Friday, June 26, 2026

The Hammer Comes to Vroman’s: Five Latino Writers Read in Pasadena

An L.A. press founded in 2023 brings American Book Award winners and Pomona’s poet laureate to the city’s oldest bookstore

The hammer in El Martillo Press is not a metaphor the publisher hides. It is in the name, in the logo, and in the kind of writers it puts on a stage.

On Friday, June 26, 2026, five of those writers took the floor at Vroman’s Bookstore. El Martillo Press, the Los Angeles-based publisher founded in 2023, presents a free reading and signing at 7:00 p.m. at the store, 695 East Colorado Boulevard, pairing a founding member of the performance troupe Culture Clash with four poets whose honors include the American Book Award and the title of Pomona poet laureate. For Pasadena readers, it is a chance to hear an award-laden Latino roster in a single evening at the city’s oldest bookstore.

The playwright on the bill is Herbert Siguenza, a Culture Clash founder who recently served as playwright in residence at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. His “Anthology of Latino Plays” arrived in September 2025.

The poets carry their own credentials. Lorna Dee Cervantes founded a publishing imprint at 20 and wrote the American Book Award-winning collection “Emplumada” at 24. Paul S. Flores won the American Book Award in 2024 for “We Still Be: Poems and Performances,” published by El Martillo. Sonia Gutiérrez, recipient of the Tomás Rivera Book Award, reads from the bilingual collection “Paper Birds.” Ceasar K. Avelar, a former factory worker, is the second poet laureate of Pomona; his “God of the Air Hose and Other Blue-Collar Poems” takes its language from the factory floor.

El Martillo Press was founded in 2023 by poets Matt Sedillo and David A. Romero. Romero, the co-founder and editor-in-chief, has described the logic of banding writers together. “We had seen great success,” he told CALÓ News. “We could promote each other’s books, we could get each other’s books into bookstores, and there was just a lot of collective action, you know, of like: together we are more powerful.”

Within its first year, the press published Flores’s award winner. “That’s pretty much unheard for a press within our first year of publishing, we won one of the top literary awards,” Romero told CALÓ News.

Avelar’s place on the roster reflects what the founders say they are after. “He really embodied the spirit of what we are trying to do with the press and really showed that people who work, you know, the working hands are some of the most creative minds,” Sedillo told CALÓ News.

The reading is free; Vroman notes that buying the featured book helps make its events possible. The store, founded in 1894, sits in Playhouse Village and hosts hundreds of readings, signings and book clubs each year. Vroman’s can be reached at (626) 449-5320.

El Martillo’s authors have read at Vroman’s before. On Friday, they bring the hammer back.