Beyond Baroque Announces The Beyond Gala

The annual benefit and awards event, to be held October 21, will celebrate the iconic Los Angeles literary arts institution’s 55th anniversary and honor significant writers and artists.

Beyond Baroque, one of the United States’ leading literary arts centers and the oldest literary arts institution in Los Angeles, has announced the date for The Beyond Gala. This year’s annual benefit and awards event, set for Saturday, October 21, at 5:30 PM, will celebrate Beyond Baroque’s 55th anniversary and serve as a fundraiser.

This will be the first time Beyond Baroque members and supporters will gather together in person to celebrate awardees as a community since the pandemic began. The festive event will be held at Playa Studios in Culver City, and will include an online and live silent auction, cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, The Beyond Baroque Awards Dinner, and performances. The headline MC, special guests, and honorees will be announced in a formal invitation soon.

Previous honorees include the late Wanda Coleman; L.A.’s inaugural poet laureate Eloise Klein Healy; former L.A. Poet Laureate Luis Rodriguez; actor and poet Viggo Mortensen for his service to Beyond Baroque; and Beyond Baroque Poet-in-Residence Will Alexander, among many others.

Beyond Baroque
Founded in 1968, Beyond Baroque is one of the United States’ leading nonprofit literary arts centers and is the oldest literary arts institution in Los Angeles. Located in the historic Venice City Hall building in Venice, Calif., Beyond Baroque is dedicated to cultivating new writing and expanding public knowledge of poetry, fiction, literature, music, and art, through workshops, readings, performances, cultural events, and exhibitions. Few literary spaces have done more to cultivate innovative art from cultural outsiders, or to shape emerging artistic movements. Across 55 years, Beyond Baroque has nurtured the Venice Beats, cradled the L.A. punk scene, and provided crucial support to such seminal writers, musicians, artists, and performers as Dennis Cooper, Mike Kelley, Tom Waits, Wanda Coleman, Viggo Mortensen, Amanda Gorman, and Exene Cervekna and John Doe of the band X.

The Beyond Gala
The Beyond Baroque Awards Dinner began in 2011 as a way to honor poets in the L.A. poetry community who have shined a light on the craft of poetry, both through their writing and efforts to draw attention to poetry as an art form. The event was renamed The Beyond Gala in 2023.

Contact
To learn more about partnerships, sponsorships, donations, or media, contact Development & Communications Director Michele Raphael: michele@beyondbaroque.org; tel: 310-883-5761.