June 19th, 2026, Friday, 5-7 pm PT, (In person)
This month's Grotto Literary Salon celebrates works of Queer writers, featuring K.M Soehnlein, Josh Wilson, Chino Lee Chung, Sezin Devi Koehler, and Andrea Isabel Díaz. Dominic Lim will emcee the event, which will take place at The Writers' Grotto, 1663 Mission Street Suite 602, San Francisco (near the Van Ness BART & MUNI station).
Reader bios:
Dominic Lim is the author of All the Right Notes (a 2023 Best Book by USA Today, Goodreads, and more) and Karaoke Queen (a 2024 Amazon Editor’s Pick). A co-host of San Francisco’s Babylon Salon, he holds a Master of Music from Indiana University and is a proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.
Chino Lee Chung is a queer and trans Chinese Mexican personal essay writer, grassroots activist, and is currently working on a collection of essays that integrate his social activism with his intersectional identities. He’s a recipient of the 2024-2025 San Jose State Steinbeck Fellowship and a member of San Francisco Writer’s Grotto. He holds an MFA from the California College of Arts and San Francisco State University. His work appears in Invitation to Joy – Writer’s Creating in Community, Gender Queer: voices from beyond the sexual binary, a featured narrator in “So Many Stars; An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color” and currently exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts “Roots and Futures of Queer and Trans Movements.” He served as an Assistant Fiction Editor at 14 Hills Literary Magazine.
Sezin Devi Koehler is a multiracial Sri Lankan/Lithuanian American and author of Much Ado About Keanu: A Critical Reeves Theory (April 2025, Chicago Review Press), a sociocultural deep dive into what makes Keanu Reeves so extraordinary as a performer and artist. Pop-culture writer, entertainment journalist, and Rotten Tomatoes-certified film and TV critic for Black Girl Nerds, Sezin's bylines also include Entertainment Weekly, The Daily Beast, Black Girl Nerds, Queerty, and many more. Her poetry has appeared in Tension Literary, Verse News, Syncopation Literary Journal, and Dark Poets Club. Sezin is a board member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto and wordsmiths from an East Oakland historic landmark that looks uncannily like the house from Practical Magic, where she can see the San Francisco Bay from her own window.
K.M. Soehnlein (Karl) has been honored with the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize from Lambda Literary. His published novels are Army of Lovers, recognized by the Independent Publisher Book Awards for the best LGBTQ Fiction; The World of Normal Boys, winner of the Lambda Award for Gay Fiction; You Can Say You Knew Me When; and Robin and Ruby. He teaches in the MFA In Writing Program at University of San Francisco.
Josh Wilson is an editor, journalist and writer in San Francisco, and publisher of The Fabulist Magazine, a home to fantastical fiction and art in print and digital editions. Stories published in The Fabulist have been finalists for the Pushcart Prize and the Shirley Jackson Awards. He is a recipient of the Society for Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award, and founder of the 501(c)3 organization Independent Arts & Media.
Andrea Isabel Díaz (she/ella) is a Boricua lesbian poet based in the Bay Area. She is a first year MFA student at the University of San Francisco and often writes about queer love, liberatory relationships, and her experience as a diasporic Puerto Rican. Andrea loves the beach at night, golden trumpet trees, and everything blood orange.”