Well-RED Reading Series featuring Anshu Johri & Monica Korde!
Co-sponsored by Works/San José art and performance center!
38 South Second Street, downtown San José
7:00 p.m. PDT
Open mic to start the show!
If you are unable to attend in person, we welcome you to join via Zoom! Register in advance for this event via Zoom. Link: https://bit.ly/Well-RED_June2026
Anshu Johri authors poems, short stories, and plays in Hindi and English. She has published three poetry collections and three short story collections in Hindi and published Scraped, a short story collection in English. Her work in Hindi and English has been continuously published in various reputed literary magazines and journals of India and the USA, and is also available at Amazon, Audible, Apple Books, YouTube, Spotify, and Kindle. She has been a featured reader and guest speaker in various reading series of the San Francisco Bay Area and India. She has been organizing literary events through local non-profit organizations of the San Francisco Bay Area for the past twenty-five+ years. She has curated and directed various experimental poetry projects in collaboration with other art forms, combining theater and classical dance forms with poetry, which were showcased in the San José Poetry Festival and the San Francisco Litcrawl, among many others. Besides writing, her other passions include dabbling in oil painting and theatre, where she has written, directed, and acted in plays in the Bay Area. A recipient of the Kamleshwar Smriti Katha Samman (India) for best story of 2019 and “Glorious India Award 2017” in New Jersey, U.S.A, she is also the program coordinator of Poetry Center San Jose’s monthly reading series in Hindi called “Bauchhaar”. She has a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from San José State University and works as a hardware engineer. She lives in San José, California.
Monica Korde is Poet Laureate Emerita of Belmont, California (2021–2025), and the city’s first South Asian immigrant to serve in the role. Her multidisciplinary practice bridges poetry and other arts, inviting audiences to engage deeply with identity, belonging, climate action and collective creativity. Founder of the initiative Project POETRY 360, Monica often holds spaces with BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ AAPI, immigrant and youth voices through collaborative work, workshops and readings. Her interviews and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous publications such as LAdige Review: home of California Poets (2026), Poets for Science (2026), Weavers Literary Review (Weavers Press 2025), Being, Becoming, Belonging Anthology (Pierian Press 2024), World Poetry Day Anthology (Savitri Publications, India), and elsewhere, including various digital venues on podcast, radio, and YouTube. An experienced curator and host of several community poetry series with Open Mic events and editor of the e-book RESONANCE: A Chorus of Response Poems, featuring local poets and guest California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick, her work centers on bringing visibility to the literary arts and poets in the community. Among her recently featured creative works is a collaborative poetry installation showcased at the 2026 Legacy Exhibition at Kitsune Art Studio in Half Moon Bay. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence with Government (AIRG) with the San Mateo County Office of Arts and Culture, supporting creative civic engagement through the arts.
Downtown SJ provides free parking on the street after 6:00 p.m. Available street parking is difficult to find after 6:30 p.m.
If you are unable to find parking on the street, there are two parking garages of note:
1.) 25 S. 3rd Street PARKSJ Garage (located underground, under The Globe Apartments), about 300 meters from Works/San José;
2.) 2nd & San Carlos PARKSJ Garage (first 90 minutes are free). This is a 5-10 minute walk to Works/San José
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