El Martillo Press at The Pop-Hop

El Martillo Press reads and performs at The Pop-Hop in Highland Park! Featuring: Alyesha Wise, Matthew Cuban Hernandez, Ceasar K. Avelar, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Donato Martinez, and Briana Muñoz. Hosted by Matt Sedillo and David A. Romero.

The Pop-Hop

5002 York Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90042

$5 entrance

Featuring:

Alyesha Wise

Matthew Cuban Hernandez

Ceasar K. Avelar

Margaret Elysia Garcia

Briana Muñoz

Hosted by Matt Sedillo and David A. Romero.

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.

Matthew Cuban Hernandez is a poet, emcee, speaker, actor, and performance coach from Jacksonville, Florida. He has toured as far as Abu Dhabi and nearly every major city in the United States and Europe, performing, teaching and coaching poetry.

Ceasar K. Avelar is the second poet laureate of Pomona, CA. As a poet, Ceasar is dedicated to the working class.

Macondo fellow Margaret Elysia Garcia is the author of the poetry collection the daughterland (El Martillo Press, 2023), of the short story collection Graft (Tolsun Books, 2022), and the poetry chapbooks Iconistas!, and Burn Scars, (Lit Kit Collective, 2025, 2022).

Briana Muñoz is a poet from Southern California. She is the author of Loose Lips (Prickly Pear Publishing, 2019), Everything is Returned to the Soil (FlowerSong Press, 2021) and Martriarchy: Sacred Poems (El Martillo Press, 2025).

The Pop-Hop

The Pop-Hop is a mission-driven, multi-use community arts and education space. We sell new and used books and hundreds of items from local authors and artists. Our mission is to forge relationships with community partners to build a new creative ecosystem that amplifies marginalized voices, supports community growth, and empowers collective good works to build a healthier, more equitable neighborhood.

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.