Book launch for Aerik Francis’s Bodypolitic, with Aerik Francis, Tyler Hurula, Nathan A. Moore, and Suzi Q. Smith. Saturday, March 21, 2026, 6pm

Please join us on Saturday, March 21, 2026, at 6pm at Counterpath (7935 East 14th Ave.) for a book launch and readings by Aerik Francis, Tyler Hurula, Nathan A. Moore, and Suzi Q. Smith. Free and open to the public.

Aerik Francis is a Queer Black and Latinx poet & teaching artist based in Denver, Colorado, USA, and is currently serving as the second Adams County Poet Laureate. Aerik wants us to come together and gum up the gears of the machinery of the empire toward all of our collective liberation. They are the author of poetry chapbooks MISEDUCATION (New Delta Review 2023) and BODYPOLITIC (Abode Press 2026). Find more of their work on their website phaentompoet.com or via social media @phaentompoet

Crisosto Apache is the current 11th Poet Laureate for Colorado (26-27) and is from Mescalero, New Mexico, on the Mescalero Apache reservation. Crisosto is Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo). Apache’s clanships are the Salt Clan, born for the Towering House Clan. Apache attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and earned an MFA, and is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing. Crisosto is also an editor-at-large for The Offing Magazine. Apache’s books are GENESIS (Lost Alphabet), Out-of-Print  & Ghostword (Gnashing Teeth Publishing), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s 2023 Betty Berzon Emerging Writers Award and a finalist for the 2023 Colorado Authors League Award in poetry, with a new poetry collection is(ness), from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. Apache is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Crisosto continues to advocate for the Two-spirit/Indigiqueer community for the past twenty years, working in grassroots non-profit organizations both locally and nationally.

Tyler Hurula (she/they) is the pinkest poet in Denver, Colorado. She strives to be the most queer and polyamorous person they can be. You’ll likely find her parading around in a tiara with hot pink lipstick going to an art walk or discussing the intricacies of the latest horror movie she’s watched with anyone who will listen. Author of chapbook Love Me Louder (Querencia Press) and Too Pretty for Plain Coffee (Wayfarer Books). They have been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes, and were an honorable mention for the Write Bloody 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize Contest. She is an editor for South Broadway Press.

Nathan Alexander Moore (she/they) is a writer, cultural theorist, and educator. She is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder whose research explores Black transfemininity, speculative fiction, and temporality. Their scholarly work has been published in Women & Performance, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and Departures in Critical Qualitative Research. Her poetry chapbook, small colossus, was published in 2021 by above/ground press. Their fiction was a Semifinalist for the 2021 Screencraft Cinematic Book Competition, as well as shortlisted for the 2022 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award. She was also a 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow in poetry. The Rupture Files, published by Hajar Press in 2024, is their debut short story collection. She is a 2026 Chateau d’Orquevaux Writer in Residence.

Suzi Q. Smith is an award-winning poet and author who lives in Denver, Colorado.
The author of poetry collections Poems for the End of the World, A Gospel of Bones (winner of the 2019 Electric Press Award), and the chapbook collection, Thirteen Descansos, Smith is also the co-editor of two anthologies, Tell It Slant: An Anthology of Creative Nonfiction by Writers from Colorado’s Prisons and All the Lives We Ever Lived, Volume I, both Finalists for the Colorado Book Award. While primarily known for her poetry, Suzi is also an organizer, an educator, a singer-songwriter, playwright, and interdisciplinary creative. She has created, curated, coached, organized, and taught for over 25 years, touring throughout the United States. Smith is also a Pushcart-nominated essayist with an MFA in Creative Writing from Randolph College. Recipient of the 2023 Beacon Award for Excellence in Teaching, she is currently a Faculty member with Lighthouse Writers Workshop and Regis University’s Mile High MFA, and the Writing Director with Chateau d’Orquevaux in France, where she was a resident artist in 2023. As an organizer, Smith is the recipient of the 2024 Social Impact Artist Award from Bonfils-Stanton Foundation and Denver Arts & Venues, as well as the 2018 Denver Foundation Swanee Hunt Leadership Award, and she has worked with arts and cultural organizations for over 25 years, in Denver and around the U.S.