Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Sat, Apr 26
|University of Southern California
El Martillo Press is proud to partner with Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural for this year's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Luis J. Rodriguez, Matt Sedillo, Tshaka Campbell, Matthew Cuban Hernandez, Sonia Gutiérrez, and Margaret Elysia Garcia signing at Booth 008!
Time & Location
Apr 26, 2025, 10:00 AM – Apr 27, 2025, 5:00 PM
University of Southern California , Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA
About the event
El Martillo Press is proud to partner with Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural for this year's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.
April 26-27
University of Southern California
Booth: 008
De Los Stage area (South Trousdale / Cardinal Zone)
Parking $20. Free attendance!
Books and other merch for sale!!!
Author signing schedule:
Saturday, April 26
10 am, Matt Sedillo, Mexican Style and Mowing Leaves of Grass, CEO of El Martillo Press
12 pm, Tshaka Campbell, Blood at the Root: An Nkisi
2 pm, Luis J. Rodriguez, Always Running
Sunday, April 27
10 am, Matthew Cuban Hernandez, All Brown Boys Get Trumpets
12 pm, Margaret Elysia Garcia, the daughterland
2 pm, Sonia Gutiérrez, Paper Birds: Feather by Feather / Pájaros de papel: Pluma por pluma
Visit Tia Chucha's and El Martillo Press for updates!
Matt Sedillo (Saturday, April 26, 10 am)
Matt Sedillo has been described as the "best political poet in America" as well as "the poet laureate of the struggle." He is a co-founder and CEO of El Martillo Press. His work has drawn comparisons in print to Bertolt Brecht, Roque Dalton, Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, Carl Sandburg and various other legends of the past.
Tshaka Campbell (Saturday, April 26 12 pm)
Poet Laureate Emeritus, Santa Clara County. Originally from London England, Tshaka Campbell was raised on his father’s teachings of solidarity and brought up on orators the likes of Garvey's ‘Pan-Africanism’ to William Churchill, as such, he adopted his father’s intense love of language.
Luis J. Rodriguez (Saturday, April 26 2 pm)
From 2014-2016, Luis served as the official Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. For Luis poetry is soul talk, a prophetic act, a powerful means to enlarge one's presence in the world. Luis is also a novelist/memoirist/short story writer/children's book writer/essayist as well as a community & urban peace activist, mentor, healer, youth & arts advocate, husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.
Matthew Cuban Hernandez (Sunday, April 27 10 am)
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.
Margaret Elysia Garcia (Sunday, April 27 12 pm)
Margaret Elysia Garcia is an award-winning author of poetry collections Iconistas! (Lit Kit Collective, 2025), the daughterland (El Martillo Press, 2023), and Burn Scars, (LKC, 2022). She is the author of the short story collection Graft (Tolsun Books, 2022), and the forthcoming Chicana Noir - Stories (El Martillo Press, October 2025), and the co-editor of the anthology Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Community in California’s Fire Country, (AK Press, June 2025).
Sonia Gutiérrez (Sunday, April 27 2 pm)
Sonia Gutiérrez is the author of Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña and the recipient of the Tomás Rivera Book Award 2021 and the International Latino Book Awards 2022 for her novel, Dreaming with Mariposas.
Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural
The mission of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural is to transform community in the Northeast San Fernando Valley and beyond through ancestral knowledge, the arts, literacy and creative engagement. Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural is a not-for-profit learning bookstore and cultural arts center. We support and promote the continued growth, development and holistic learning of our community through the many powerful means of the arts. The Centro provides a positive space for people to activate what we all share as human beings: The capacity to create, to imagine and to express ourselves in an effort to improve the quality of life for our community.
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.
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