We’re so excited to welcome so many incredible table hosts to Red Hen’s 32nd Benefit Gala! Viet Thanh Nguyen, Luke Goebel, and DC Frost are three of the incredible authors whose tables are still available for purchase at this year’s event on November 8, 2026 at the Palladio Banquet Hall in Glendale. To inquire about purchasing a table, please reach out to [email protected]. For individual tickets, information, and our full list of remarkable table hosts (so far!), head over to /events/benefit/.
Read on to learn more about these hosts!
VIET THANH NGUYEN is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel THE SYMPATHIZER and its sequel, THE COMMITTED. He also wrote TO SAVE AND TO DESTROY: WRITING AS AN OTHER, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and NOTHING EVER DIES: VIETNAM AND THE MEMORY OF WAR, shortlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction. Other books include A MAN OF TWO FACES: A MEMOIR, A HISTORY, A MEMORIAL; THE REFUGEES; and two children's books, SIMONE and CHICKEN OF THE SEA.
LUKE B. GOEBEL is an American novelist and screenwriter whose work moves between fiction, memoir, and cinema with a restless, intimate energy. He is the author of FOURTEEN STORIES, NONE OF THEM ARE YOURS, winner of the Ronald Sukenick Prize for Innovative Fiction, and the forthcoming novel KILL DICK (Red Hen Press). His screenwriting credits include CAUSEWAY and EILEEN, and his writing has been appreciated in numerous literary journals. Goebel’s work is known for its formal daring and emotional precision, often exploring grief, identity, and the porous boundary between lived experience and art.
DC FROST is a second-generation Angelino. Her first novel, A PUNISHING BREED, published by Red Hen Press in 2024, received a New York Times recommendation. DC has published several literary short stories in various journals including UCLA’s WESTWIND. She had a long career in nonprofit fundraising before turning to writing full time. DC appreciates California’s melting pot of class, culture, and natural beauty. Frost lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a pack of rescue dogs. DC and her husband have an adult son.
There is currently 1 Red Hen Press Award open for submissions.
⭐️ Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award: October 31, 2025
Award is $3,000 + publication by Red Hen Press.
visit the Submission Guidelines in the linkinbio for details 📎
The series continues! This week take a look at author Rebecca Chace’s favorite (if she had to pick only one, of course) character from her new novel TALKING TO THE WOLF. 🐺 Out May 19th, TALKING TO THE WOLF is available for purchase at the link in our bio 💛📕
Dreams in Which I’m Almost Human is officially available for pre-order. ✨📚
At eight years old, Hannah Soyer underwent spinal fusion surgery to keep her lungs from collapsing. Fourteen years later, she chose another treatment for her neuromuscular condition—regular injections into her spinal fluid. But what does choice really mean, and how much power do our choices hold over our bodies and our lives?
In this lyrical, genre-bending memoir, Soyer explores bodily autonomy, consent, disability, caregiving, travel, family history, myth, and the fragile, powerful language we use to understand ourselves and the worlds we inhabit. Moving between dreams and reality, fairy tale and daily life, Dreams in Which I’m Almost Human invites readers to sit with the ambiguity, vulnerability, and wonder of living in a body.
💫 A bold and imaginative debut about what it means to be human.
Pre-order now at the link in bio. Officially out June 2, 2026! 🛍️📚
#redhenpress #memoir
Take a peek behind the curtain at what author William Archila has to say about his newest collection, CANÍCULA/DOG DAYS, out May 12th! 📕 To grab your copy today, head to the link in our bio! 📖
It's less than a week before TALKING TO THE WOLF by Rebecca Chace gets released! Want a sneak peek at the vibes of Chace's novel? Here's a Spotlify playlist to listen to while you wait for May 19th!
✨Hello fellow readers! ✨
In celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month check out our podcast Red Hen Radio and listen to an insightful and inspiring discussion of Asian American and Pacific Islander history and authors in publishing!
Click the link in our bio to tune in! 🎧📱📖
Couldn’t be more delighted with the cover of my upcoming poetry collection, The Cardinals, with @redhenpress .
It really captures the book perfectly. So excited to share it with the world on September 1st. Available for pre-order in paperback and hardback now!
