She Speaks: Reclaiming Identity w/ Consuelo G Flores

On our first night of our She Speaks poetry series, we ask a question that’s been featured in various recent debates in the public discourse: “How do you define a woman?” The deep, nuanced spectrum of answers comes from a varied collection of poets curated by Consuelo G. Flores, with live music provided by Maritri Garrett.

Grand Performances Amphitheater

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Consuelo G. Flores is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, and cultural activist recognized for her powerful contributions to Chicano art and Día de los Muertos traditions. Born and raised in East L.A., she creates elaborate altar installations that honor loved ones and spotlight social issues—from racial injustice to pandemic loss. Her work has been featured at Grand Park, Avenue 50 Studio, and other key cultural spaces.

A former board member of Self Help Graphics and current council member for the Eastside Arts Initiative, Flores is also an accomplished writer and playwright. Her recent work includes An Illegal Feast (Broadstone Press, 2025), and contributions to Fieldnotes on Allyship and Covid, Isolation, and Hope.

Whether through visual art, performance, or prose, Flores continues to uplift community memory and cultural resilience with clarity, heart, and purpose.

After working with at-risk youth as a social worker, Diana began writing and producing for film and TV. Her work is rooted in social justice, including the award-winning Niña Quebrada, which explores sex trafficking.

Now a wheelchair user, she continues to write, contributing to CW’s 4400, Good Trouble, and My Life is Worth Living.

Diana, a Hollywood Fringe Festival Scholarship recipient, will premiere her solo show Me, Myself and Other in June 2025.

Elizabeth Wong is a playwright, theatre director, sitcom writer, and teaching artist at Boston Conservatory@Berklee. Elizabeth's plays have been produced in the U.S. and abroad, including @LYS, LETTERS TO A STUDENT REVOLUTIONARY, CHINA DOLL, KIMCHEE & CHITLINS, SPACE NUNS OF THE RESCUE MAINFRAME, and DATING & MATING IN MODERN TIMES.

Elizabeth recently produced and wrote an immersive multimedia art/soundscape, VOICES OF THE UNIVERSE, inspired by NASA sonifications with images from the Los Angeles Astronomical Society. Her installation has been exhibited at the historic Mt Wilson Observatory, the Garvey Ranch Park Observatory, the Monterey Park Bruggemeyer Library, and at the Taxco Theatre gallery.

Elizabeth, along with Consuelo G. Flores and Andrea Goyan, writes in a six-member women's poetry collective founded by E.E. King. Their first book of badass poetry together, ILLEGAL FEAST, will be published by Broadstone Media this month.

Sehba Sarwar is a writer and multidisciplinary artist whose work tackles displacement, migration, and women’s issues.

Her essays, short stories, and poems have appeared in Asia: Magazine of Asian Literature, Poetry in English from Pakistan, Callaloo, Creative Time, Aleph, Vallum, and elsewhere, while her short stories are anthologized by Feminist Press, Akashic Books, and Harper Collins India.

A second edition of Sarwar’s novel, Black Wings, was published by Veliz Books (2019), and her video collages have been screened in Pakistan, India, and Egypt. She has also generated a large body of site-specific visual art installations.

Born and raised in an activist home in Karachi, Pakistan, Sarwar is the recipient of multiple artist awards through organizations, including LA’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Pasadena’s Cultural Affairs Division, Mid-America Arts Alliance, among others. Her papers are archived at the University of Houston, and she serves as Altadena Co-Poet Laureate (2024-26).

Frankie Hernandez is a poet with a passion for honest storytelling. In 2024, she received the Eastside Arts Initiative in partnership with LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes to produce “Daughters of Poetry.” This short film trilogy is told through Frankie’s poetry about living fully through birth and death with her daughters, Delilah and Luna.

2024 also brought the release of the documentary film she produced, “Saving Malibu,” about the 2018 Woolsey Fire. She is in production on a documentary film about a political poet as he performs on every continent in 2025. Her film and TV projects have been on NBC, HBO, and have received international recognition from Goya, Alma Awards, and more.

