31st Benefit Evening Gala

Lara Ehrlich – Bind Me Tighter Still

Lara Ehrlich is the author of the novel Bind Me Tighter Still (Red Hen Press, 2025) and Animal Wife, a collection of stories about women’s transformations from girls into wives, mothers, and monsters. Animal Wife won Red Hen Press’s Fiction Award judged by Ann Hood and was published by the press in 2020. Lara is also the host of Writer Mother Monster, a conversation series devoted to dismantling the myth of “having it all,” and the founder and director of Thought Fox Writers Den, which supports writers of all levels with workshops, events, and more. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter. www.LaraEhrlich.com

Adela Najarro – Variations in Blue

Adela Najarro is a poet with a social consciousness who serves on the board of directors for Círculo de poetas and Writers and works with the Latinx community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice. The Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Collaborative selected Variations in Blue for publication in 2025. She is the author of four additional poetry collections: Split Geography, Twice Told Over, My Childrens, and Volcanic Interruptions, a chapbook that includes Janet Trenchard’s artwork. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area. The California Arts Council recognized her as an established artist for the Central California Region and appointed her as an Individual Artist Fellow.