ABOUT
Red Light Lit is a small press and performance series.
Red Light Lit is a small press and performance series presenting tightly curated, interdisciplinary events where music, poetry, prose, art, and dance converge on stage. Each show invites a diverse lineup of acclaimed and emerging artists to explore love, relationships, and human connection through bold, immersive storytelling. With over a decade of momentum, Red Light Lit has become a trusted cultural platform—building creative community, fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration, and leaving audiences inspired to make art of their own.
Since its founding in 2013, Red Light Lit has published 10 literary journals; produced more than 300 live shows in cities including Austin, Chicago, Joshua Tree, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle; and released the poetry anthology Love Is the Drug & Other Dark Poems as well as two full-length collections: Unearth (The Flowers) by Thea Matthews and Lions Like Us by Hollie Hardy. Forthcoming titles include The Body Can Tolerate (Poems) by Loria Mendoza, Red Light Lit’s first novel A Road of Her Own by Kimberly Gomes, and the recently acquired The Worst Kind of Girl by Susan Rukeyser.
Red Light Lit Presents
Red Light Lit Presents is a boutique music and events curator and presenter, producing intimate, lyric-forward shows across the U.S. Our lineup centers on emotionally resonant, mostly female-led acts, with each event crafted to be a singular experience—for both artist and audience. Past venues we’ve loved include: Gold Diggers (Los Angeles), Shack 15 (San Francisco), Soho House (Chicago), Ace Hotel & Swim Club (Palm Springs), the Ballroom (Austin), Here-After (Seattle), and DesertTrade (29 Palms).
Featured performers have included:
Heidi Alexander, Sam Burton, Andrés Miguel Cervantez, Shana Cleveland, Tim Cohen, Bart Davenport, Josiah Flores, Haley Heynderickx, Nick Jaina, Josiah Johnson, Shannon Lay, Jessica Lea Mayfield, Elizabeth Lubin, Laena Meyers, Elizabeth Moen, Angelina Moysov, Sarah Bethe Nelson, Tomo Nakayama, Noelle and the Deserters, Mary Simich, Sonny Smith, Leslie Stevens, This Lonesome Paradise, Sunny War, Wildlife Freeway, Zero Charisma and Zelma Stone.
TEAM
RED LIGHT LIT EDITOR-IN-CHEIF
JENNIFER LEWIS is a writer, editor, and publisher of Red Light Lit. Her debut short story collection, The New Low (Black Lawrence Press), was an SPD Bestseller. She is the winner of the Nomadic Press Bindle Award and The Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction Award. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Cosmonauts Avenue, Midnight Breakfast, The Los Angeles Press, and CRAFT, among others. Additionally, her most recent nonfiction work has been featured in The Rumpus, The Creative Independent, and Alta Journal, where her piece “The High Desert’s Funkiest Art Gallery” won the Los Angeles Press Club’s 17th annual National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Jennifer teaches at The Writing Salon in San Francisco.
Read Anita Felicelli's profile of Jennifer in Alta Journal and listen to their discussion on Alta Live.
Read Shelby Hinte’s interview with Jennifer in The Creative Independent.
Red Light Lit Austin Curator and Host
LORIA MENDOZA (she/they) is a queer Chicanx author, curator, and writing instructor in Austin, Texas. They attended Swarthmore College where they Honored in English Literature and eventually found themselves at San Francisco State University where they earned their MFA in the Creative Writing. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Vassar Review, great weather for Media, Orca, The Acentos Review, Mobius, Subprimal, Fourteen Hills Magazine, and The Walrus Literary Journal. Their book, Life’s Too Short (Fourteen Hills Press, 2017) won the Michael Rubin Book Award. Their stories and poetry have been performed at Red Light Lit (San Francisco, Healdsburg, Guerneville, Seattle, Los Angeles, Joshua Tree, Austin), The Austin Poetry Brothel, Bay Area Generations, Voz Sin Tinta, Oakland’s Beast Crawl, and San Francisco’s Litquake.
Read Carys Anderson’s cover-story about what Loria is up to with Red Light Lit Austin in the Austin Chronicle or check out their recent feature in Voyage Austin.
authors
hollie hardY
HOLLIE HARDY is a poet, educator, and award-winning author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press, 2014) and Lions Like Us (forthcoming from Red Light Lit Press in 2024). She holds an MFA in Poetry from SFSU, teaches private poetry workshops online and in person, and hosts the long-running monthly reading series Saturday Night Special, a Virtual Open Mic. Publications include The Common, Fourteen Hills, Colossus, Eleven Eleven, MiGoZine, Poetry Super Highway, sPARKLE & bLink, Parthenon West Review, and other journals. She lives in Austin, TX.
thea matthews
THEA MATTHEWS is a poet of African and Indigenous Mexican descent from San Francisco, CA. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and a BA in sociology from UC Berkeley. Her work appears in Obsidian, The Massachusetts Review, Alta Journal, The New Republic, and more. Her debut, Unearth [The Flowers] (Red Light Lit Press), was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie Poetry collections of 2020. Her second book, Grime (City Lights, 2024), further establishes her as a vital contemporary voice. In 2023, she was poet in residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora and programming curator at UC Berkeley’s Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. She teaches, edits, and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Loria Mendoza
LORIA MENDOZA (she/they) is a queer Chicanx author, curator, and writing instructor in Austin, Texas. They attended Swarthmore College where they Honored in English Literature and eventually found themselves at San Francisco State University where they earned their MFA in the Creative Writing. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Vassar Review, great weather for Media, Orca, The Acentos Review, Mobius, Subprimal, Fourteen Hills Magazine, and The Walrus Literary Journal. Their book, Life’s Too Short (Fourteen Hills Press, 2017) won the Michael Rubin Book Award. Their stories and poetry have been performed at Red Light Lit (San Francisco, Healdsburg, Guerneville, Seattle, Los Angeles, Joshua Tree, Austin), The Austin Poetry Brothel, Bay Area Generations, Voz Sin Tinta, Oakland’s Beast Crawl, and San Francisco’s Litquake.
Susan Rukeyser
Susan Rukeyser writes and lives in Joshua Tree, California. She created the Desert Split Open to amplify literary work that is feminist, queer, and “otherwise radical,” and publishes select titles as World Split Open Press, including Feckless Cunt: A Feminist Anthology. Her new novel, The Worst Kind of Girl, is out now. She is the author of one previous novel, Not On Fire, Only Dying (Twisted Road Publications). Her short work appears in many wonderful places, online and in print, and is collected most recently in Utility Location (Bottlecap Press) and Whatever Feels Like Home (above/ground press).
In the past, Susan was a Senior Book Buyer for Baker & Taylor, working with the most volatile bestsellers. For three years she edited weekly small press book reviews at Necessary Fiction. Her Creative Writing MA is from Lancaster University, UK. She worked at Connecticut’s Just Books, with legendary bookseller Warren Cassell, until he fired her. For a while, she owned a tiny used bookstore in New York’s Hudson Valley.