Alyesha Wise at Beyond Baroque

Join Alyesha Wise as she stages a production/reading of her book My Older Brother, A Famous Rapper (El Martillo Press, 2025).

Alyesha will experiment with lighting, sound, and costuming—staging a hybrid between a poetry reading and one-woman dramatic performance!

Beyond Baroque

681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

About the Author:

Alyesha Wise is an award-winning, published poet, educator & speaker from Camden, N.J. Currently residing in LA, she is the Director of Programming for Street Poets, Inc., an organization mostly serving juvenile injustice-involved youth with mentorship and arts programming. Alyesha has been featured on platforms and in publications such as OWN TV, BET, LA Times, Bustle, Afropunk, PBS, Buzzfeed and more. Other collabs include the ACLU, The Shabazz Center, The Nantucket Project, Brave New Films and the Google Interstellar Project. Ron Howard once wrote about Alyesha's work, "Very Powerful."

About the Book:

“In My Older Brother, A Famous Rapper, Alyesha Wise invites us into stories that are as raw as they are healing. Through themes of family, identity, and peace, Wise transforms pain into resilience and fracture into unity. This remarkable collection is both intimate and universal—a testament to the strength we discover in our shared humanity.”  

—Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X, author, community organizer, social activist, and motivational speaker

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 the largest collection of new poetry books for sale and an archive that houses over 40,000 books, including small press and limited-edition publications, chronicling the history of poetry movements in Los Angeles and beyond. Through the years, Beyond Baroque has played muse to the Venice Beats, the burgeoning Punk movement and visiting scholars. Many of the city's leading literary talents, including Dennis Cooper, Wanda Coleman, Tom Waits, Exene Cervenka and Amy Gerstler, are alumni of the Wednesday night poetry workshop. Many of the world’s most well-known independent artists, including Patti Smith, Michael McClure, Dana Gioia, and Viggo Mortensen have performed on its stage.

El Martillo Press:

Founded by Matt Sedillo and David A. Romero, El Martillo Press publishes writers whose pens strike the page with clear intent; words with purpose to pry apart assumed norms and to hammer away at injustice. El Martillo Press proactively publishes writers looking to pound the pavement to promote their work and the work of their fellow pressmates. El Martillo is the builder of bridges and the destroyer of walls.