Three Women, Coast to Coast
Three Women, Coast to Coast brings together poets Deborah Landau, Suzanne Lummis, and Jessica Goodheart for an afternoon of readings. Each poet will share selections from their recent collections—Landau’s Skeletons, Lummis’ Crime Wave, and Goodheart’s Earthquake Season—as well as new and upcoming work.
The event offers a chance to hear three distinct voices from across the country, each bringing their unique perspective and style to the stage.
Join us at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, or watch live on YouTube.
Doors Open: 1:30 PM I Readings: 2:00 PM
About the authors
Suzanne Lummis received her MA in English with a focus in poetry from FSU Fresno, then Fresno State, during its legendary era. She has been associated with the Los Angeles-based Stand-up Poetry movement of the 90s and also with the "poem noir." NPR's All Things Considered profiled her in "Writing Noir Poetry with L.A. as a Backdrop." In 2024, she guest-edited a special issue of the international literary journal, Pratik, giving it a Noir focus, Darkness in Style. Suzanne co-founded and directed The Los Angeles Poetry Festival (active 1989 - 2016). For 30 years she was an influential teacher in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and has been honored with Beyond Baroque's George Drury Smith Award for Excellence in Poetry, and as a 2018/19 COLA (City of Los Angeles) Fellow. Suzanne’s fourth collection, Crime Wave, will be published by Giant Claw, an imprint of What Books, in 2025.
Jessica Goodheart first began writing poetry in the 1990s at Beyond Baroque’s Thursday night workshop. In 2023, she edited Poets on the Beat, a multimedia collaboration between Beyond Baroque and the nonprofit newsroom Capital & Main. Her work has appeared in Rattle, The Antioch Review, Poetry Goes to the Movies, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, First of the Month, The Best American Poetry, and other journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection, Earthquake Season, was published by Word Press. By day, Jessica is a senior editor at Capital & Main, an award-winning Los Angeles-based publication focused on social, economic, and political issues. Her reporting on low-wage work, housing, and politics has been recognized by the California Journalism Awards, Best of the West, and the Los Angeles Press Club, among others. She lives in Pasadena, California.
Deborah Landau is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Skeletons, which was named one of The Guardian’s best recent books of poetry and one of The New Yorker’s “Best Books of 2023.” Her other books include Soft Targets (winner of The Believer Book Award), The Uses of the Body, and The Last Usable Hour, all Lannan Literary Selections from Copper Canyon Press, and Orchidelirium, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry. In 2016 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The Uses of the Body was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, and included on “Best of ″ lists by The New Yorker, Vogue, BuzzFeed, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. A Spanish edition, Los Usos Del Cuerpo, was published by Valparaiso Ediciones in 2017. UK editions of her books include Soft Targets (Bloodaxe, 2020) and Skeletons (Corsair, 2024).
Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, New York Review of Books, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Poetry, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Yale Review, and The New York Times, and included in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, Not for Mothers Only, Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now, The Best American Erotic Poems, and Women’s Work: Modern Poets Writing in English.
Landau was educated at Stanford University, Columbia University, and Brown University, where she was a Javits Fellow and received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. She is a Professor at NYU, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.
About Beyond Baroque
Beyond Baroque is one of the United States' leading independent Literary | Arts Centers and public spaces dedicated to expanding the public's knowledge of poetry, literature and art through cultural events and community interaction. Founded in 1968 as an experimental literary magazine, Beyond Baroque is based out of the original City Hall building in Venice, California. The Center offers a diverse variety of literary and arts programming including readings and workshops. The building also houses a bookstore with a large collection of new poetry books for sale.
Livestream: If you can’t join us in person the event will be livestreamed on Beyond Baroque’s YouTube channel at the scheduled time of the event. If you are tuning in this way, no ticket purchase is necessary.
If you are attending in person, ticket purchase is required. Tickets will be available at the Beyond Baroque bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. Please arrive early.
Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, staff, fellow attendees, or performers.