People ///
Interim Executive Director
Jimmy Vega
jimmy@beyondbaroque.org
jimmy vega is the child of Mexican immigrants, a Chicano Los Angeles poet, educator, and interdisciplinary artist who creates and works in service of racial, environmental, and educational justice. vega is the author of future shock which was a finalist in the 2025 Alta California Chapbook Contest sponsored by Gunpowder Press. His debut poetry collection zirconium ash (What Books Press, 2025) was named one of 25 Best L.A.-Centric books of 2025 by L.A. Taco. A pushcart nominated writer, he holds a BA from UCLA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing from CalArts. vega's poems are anthologized in Catching Fire: The Los Angeles Wildfires, Poetry Goes to the Movies, and Maintenant a Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art. vega is currently the Interim Executive Director of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Programs Manager
Iván Salinas
ivan@beyondbaroque.org
Iván Salinas is Programs Manager at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. He is the author of a bilingual poetry collection, Dealer: Poesía Carcacha. He received a B.A. in English, Creative Writing, at California State University, Northridge. He is the co-editor of Drifter Zine, based in the 818.
Website Manager & Mike Kelley Gallery Coordinator
Jody Zellen
jody@beyondbaroque.org
Jody Zellen is a Los Angeles based artist, writer and designer. She makes animations, interactive installations, app art, net art, drawings, paintings, photographs, public art, and artists' books. Her website is www.jodyzellen.com. She also created and maintains the art listing site www.whatsonlosangeles.com.
Bookstore & Programs Assistant
Genesis Perez
genesis@beyondbaroque.org
Genesis Perez is queer Chicana poet and performer from Oxnard, California. They are the Program and Bookstore Assistant at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. From 2019 to 2020 they were the Youth Poet Laureate of Ventura County. They released their debut collection of poetry Flash Photography in 2021. Perez has performed at .Paak House, Medicine for Nightmares, and Stories Books and Cafe.
Development & Operations Assistant
Rhiannon Cielos Chavez
rchavez@beyondbaroque.org
Rhiannon Cielos Chavez is a trans-masculine whitewashed Mexican from Los Angeles, California. He received his BFA in Creative Writing from Southern Oregon University, where he read his debut chapbook, Beer Hunter (Armadillo Pussy Press), at the 2023 Oregon Fringe Festival. Their work has been published in the chapbook anthology One Poem Festival: An Anthology Celebrating 20 Years of Letras Latinas 2004-2024, as well as in Jefferson Journal, Drifter Zine, Mobile Data Mag, Main Squeeze, zines & things, and more. Rhiannon began working for Beyond Baroque in June 2024 as a Development Intern, and now holds the title Development and Operations Assistant.
Poetry Coalition Fellow in Communications & Development
Barbara Fant
barbara@beyondbaroque.org
Barbara Fant is the author of three poetry collections, Paint, Inside Out (2010), Mouths of Garden (2022), and Joy in the Belly of a Riot (2025). Her work has been featured in Electric Literature, McNeese Review, Button Poetry, and Def Poetry Jam, amongst others. She is a Women of the World Poetry Slam Finalist, a Healing Centered Engagement specialist, and a Recording Academy member. She holds a BA in Literature, a Master of Theology, and an MFA in Poetry. For over 15 years, she has led healing-informed poetry workshops for youth and adults who are incarcerated and survivors of domestic violence. A recipient of the 2025-2026 Poetry Coalition Fellowship through the Academy of American Poets, she now serves at Beyond Baroque as the Poetry Coalition Fellow in Communications and Development. She believes in the healing power of the arts.
Facilities & Theater Tech Manager
Eric Rudolph Ahlberg
A veteran Systems Engineer and community anchor, Eric Rudolph Ahlberg has navigated the tech landscape from the first generation of ATMs to Senior Engineering roles at Oracle. Today, he blends technical expertise with activism as the Layout Editor for the Free Venice Beachhead and Operations Lead at Beyond Baroque, dedicated to preserving the radical arts and history of Venice, CA.
Accounting
Francesca Corrado
francesca@beyondbaroque.org
Board of Trustees
Luivette Resto (President)
Luivette Resto is an award-winning poet, a mother of three revolutionary humans, and a middle school English teacher. She was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico but proudly raised in the Bronx. She is a CantoMundo and Macondo Fellow and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She has three books of poetry: Unfinished Portrait, Ascension, and Living on Islands Not Found on Maps. Her work has been mentioned in the LA Times and Ms. Magazine. Her most recent poetry can be found in Angel City Review, Latino Book Review, and Poetry Magazine. She is the associate editor of Tía Chucha Press, one of the co-hosts of Poetry LA, and serves as President of the Board of Trustees of Beyond Baroque.
Liz Camfiord (Vice President)
Liz Camfiord has worked for Penguin Random House for 30 years with independent booksellers and librarians. She holds her B.A. in English Literature from U.C. Berkeley. Liz serves Beyond Baroque as Board Vice President as well as Publications Chair for Beyond Baroque Books. In 2015, Liz co-founded the Pacific Coast Poetry Series with Suzanne Lummis and Henry J. Morro. Liz grew up in Southern California and lives in Malibu with her husband, Dave and their dog JoJo. They have two grown children.
Teresa Mei Chuc (Secretary)
Teresa Mei Chuc was born in Sài Gòn, Việt Nam, shortly after the Việt Nam War, and grew up in Pasadena and Altadena, California, on unceded Tongva Territory. Altadena Poet Laureate, Pasadena Rose Poet, and former Altadena Poetry Review Editor-in-Chief (2018–2020), she is the author of three poetry collections—Invisible Light, Keeper of the Winds, and Red Thread—and the chapbook Incidental Takes (2023). She is also co-editor of Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2026). Teresa holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Goddard College and is a public high school English teacher who has taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for more than twenty years.