As one of original members of Warner Bros Studios digital home entertainment team, Frankie worked on iconic projects such as The Dark Knight, The Harry Potter film series, and the Sex and the City films.

Frankie was part of former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's Office of Economic Development Roundtable for Women in Film - Los Angeles Women's Entrepreneur Day as well as the Los Angeles Valley Economic Alliance Business Accelerator Program.

Frankie is a native of East Los Angeles and has lived in Malibu for 16 years.

Andrea Goyan is an award-winning writer, playwright, and poet. In her spare time, she paints, walks her dogs, and co-hosts Metastellar’s Long-Lost Friends and Storytime.

Recent stories are available in Small Wonders, Intrepidus Ink, Dark Matter Presents: Monstrous Futures, All Worlds Wayfarer, Flash Fiction Magazine, and The Molotov Cocktail. She's part of a collective of women poets. Their first collection, "An Illegal Feast," will be out this summer.

Andrea lives in sunny Southern California with her husband, the dogs above, and two cats. Some of her stories are available on her website www.andreagoyan.com and she’d love it if you follow her on Bluesky @andreagoyan.bsky.social

Born and raised in East Los Angeles, Pat Alderete writes with fierce honesty about the beauty and brutality of varrio life, offering rare insight into the inner worlds of a community often overlooked in literature. A founding member of PEN Center USA West’s Emerging Voices, Alderete has studied with celebrated writers including Sandra Cisneros, Luis J. Rodriguez, and Mona Simpson.

Her short stories appear in Joteria, PEN Center Journal, and numerous anthologies, while her performance work—spanning plays, solo shows, and literary readings—has graced venues from the J. Paul Getty Museum to KPFK’s Unheard L.A.. A longtime member of Macondo Writers Workshop and Writers At Work, Alderete is currently working on a memoir about Chicana life in East L.A.

She lives in Los Angeles with her wife, Mary, and their daughter, Alicia.

Olga García Echeverría (She/Her/Ella), born and raised in East Los Angeles, is the author of Falling Angels: Cuentos y Poemas. Her work has been published in The Sun Magazine, Imaniman: Poets Writing on the Anzalduan Borderlands, Lavandería: A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Words, U.S. Latino Literature Today, Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language, among others.

As co-literary executor of the beloved lesbian Colombian writer and publisher, tatiana de la tierra, she has worked with queer and feminist presses in the U.S. and abroad to help bring to fruition such projects as the republishing of de la tierra’s For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology (Sinister Wisdom 2018) and most recently Redonda y radical: antología poética de tatiana de la tierra (Sincronía Casa Editorial 2022).

Olga has been an educator in the literary arts for over 25 years and currently teaches literature in the Chicanx Latinx Studies Department at California State University of Los Angeles.

Natalie Nicole Dressel is a transgender actress/writer currently living in North Hollywood, CA. In 2019, she attained her MFA in writing for the Stage and Screen from Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA, and in 2013, she earned her BFA in Theater from Michigan State University. Her plan,y There is Evil in This House was a 2019 O'Neill NPC finalist and the winner of Best Ensemble at SheLA this past July.

She has 10+ years of stand-up comedy exp and in 2012 was named "Funniest Mouth of the South" in Chattanooga, TN. She's worked on two projects that are currently available on HBO Max (Veneno, The Lady and The Dale), and in 2021, she was the recipient of an artist grant from West Hollywood and put up an exhibition of her work in 2022.

Her play "Granny, or How to Forgive When You Can't Forget: A Play in Poems" was turned into an audioplay by Antaeus Theatre, which is available now wherever you find your podcasts.

Rochelle Newman is a writer, performer, and creative strategist whose work spans poetry, theater, and cultural storytelling. Born on the “small island near Puerto Rico called Manhattan,” she draws inspiration from her Lower East Side roots.

An award-winning playwright and published poet, her solo show Hip Bones and Cool Whip earned praise from the LA Times, and her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Independent, Off Assignment, and more.

Her upcoming work includes poetry in Anger is a Gift (Luchadora Press) and an essay in Manna Songs (ELJ Editions).

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

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