This weekend is the first show of a new regular event called Soul Together. It’s the brainchild of our man Peter Woods. It’s a night of music with a touch of literature. Three musical acts introduced by three poets in their own magnificent ways.

It’s weird. With all the stuff going on, we’ve been treating this as a small project. And it is, in a way. Peter conceived it, planned it, and put it together pretty fast. He’s been running point on the whole thing, being in charge of it as he has with other Quality Collective events over the years. (Soul Together is officially a joint event from Writ Large Press and Quality Collective.) This he has done while we’ve also been preparing for our big New York trip for PUBLISH!, our two day event at the start of June, and for our biggest event, possibly ever, the release of Antidote by José Luís Peixoto, coming in mid-June.
But the more I think about it, Soul Together is a crucial point in our continuing evolution as a publisher, as a literary entity in Los Angeles. It’s the first of what we think will be countless events and venues we create, support, and get involved in all over town.
The other day, we were asking ourselves why we were doing this.
The answer?
We have to continue spreading literature. We have to keep placing writers where they can be seen or heard. We have to continue finding new audience members.
These are things that can’t achieved by just relying on the favorite established places. The slots available for writers are finite (obviously) and often a closed system available for friends and other alliances.
More importantly, we need to take the writers to where the audience is. This means we have to find our way to people who don’t make it out to the usual places, to people who don’t even know they want to hear writers, to places where people don’t expect literature.
People will come to Soul Together to hear incredible music from Blackbird, Nicholson, and El-Haru Kuroi. In the process, they will get a taste of wonderful writers like Mike the Poet, Jessica Ceballos and Inoe Oner.
In late June, we are joining forces with Keith Myers and his Bar Tab Confessions, a fun and raucous storytelling video project, to turn it into a live storytelling night at the legendary skidrow bar, King Eddys Saloon.
So join us at The Venus Printing Lofts, home to Galeria Obscura and located at 1230 S. Flower St., downtown LA, 90015. Soul Together. Saturday May 25th. 9pm. Facebook event page.
In the meantime, enjoy these videos from the musicians that will be performing.