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September 16th, 2018
We will have readings from 11 AM to 8 PM around downtown Petaluma.
Schedule
11:00 AM
205 Kentucky St.
Fran Claggett-Holland, an English and Humanities
teacher and consultant, currently teaches poetry and memoir writing.
Fran, with Les Bernstein, co-edited Phoenix, poetry from Sonoma County,
for Redwood Writers. She is also currently lecturing on how poetry and
painting have influenced both of the arts. In addition to a number of
books for both teachers and students, Fran has published three books of
poetry:
Black Birds and Other Birds (Taurean Horn Press);
Crow Crossings (RiskPress); and, most recently,
Moments with Madge: Lux Aeterna, in honor and memory of Madge Holland, her spouse and colleague (White Crow Press).
Maya Khosla is serving as the Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, California (2018-2019). Her collections include
Web of Water (nonfiction),
Keel Bone and
Heart of the Tearing (poems). Her new poetry collection,
Unknown World on Fire,
is forthcoming from Sixteen Rivers Press. She has received writing
awards from Bear Star Press and Flyway, filming awards from Audubon
Society, and Patagonia. Maya has taught writing workshops at Stanford
University, Sonoma State University, California Poets in the schools
(San Francisco), and in Nagaland, India.
Before founding Bear Star Press (
www.bearstarpress.com) in 1996,
Beth Spencer
worked as a maid, waitress, file clerk, poker dealer, zookeeper, clinic
administrator, code enforcement officer, bookstore clerk, college
professor, and freelance grant-writer. She much prefers editing and
designing books. Her poetry and fiction have appeared on- and offline
(Winning Writers, Litro, Tin House, Split This Rock, Lodestone Journal,
and elsewhere) and she lives with her husband and dog in a pine forest
safely north of the Oroville Dam. She wishes everyone would boycott
Amazon and buy their books directly from independent bookstores and
presses.
Noon
122 American Alley, B
Sashana Kane Proctor is a Cazadero hillside dweller.
She has been writing all her life but been gifted with the company of
poets and immersion in poetry only in more recent years. In addition to
her first book,
Cave of the Casting Bones, her work has appeared in Sonoma State University's literary magazine,
Flight,
Women's Voices,
Harlots' Sauce,
The Scream Online's anthology, "Heaven and Hell," and in the past year was awarded Honorable Mention publication in
New Millennium Writings. She hosts a monthly open mic each in Guerneville and "Come to Know the Poets", a yearly poetry event featuring local poets.
Chris Olander, bio-educator with California Poets in
Schools articulates meanings of words, phrases, ideas and emotions in
sound rhythm patterns. His poetry arises from land-based ethics rooted
in science, observation and reflection; an action art poetry: musical
image phrasing to dramatize
relative experiences. Olander teaches/reads his poetry throughout the
west coast and Hawaii; helps organize poetry readings and festivals;
collaborates with jazz, ballet, modern and belly dancers, musicians, and
painters; a state champion Poetry Coach with Poetry Out Loud program.
He has published seven CD's, three with musicians; four chapbooks and
his newest full-length poetry book,
River Light by Poetic Matrix Press.
Kate Peper grew up in Minnesota and moved to
California in 1994 to work as a free-lance animator in the then-thriving
educational games industry. She later went back to school to learn
fabric design and for a time designed high-end carpets in San Francisco.
Though poetry is a constant preoccupation, she also works on honing her
watercolor technique and indulges an unhealthy fascination with
gardening. She has taught creative writing as part of California Poets
in the Schools as well as to older adults in retirement communities. She
lives in Marin County with her husband Bruce and semi-feral dog Hannah.
1:00 PM
224 "B" St.
Donna L Emerson’s
recent poetry publications include
CALYX,
the Denver Quarterly, the London Magazine, Weber: the Contemporary West, and the
Paterson Literary Review. She has published four chapbooks:
This Water (2007),
Body Rhymes (2009), Wild Mercy (2011), and
Following Hay (2013). Her photographs are paired with her poetry in journals such as the
Healing Muse,
Lumina,
Passager, and
Stone Canoe.
