Wednesday, April 15, 2026

LitFest in the Dena Returns to Pasadena With Immigration Panel, Latine Literary Programming

The free literary festival LitFest in the Dena will open its 2026 program with a panel on immigrant communities and immigration enforcement when it returns May 1-2 to Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 585 E. Colorado Blvd.

The panel, titled “Speaking Truth to Power: Humanizing Immigrant Communities in the Time of ICE,” will feature four writers examining anti-immigrant sentiment through literature, according to a press release from the festival’s organizers. Panelists include Daniel Olivas, a California Department of Justice attorney and speculative fiction author who lives in Pasadena; Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, an arts and general assignment reporter at LAist and author of the recent collection California Southern; fiction writer and essayist Lisa Alvarez; and speculative fiction writer Pedro Iniguez. Thomas E. Backer, PhD, will moderate.

The festival’s 2026 theme is “Books That Changed the Public Narrative,” focused on literature that has shaped public discourse beyond the page, the press release states.

Now in its 14th year, LitFest in the Dena was founded in 2012 and historically held at the Mountain View Mausoleum in Altadena. The festival relocated to Pasadena Presbyterian Church in 2025 after the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which led to the mausoleum site being used for Army Corps of Engineers recovery operations. The festival returns to the Pasadena church this year.

The two-day program runs Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission is free and no registration is required.

Latine literary voices figure prominently in this year’s schedule. Red Hen Press and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, are presenting a reading of Latine writers including Francisco Aragón, the founding director of Letras Latinas. A separate panel, “Brilliant Bilinguals,” will feature Spanish-language diaspora poets sharing work and hosting a round of lotería, according to the press release.

Local ties run through the program. Pasadena Unified School District students will present in two sessions — “Pieces of Us” with the PUSD ThinkTank and “Diasporan Witness and Wonder: 8th Graders Respond.” Altadena Poets Laureate past and present, including Sehba Sarwar, Thelma Reyna and others, will read in “Celebrating Altadena.” Glendale Poet Laureate Raffi Wartanian will host a community poetry table connected to the Eaton Fire recovery.

Additional panels address crime fiction, fantasy writing, queer spirituality in speculative fiction, and young adult literature. Workshops cover science fiction and social change, mystery writing, and community organizing.

LitFest in the Dena is produced by Light Bringer Project, a Pasadena-based nonprofit arts organization founded in 1990, and the literary journal Locavore Lit LA. The full schedule is at litfestinthedena.org/schedule2026.