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BIPOC Reading Series – June
This monthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color.
Come listen to our featured readers, or sign up to share your work in our open mic. Readings will be followed by a short community discussion. Hosted by Kyle Yoshioka and Jessica Meza-Torres.
The featured readers for June are Olufunke Grace Bankole and Andy Nwannem.
This event is open to everyone, but only people who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color will be invited to read. If you have any questions, please contact Jessica Meza-Torres at jmezatorres24@gmail.com or Kyle Yoshioka at kyle.yoshioka@gmail.com.
Jessica Meza-Torres
Kyle Yoshioka
Kyle Yoshioka thinks and writes a lot about belonging. He is the founder and editorial director of Provecho, a publication about the intersection of food and identity, and co-hosts the BIPOC Reading Series at Literary Arts. His writing projects have been supported by the Independent Publishing Resource Center, the McCormack Writing Center Workshop (formerly the Tin House Workshop), and the Andy Warhol Foundation's Precipice Fund. Kyle is working on his debut novel about a multigenerational Japanese American family that explores whether inheritance is destiny.
Olufunke Grace Bankole
Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer. The Edge of Water (Tin House), her debut novel, has been praised by Oprah Daily, Goodreads, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, Electric Literature, The Root, Debutiful, and more; named a Best Book of 2025 by Apple; and is currently a Finalist for the Westport Prize for Literature and a Finalist for the New American Voices Award. A graduate of Harvard Law School, and a recipient of a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train Stories, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Letters, The Antioch Review, and Poets & Writers. She won the first-place prize in the Glimmer Train Short-Story Award for New Writers, and was the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has been awarded an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, a residency-fellowship from the Anderson Center at Tower View, and other honors.Â
Andy Nwannem
Andy Nwannem is a writer from New Orleans, Louisiana, now based in Portland, Oregon. Her work, rooted in personal essay and memoir, explores memory, identity, and the quiet moments that shape us. With a voice both intimate and reflective, Andy draws from the rhythms of the South and the stillness of the Pacific Northwest to craft stories that resonate with honesty and depth. You can follow her work on her Substack, anywhere else.
