Name: The Familia Reading: A Celebration of Orange
Start: 2026-05-08T18:30:00-04:00
End: 2026-05-08T20:00:00-04:00
Location: Loisaida, Inc.

The Familia Reading: A Celebration of Orange

Noel Quiñones

A family style reading celebrating Noel Quiñones' debut poetry collection!

Loisaida, Inc.

<h2>This reading is a family affair!</h2> Featuring poets who supported Noel throughout their poetry journey. Orange wouldn't exist without them. Readers: Willie Perdomo, José Olivarez, Cynthia Manick, Yesenia Montilla, and Sean DesVignes. About the Book, Author, and Featured Readers A bold and tender portrait of family, identity, and truth in the North Bronx.Through narrative poems and innovative forms inspired by color theory and elementary school, Orange explores the ripple effects of queerness, lies, and finding yourself in a family. In this visceral new collection, however, the scope of "family" expands well beyond the nuclear unit; Noel Quiñones's poems center relationships between friends, cousins, partners, and many other family members. Painting a vivid and fraught portrait of the North Bronx, Quiñones unflinchingly confronts the contradictions at the heart of love, divorce, gender, religion, and community, unpacking the complexities of coming out, divorced parents, and generational trauma. Orange ultimately argues that truth resembles color: something real, yet elusive, and impossible to prove. <a href="https://cavankerrypress.org/products/orange" title="https://cavankerrypress.org/products/orange" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Preorder Orange here</a> or get a copy at the event.Noel Quiñones is an Emmy award-winning writer of all genres. Noel is the author of the interactive poetry collection Orange (CavanKerry Press, May 2026) and has been published in Poetry, Boston Review, Poem-a-day, and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT anthology, as well as the Michigan Quarterly Review, for which they won the 2025 Jesmyn Ward Fiction Prize. Noel’s short story "This Time and the Next" will be included in The Best Short Stories 2026: The O. Henry Prize Winners. Noel has also written for, narrated, and acted in several films, including the Emmy nominated documentary Takeover, recounting the Young Lords’ 1970 takeover of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx to fight for better healthcare. A graduate of the University of Mississippi's MFA program and founder of Project X, a Bronx-based spoken word poetry organization, Noel is currently a Justice for My Sister BIPOC Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab Fellow working on their first TV show, The Telescope. Follow Noel at <a href="https://www.noelpquinones.com" title="https://www.noelpquinones.com" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">www.noelpquinones.com</a>. Sean DesVignes is a writer from Brooklyn. A Professor of English, he holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. When not writing, he performs as a DJ internationally. Yesenia Montilla is a poet, translator &amp; educator. Her first collection The Pink Box is published by Willow Books &amp; was longlisted for a PEN Open Book award. Her second collection Muse Found in a Colonized Body published by Four Way Books was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. She currently teaches poetry at The Juilliard School and lives in Harlem, NY. Find her at <a href="http://www.yeseniamontilla.com/" title="http://www.yeseniamontilla.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">www.yeseniamontilla.com</a>. José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants, and the author of two collections of poems, including, Promises of Gold—which was long listed for the 2023 National Book Awards. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. Along with Felicia Rose Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. Alongside Antonio Salazar, he published the hybrid book, Por Siempre. José Olivarez received a 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and was named the 21st Century Award Recipient by the Chicago Public Library Foundation. He lives in Jersey City, NJ. Cynthia Manick is the author of No Sweet Without Brine (Amistad-HarperCollins, 2023), which received 5 stars from Roxane Gay, was named among the “Best Poetry of the Last Year (2023)” by Ms. Magazine, and was selected as a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023. She is the author of Brown Girl Polaris (a Belladonna chaplet); editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry; and author of Blue Hallelujahs. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus and other outlets. She lives in New York but travels widely for poetry. Willie Perdomo is the author of Smoking Lovely: The Remix, The Crazy Bunch, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime. Winner of the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, the New York City Book Award in Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, Perdomo was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award. He co-edited the anthology, LatiNext, and was recently awarded a Letras Boricuas 2024 Fellowship. He teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy and was appointed New York State Poet (2021-2023).

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Book Talk: Orange with Noel Quiñones & T.S. Leonard

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The Familia Reading: A Celebration of Orange

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