandra Garcia Rivera hosted the season finale of Lunada Literary Lounge at Galeria de la Raza, with an open mic and feature performances by Nance Gonales, Tim Z. Hernandez, and Aya de Leon.

Held every full moon for 11+ years now, this was my first Lunada; in addition to meeting a roomful of genuine folk I learned a lot from Rivera about how to host an event; the quality of performances was stellar, overall, and Hernandez’s story has stuck with me all week (you can read more about that in next week’s Out Loud section of the SF Chronicle). I also had a chance to admire the Traded Moons exhibit they have up, the opening reception of which I had been able to catch last month; I was happy to see some of the paintings had been sold.

The next Lunada will be in August, I think, but Quiet Lightning is doing a show there on Monday, July 2nd (submissions are open). If you haven’t been to la Galeria, do yourself a favor! Really. Admission to this show was $5 or free if you brought a dish; I don’t know what it is lately, but this potluck method is really winning me over.

Above is most of the reading (I also performed this poem for the first time in almost two years – that link is the first time I performed it). The video playlist is somewhat out of order, as I don’t quite recall exactly how things went down (if you were there and you know, I’m happy to change things around!), but below is an index that corresponds to the order it’s in now.

Click “Play” to watch all, “Next” to skip forward, or the small “Playlist” screen (to the right of the video time) to see thumbnails and watch them directly. Below is an index: