At “Queer Jewish Poetics,” three poets (Rachel Kaufman, Jason Lipeles, and Erin Mizrahi) will debut new work honoring their Queer Jewish Elders at The Cottage, a residence and event space in West LA. The 30-minute reading will take place in the on-site garden followed by a 30-minute moderator-led panel discussion. The evening will end with a ritual celebration of the harvest.
While the poets have much in common, they all bring their unique perspective to their work and their relationship with queer histories. Kaufman is a historian and poet, currently a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American and Jewish History at UCLA. Lipeles is a multimedia artist and writer whose work draws heavily on the archives and the history of the AIDS crisis. Mizrahi is an interdisciplinary scholar and poet whose work focuses on silences and gaps in the archives.
Participant Bios
Rachel Kaufman (she/her) is a poet, teacher, and PhD candidate in Latin American and Jewish history at UCLA. Her work explores diasporic memory, transmission, and violence and argues for the power of poetry as historical method. She is currently working on a collection of Talmudic poetry which stretches the bounds of female body and desire through a lyric ‘I’ and a mythic ‘She’. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming on poets.org and in The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, AGNI, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. The author of poetry collection, Many to Remember (2021), her work has been supported by the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Huntington Library, Clark Library, Willapa Bay AiR, and Fulbright-Hays Program.
Jason Lipeles (he/him) is a writer, artist, and human-being-with-feelings. He was awarded a 2025-2026 Yale University Beinecke Library Research Fellowship for Graduate Students. He has received grants, residencies, and commissions from Counterpath, Vera List Center, Asylum Arts, Institute for Jewish Creativity, and Art Papers. He founded Faint Line Press in 2023, and co-founded the ee! with Marcella Green in 2019. He earned his PhD in Creative Writing from University of Denver, his Master of Fine Arts from Image Text Ithaca in 2018, and his Master of Social Work from University of Southern California in 2012. His book, Letters to M., a finalist for the Chautauqua Janus Prize, was published by Pilot Press in 2021.
Erin Mizrahi (she/they) is a writer, teacher, collaborator and co-founder of Cobra Milk. Erin is author of the chapbooks To What End: (Ethel Press 2026) and I’m Doing My Best To Make Everything Holy (Faint Line Press, forthcoming 2026) as well as co-author of the micro-chapbook, If We Break, Where We Break, How We Break (Ghost City Press 2023). Erin holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture from the University of Southern California and has received fellowships from Asylum Arts and The Institute for Jewish Creativity. Their writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Sundress Best of the Net and has appeared in Sonora Review, Bending Genres, Maudlin House, Hunger Mountain and elsewhere.
Queer Jewish Poetics is organized by Jason Lipeles as part of the 2026 Circa: Queer Histories Festival, presented by One Institute.