#TheCardinals #BookCoverReveal #RedHenPress #NewRelease #PreOrderNow
HAPPY PUB DAY 🥳 Wishing a very happy Publication Day to CANICULA / DOG DAYS by William Archila, translated into Spanish by Mario Zetino
From war-torn El Salvador to the streets of LA, CANICULA / DOG DAYS is a bold, bilingual collection chronicling exile, memory, and resilience across borders.
William Archila’s CANICULA / DOG DAYS is a bilingual selection of his first two books of poetry, THE ART OF EXILE and THE GRAVEDIGGER’S ARCHAEOLOGY, two collections that chart the emergence of a newcomer in the chorus of Latin Poetry. Canícula, which means “dog days” in English, takes the reader on a poignant journey from the unrest in El Salvador in the 1980s to the urban landscape of the US immigrant, revealing the turmoil and memory of the disempowered, the impoverished, and the displaced who struggle back home in Central America. In lyrical and often harrowing language, Archila unearths the vestiges of war and the exile’s return in an elegy, the fragments of a myth, or a jazz riff. They come together like the bilateral symmetry of a volcano, and the result is the introduction to Archila’s poetry for the Spanish reader.
“In this brilliant bilingual anthology, William Archila creates a powerful and fiery poetics of exile, war, and, ultimately and brilliantly, survival. These poems, in both their English and translated forms, dig into the rancid holes that empire, dictatorship, and nation have left for us to crawl out of.”
— Daniel Borzutzky, National Book Award winner
“CANICULA / DOG DAYS presents us with a wealth of unforgettable poems about the duality of home for the immigrant poet, the one lost but still remembered from childhood with a mixture of longing and heartbreak. Mario Zetino should be applauded for imbuing his Spanish versions with a certain majesty that will surely impress those readers not just in El Salvador but also in the wider Spanish-speaking world.”
— Orlando Ricardo Menes, author of Gospel of Wildflowers & Weeds
To read more and grab your own copy, visit the link in our bio!
HAPPY PUB DAY 🥳 Wishing a very happy Publication Day to THE AFTERLIFE OF A THREADBARE JESTER by Khanh Ha.
Centering on a Vietnamese intelligence officer’s years-long ordeal in communist reeducation camps, THE AFTERLIFE OF A THREADBARE JESTER offers a heartrending and an illuminating look at the Vietnam War and its aftermath. War, literature, religion, politics, loyalty—they are all expertly interrogated through the protagonist’s compelling voice and the memorable cast of characters he encounters, this is a moving, unforgettable, and enlightening must-read.
“This is an important book from an important writer.”
— Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
“Ha is a writer of rare talent able to plumb the depth of the human heart in the smooth rhythm of a meandering river. At the same time, it is—at times brutally—realistic.”
— John Gist, author of The Yewberry Way: Book I Prayer, Lizard Dreaming of Birds, and CrowHeart
To read more and grab your own copy, visit the link in our bio!
HAPPY PUB DAY 🥳 Wishing a very happy Publication Day to THE LIFEGUARD by Laura Kasischke.
Can a single moment alter the lives of a whole community? In the town of Mission Hills, Michigan, a child drowns in the Olympic-sized pool at a summer swim club in 1969. By most, but not all, the lifeguard on duty that afternoon—a teenage girl who becomes the town’s scapegoat, bearing the weight of their grief and fears—is seen as responsible for the tragedy. As secrets unravel, the truth about the drowning gradually surfaces.
“The Lifeguard is a wonder of a novel—taut, penetrating, immersive, but above all, deeply humane.”
—Meg Howrey, author of They’re Going to Love You
“This is a gorgeously fractured, heartbreaking novel.”
— Kristen Roupenian, author of Cat Person and Other Stories
To read more and grab your own copy, visit the link in our bio!
As part of our new BOOK TALK series, we asked author Amy Pence to share a little about her new release YELLOW 💛 This week, you can listen to Amy read a poignant poem from her new novel and appreciate her grip on both prose and poetry 🖋️ Head to the link in our bio to grab your copy of YELLOW today! 📖
