Founded in San Francisco in 2022, Kitchen Table is a reading series centered around poetry and literature, food and drink, and culture and politics. The core of the events are the questions: What feeds your body? What feeds your mind? Writers share their work as we all share a local pop-up's food or drink. Featured readers for this evening are Dāshaun Washington, Jeanne Powell, and Cecilia Lei.

Pop-up collaborator: Half Baked Hapa

Dāshaun Washington is a poet from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His work has received support from Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Lighthouse Works, Ucross Foundation, Millay Arts, and beyond. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, New England Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in San Francisco and is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he was previously a Wallace Stegner Fellow.

Cecilia Lei is a reporter, producer and podcast host based in the East Bay. She covers immigration, the criminal legal system, AAPI issues, as well as other local communities. Her work has appeared in KQED, Apple News, SF Chronicle, NPR and Vox Media. Cecilia is also a co-founder of COYOTE Media Collective, a worker-owned newsroom in the Bay Area that launched in 2025.

Jeanne is a published poet and essayist. She holds degrees from Wayne State University and the University of San Francisco. Jeanne has taught in the CS, UB and OLLI programs at universities in the City. Her books in print include MY OWN SILENCE and WORD DANCING from Taurean Horn Press. Her poems have appeared in several print and online journals, including Essence Magazine, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and the tenth anniversary issue of Drumvoices Revue from SIU-E. Jeanne Powell's poem, "Next Time" won first prize from the Detroit Writers Guild in 2002.