Ladies Night El Martillo Press at The Goddess Mercado Bazaar

The Goddess Mercado Bazaar hosts El Martillo Press for its first LADIES NIGHT celebrating some of the amazing mujeres who've published with the press! Plus, open mic! Hosted by Felicia 'Fe' Montes!

The Goddess Mercado Bazaar

424 W Whittier Blvd

Montebello, CA 90640, USA

Featuring:

Sonia Gutiérrez

Iris De Anda

Margaret Elysia Garcia

Susan Hayden

Natalie Sierra

Hosted by Felicia 'Fe' Montes!

With a limited open mic!

Felicia 'Fe' Montes

Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes (M.A./M.F.A.) is a MeXicana Indigenous holistic artivist, femcee, designer, poet, professor, public scholar, and practitioner of the healing arts from East Los Angeles. She is the co-founder and director of Mujeres de Maiz, In Lak Ech, Botanica del Barrio and El MERCADO y Mas and an Assistant Professor in Chicanx/Latinx Arts and Social Practice at Cal State University Long Beach. She has published in the books Fleshing the Spirit, Voices from the Ancestors, and MeXicana Fashions and is the co editor of the book Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice and Feminist Praxis (University of Arizona Press, 2024) www.FeliciaMontes.com

Sonia Gutiérrez

Sonia Gutiérrez is the author of two full-length bilingual poetry collections, Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña (Olmeca Press, 2013) and Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma (El Martillo Press, 2024), recipient of an honorable mention for the ILBA’s The Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award—One Author—Bilingual, and the novel, Dreaming with Mariposas (FlowerSong Press, 2020), winner of the Tomás Rivera Book Award 2021, the International Latino Book Awards 2022, and the ILBA Book into Movie Awards 2023. She teaches composition, critical thinking and writing, and creative writing. Sonia Gutiérrez is currently working on her first illustrated book, The Adventures of a Burrito Flying Saucer and Sana Sana Colita de Rana: Poems to Not Perish / Sana sana colita de rana: Poemas para no morir, a bilingual poetry collection. She lives in the Californias. To learn more about Sonia Gutiérrez and her work, visit www.soniagutierrez.com. 

Iris De Anda

Iris De Anda is a Guanaca Tapatia poet, speaker and musician who has been featured with KPFK and KPFA Pacifica Radio, organized with Academy of American Poets, performed at Los Angeles Latino Book Festival, Feria del Libro Tijuana, Mexico, Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba and is named one of Today’s Revolutionary Women of Color. Author of Codeswitch: Fires from Mi Corazón (Los Writers Underground Press, 2014), Roots of Redemption: You Have No Right to Remain Silent (FlowerSong Press, 2022) and Paint the White House RED (El Martillo Press, 2025).

Margaret Elysia Garcia

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). She’s the co-editor of the anthology Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country (AK Press, 2025). Her second short story collection Chicana Noir and Other Stories will be published in 2026 by El Martillo Press. She's the recipient of Chapman University's non-tuition fellowship for Creative Writing.

Susan Hayden

Susan Hayden is a multigenre writer. She is the author of Now You Are a Missing Person, a memoir in poems, stories and fragments, published by Moon Tide Press. It was a Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Book of 2024, after having received the Kirkus Star. Hayden’s book also made the Shortlist for the Memoir Prize for Books, was an Eric Hoffer Award Finalist, a National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist, a Readers’ Choice Book Award Finalist and a Finalist in the Zibby Awards 2023 for Best Coming of Middle/Old Age book, awarded by Zibby Owens. And it was a 2024 Finalist in the IAN Book of the Year Awards in 3 categories: Grief/Hardship, Poetry, and Women’s Non-Fiction. Last year, Now You Are a Missing Person was selected for the Best of 2023: Fiction & Literature from Los Angeles Public Library, as selected by library staff. She has been published in the anthologies Look What I Did About Your Silence (El Martillo Press, 2025); From Venice to Venice / Da Venice a Venezia (El Martillo Press, 2024); Beat Not Beat (Moon Tide Press); Los Angeles In the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine (Rare Bird Books); The Black Body (Seven Stories Press), I Might Be The Person You Are Talking To (Padua Playwrights Press) and elsewhere.

Natalie Sierra

Natalie Sierra (she/they) is the third poet laureate of Pomona, California. She is a poet, author, and editor. Her work has been featured in Westwind: A Journal of the Arts (UCLA), Medium, the Los Angeles Times, and more. Natalie is also the author of the poetry collection Medusa (DSTL Arts, 2020), of which her poem “Medusa Is My Sister” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Natalie followed that with her debut novel Charlie, Forever and Ever (FlowerSong Press, 2021). Natalie’s second novel, Beyond the Grace of God was published in 2025. Besides her work as an author and editor, Natalie is the president of Café Con Libros Press, a nonprofit bookstore in downtown Pomona.