Logan Phillips
RECKON Book Launch & Reading

Hosted by Natalie Brewster Nguyen
Music by Alluvium, Humblelianess & DJQ

Sunday, 2/15/2026

All ages. No cover, pay-what-you-will.

6:30pm Doors, music with Humblelianess & DJQ
6:45 opening music set by Alluvium
7:00 Logan Phillips reads from RECKON
8:00 Book signing, music by Humblelianess & DJQ
9:00 End

A one-of-a-kind night celebrating the release of poet Logan Phillips’ new book, RECKON, published by The University of Arizona Press.

“What was it like to have been born in Tombstone, Arizona? In Reckon, artist Logan Phillips returns to the fabled town to face the history he was raised on as a boy—gunfights, outlaws, and Hollywood cowboys—for a new, personal confrontation with the West’s foundational mythology. This hybrid memoir also explores sexuality, masculinity, parenting, and what it means to love a land rife with contradiction and “slathered in murder.” – The University of Arizona Press

“A full-throated consideration of the antecedent of sultry desert queerness—the cowboy.” – Raquel Gutierrez

Logan Phillips is a poet and cultural worker based in Tucson. He is author of the books Reckon (The University of Arizona Press, 2026) and Sonoran Strange, as well as the ongoing NoVoGRAFíAS series. Holding collaboration as a core creative practice, Phillips has contributed to a wide range of performance, music and community-centered education projects in the US, Mexico, Colombia and beyond. His website and newsletter are at Dirtyverbs.com.

Central School Project Presents:

Double Book Launch & Poetry Reading 

with 

Logan Phillips 

(Reckon, The University of Arizona Press 2026) 

and

Raquel Gutiérrez 

(Southwest Reconstruction, Noemi Press 2025)

Saturday, February 21, 2026

Central School Project

43 Howell Ave., Bisbee, Arizona

6:30pm doors 7:00pm show

All-ages, Pay-what-you-will

No one turned away for lack of funds

Book signing to follow

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Don’t miss this dynamic reading by two poets whose vital new books consider the histories and mythologies of the American Southwest in new light!

What does it mean to have been born in Tombstone, Arizona, a town where myth, masculinity, and whiteness have long performed a narrative of American nationhood? In Reckon, artist and poet Logan Phillips returns to the fabled site of his childhood to confront the frontier stories he inherited as a boy: gunfights, outlaws, Hollywood cowboys, and the racial and gendered power structures that sustained them. This hybrid memoir blends essays, photography, poetry, newspaper clippings, and screenplay fragments to examine sexuality, masculinity, parenting, and the contradictions of loving a landscape built on erasure and “slathered in murder.” Moving through the Tombstone of the 1980s and 90s, where daily reenactments and museum displays reinforced a nostalgic masculinity, Phillips exposes a history far more complex than the one he was raised on, and maps how empire and patriarchy shape belonging, narrative, and American nationhood. Dirtyverbs.com

Southwest Reconstruction is Raquel Gutiérrez’s debut poetry collection, a disquieting journey through the uncharted dreamspace of memory and loss, expulsion and shelter, family and recognition. Enacting an eclectic range of forms and echoes drawn from the relational complexities that occupy the difficult terrains of unceded land; these are critical improvisations of creation and closures of the imperceptible sense of displacement, and the interconnecting routes that map the vastness of desire to belong. Divided into three sections, the vocal registers in Southwest Reconstruction act as the noisy divining rod for both kinship and ancestral communication; a sonic brown butch vernacular strumming notes out of sorrow and mettle. Written over the course of almost ten years in the Southern Arizona landscape, these poems function as a psychic Thomas Guide diving into the wreck of settler logics looming large in the rearview mirror of mestizaje and the mythological ruptures left in their wake. Raquelgutierrez.net

Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe

Wednesday, February 25, 2026, 7pm

Join us at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe on February 25 at 7 pm for a reading from Reckon, followed by a conversation with producer Mary Stephens about the role of poetry and literature during a moment of resurgent white supremacy and political violence, and about how men can meaningfully confront the legacies they inherit. Stephens is the founder and director of Border/Arte, whose work interrogates the racialized and gendered production of nationhood in the US/MX borderlands. Her practice is rooted in site-specific cultural organizing and bi-national artistic collaborations. Together, Phillips and Stephens bring a sharp lens to the demands of this moment to reckon honestly with the histories they carry, the violences they benefit from, and the responsibilities they must claim. This event invites all of us, and white audiences in particular, to step more fully into the work of memory, repair, healing, and collective accountability.

What does it mean to have been born in Tombstone, Arizona, a town where myth, masculinity, and whiteness have long performed a narrative of American nationhood? In Reckon (2026), artist and poet Logan Phillips returns to the fabled site of his childhood to confront the frontier stories he inherited as a boy: gunfights, outlaws, Hollywood cowboys, and the racial and gendered power structures that sustained them. This hybrid memoir blends essays, photography, poetry, newspaper clippings, and screenplay fragments to examine sexuality, masculinity, parenting, and the contradictions of loving a landscape built on erasure and “slathered in murder. ” Moving through the Tombstone of the 1980s and 90s, where daily reenactments and museum displays reinforced a nostalgic masculinity, Phillips exposes a history far more complex than the one he was raised on and maps how empire and patriarchy shape belonging, narrative, and American nationhood.

Tucson Festival of Books 2026

Sing, Slam, Shout!

Location: Student Union Kiva

Date/Time: Saturday, March 14, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Panelists: Logan Phillips, Sophia Terazawa, Danielle Williams

Moderators: Cameron Quan

Signing Area: Sales & Signing Area - UA Campus Store Main Floor

Description

From the musical incantation of lyric to the political rhythms of slam, what role does performance play in bringing poems to life? Join three electrifying poets who expertly translate their words from the printed page to the human voice and hear them discuss their approaches to enacting language.

Tucson Festival of Books 2026

Title: Author Book Signing: Logan Phillips & Mele Martinez

Date: Sunday, March 15, 2026

Time: 10-10:50 a.m.

Location: University of Arizona Mall (Booth #TBD

Tucson Festival of Books 2026

Title: Imagined Borders

Location: Student Union Kiva

Date/Time: Sunday, March 15, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Panelists: Susan Briante, Jose Hernandez Díaz, Logan Phillips

Moderators: Gabriel Palacios

Signing Area: Sales & Signing Area - UA Campus Store Main Floor

Description: Poetry allows us to ask difficult questions like: Why do we have borders? What are borders, where do they come from, and how do they shape our language? Three poets investigate these questions, challenging the borders of place, identity, genre, history, and language.

More info TBA!

Bookworks

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