Chicago Book Launch: A Celebration of Orange

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

This reading is a family affair!

Featuring poets who supported Noel throughout their poetry journey. Orange wouldn't exist without them. Readers: Mayda Del Valle, Tara Betts, Julian Randall, and Helene Achanzar.

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. Preorder Orange here 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 www.noelpquinones.com.

Tara Betts lives in Chicago and is the author of the manuscript “Refuse to Disappear,” as well as Break the Habit (Trio House Press, 2016) and Arc & Hue (Willow Books, 2009). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and her short stories have appeared in anthologies and compilations such as Red Line: Chicago Horror Stories and Octavia's Brood.

Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. A recipient of multiple fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA from University of Mississippi. His writing appears in New York Times Magazine, POETRY, PEOPLE and The Atlantic. Julian is the author of Refuse (Pitt, 2018), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, The Pilar Ramirez Duet (Holt Books for Young Readers), and the forthcoming Shook (August 4, 2026). He can be found at @JulianThePoet. Author of Refuse (University of Pittsburgh, 2018), Pilar Ramirez and the Escape from Zafa (Holt Books for Young Readers, 2022), Pilar Ramirez and the Curse of San Zenon (HBYR, 2023), The Dead Don't Need Reminding (Bold Type Books, 2024), The Chainbreakers (HBYR, 2024) Shook (HBYR, 8/9/2026) https://juliandavidrandall.com/

More Bios coming soon.