Cynthia Alessandra Briano
Cynthia Alessandra Briano is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and grew up in Southeast L.A. She is Director of Santa Monica Reading Series First Fridays (previously Rapp Saloon Reading Series) and Founder of Love On Demand Global, which creates custom-poems on vintage typewriters and donates a portion of proceeds to charities. She is a College Counselor and teaches English Literature, Creative Writing, and African American Arts & Literature. She has taught at California State University Fullerton in the Ethnic Studies Program as Lecturer in the African American Studies Department, and she is Co-host of Black Book Chat. Cynthia is Founder of Spitfire Literary Arts, offering Manuscript Editing and College Application Consulting. She was awarded the 2023-2024 Artist Fellowship from the City of Santa Monica and serves as Treasurer on the Board of Trustees at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. @CynthiaABriano
Jeffrey Graham
Jeff is a graduate of Brown University (B.A.), Loyola Marymount (M.A., English), and Georgetown University Law Center (J.D.) He is a lawyer admitted in both California and New York and has served as a restructuring advisor in the real estate and entertainment industries. In California, he developed hundreds of residential units, an award-winning transit-oriented village, and 32 public charter schools in underserved neighborhoods. In the non-profit sector, Jeff taught American Studies at Sweden’s Lund University, served as director of a Rudolf Steiner/Waldorf school, and executive director for a community development financing institution. Jeff currently serves on the Lund University Foundation Board. In 2019 Jeff published a collection of his poems: “Elegy to a Surveyor” and is working on a second book.
Lenore French
Lenore French is founder of Transformation Arts, a Los Angeles–based 501(c)(3) cultural equity organization advancing economic democracy through art. Since 2013, Transformation Arts has produced public art projects, multidisciplinary exhibitions, and arts festivals. A former Paramount Studios television executive, French worked with leading producers and creators including Norman Lear, David Wolper, Gary Marshall, and author Alex Haley. She is also an award-winning screenwriter and taught television writing at New York University. French began her career working on Black history documentaries for Arno Press/New York Times and was an early member of the Third World Women’s Alliance, later profiled in We Were There: The Third World Women’s Alliance & the Second Wave. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University and studied film and television at NYU.
Ymasumac Marañón-Davis
Ymasumac writes, teaches, and creates from an entre mundos perspective shaped by her father’s Quechua ancestry from the Andes of Bolivia, her mother’s English-Irish roots in New England, and her upbringing in a Mayan community in southern Mexico. As a scholar, writer, educator, and keeper of intuitive healing spaces, she explores womanhood, liminality, empowerment, resistance, and resurgence through frameworks of translanguaging, Pachakuti, and Ch’ixi. She holds a doctorate in Education for Social Justice from the University of San Diego, leads a Participatory Action Research project with Latine women, and, through Limitless Learning Lab, bridges academia and grassroots movements to build cultures rooted in relationality. At the heart of her work is a guiding question: how do we learn to live and create while standing in-between?
Richard Nielsen
Richard Nielsen is an artist, activist, painter, photographer and printmaker, with a background in lithography and etching. Nielsen's painting practice is informed by his exploration in the expanded fields of printmaking and analogue photography. From 2011 to 2022, Nielsen was the founder and Master-printer for Untitled Prints and Editions which offer printmaking collaboration to artists from around the world. As well as his personal painting practice, Richard Nielsen has been a close collaborator and life partner to Lauren Bon and her Metabolic Studio since 2007.
Jeremy Ra
A Best-of-the-Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, Jeremy Ra’s poems have appeared in Los Angeles Book Review, Spillway, I-70 Review, Cultural Daily, and other publications. He was the recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize. His first chapbook, Another Way of Loving Death, was published by Moon Tide Press, and his collaborative chapbook, God Is a River Running Down My Palm, was published by Picture Show Press. He currently co-hosts the interview series on Poetry.la. By day, he is a litigation paralegal specialist at an Am Law 100 firm and has represented high-profile clients in a broad range of litigation matters including intellectual property, trademark, patent, commercial class actions, employment, and tax.
National Advisory Council
Bill Mohr, Lucas Reiner, George Drury Smith, David St. John, Paul Vangelisti
Los Angeles Advisory Council
Ryka Aoki, Lynne Bronstein, Gerry Fialka, Amélie Frank, James Evert Jones, Juri Koll, Pegarty Long, Suzanne Lummis
Garden Caretaker
Safe Place for Youth (S.P.Y)
Beyond Baroque Founder
George Drury Smith
Poet-in-Residence
Will Alexander
Interns
Anikazoe Dueñas
Volunteers
Johanna Drucker, Karen Kevorkian, Tom Laichas
IN MEMORIAM
Linda J. Albertano, Alfred Benjamin, Robert Branaman, Mike Cluff, Justin Chin, Wanda Coleman, Larry Colker, Yvonne De La Vega, Fred Dewey, Nita Donavan, Erica Erdman, Bob Flanagan, Jerry Garcia, Alexandra Garrett, Annette Geisler, R.L. Greenfield, Joseph Hansen, John Harris, Peter J Harris, Bill Hickok, Mike Kelley, Doug Knott, Philomene Long, Carol Lem, Jack McCarthy, Fred Moramarco, Henry Morro, Akilah Oliver, Frankie T. Rios, Jerome Rothenberg, Michelle Serros, Lee Sloca, Ed Smith, Austin Straus, John Thomas, Cynthia Toronto, Scott Wannberg, Mel Weisburd, Jan Wesley, Jackson Wheeler