Her first book was published in 2018, a second is in the process for
2019. Recent awards include nominations for a Pushcart, Best of the Net,
two Allen Ginsberg (2015, 2017) awards. Donna divides her time between
Sonoma County, California and her homestead in western New York.
Jackie Huss Hallerberg is a Sonoma County
Poet-Teacher and Board President of California Poets in the Schools. She
holds degrees in science, business and elementary education. She
teaches poetry in an experiential manner in public and private schools,
Valley of the Moon Children’s Home and summer arts camps. Jackie’s
poetry has been featured in anthologies of the Squaw Valley Community of
Writers, Marin Poetry Center and local firestorm publications. Her
chapbook,
Along Poetic Lines, and cd,
Poems of Motherhood,
were self-published. She can often be seen hiking with Billy, her black
Labrador, along Sonoma County trails where she draws inspiration.
https://www.jackiehuss.com/
Carolyn Miller lives on the Hyde Street cable-car
line in San Francisco, where she writes, paints, and works as a
freelance writer/editor. Her books of poetry are
After Cocteau and
Light, Moving,
both from Sixteen Rivers Press, and four limited-edition letter-press
chapbooks from Protean Press. Her poems have been featured on
Poetry Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and American Life in Poetry, and have appeared in
The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Georgia Review. Her honors include the James Boatwright Award for Poetry from Shenandoah and the Rainmaker Award from Zone 3.
2:00 PM
25 Petaluma Blvd., So.
Avotcja has been published in English & Spanish
in the USA, Mexico & Europe, and in more anthologies than she
remembers. As a poet, radio producer, playwright,
multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and invaluable DJ on KPOO (89.5) and
KPFA (94.1FM), she’s connected with a vast and varied array of artists.
She is a Bay Area icon with her award-winning jazz group, Avotcja &
Modúpue. Her most recent book is
With Every Step I Take
(Taurean Horn Press). She has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from
Berkeley Poetry Festival (2014) & Pen Oakland (2015).
www.avotcja.org.
Rafael Jesús González, Prof. Emeritus of literature
and creative writing, born and raised biculturally/bilingually in El
Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, taught at various universities before
settling at Laney College, Oakland, California where he founded the
Dept. of Mexican & Latin-American Studies. Also, a visual artist, he
has exhibited in various museums in the U.S. and Mexico. His collection
La musa lunática/The Lunatic Muse was published in 2009.
Nominated thrice for a Pushcart prize, he was honored with a Lifetime
Achievement Award by the City of Berkeley in 2015 and named Berkeley's
first Poet Laureate in 2017. His work may be read at
http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/
Jabez (Bill) Churchill, Bilingual California Poet in
the Public Schools since 1998, primarily with Spanish-speaking students
and youth at risk. Contributing member of Poets Responding to SB 1070.
Member of Ina Coolbrith Poetry Circle. Poet laureate emeritus of Ukiah,
2014-2016. Most recently published in Deep Valley: Poets Laureate of
Ukiah, 2001-2018.
3:00 PM
140 Kentucky St.
Jodi Hottel’s most recent chapbook is
Voyeur from WordTech Press in 2017.
Heart Mountain, her first chapbook, was winner of the 2012 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize. Jodi’s been published in
Nimrod International, Spillway, Ekphrasis, and
anthologies from the University of Iowa Press, Tebot Bach, and the
Marin Poetry Center. Her work’s been nominated for a Pushcart prize.
Jodi lives in Santa Rosa.
Prartho Sereno is author of three prize-winning poetry collections:
Indian Rope Trick,
Elephant Raga, and
Call from Paris, and author/illustrator of the award-winning gift-book,
Causing a Stir: The Secret Lives & Loves of Kitchen Utensils.
She has an MFA from Syracuse University and was the 4th Poet Laureate
of Marin County. A long-time California Poet in the Schools, Prartho was
awarded a Radio Disney Super Teacher Award in 2005. She also teaches a
writing series at the College of Marin: "The Poetic Pilgrimage:
Poem-Making as Spiritual Practice” and offers creativity workshops for
all ages & stripes.
Andrena Zawinski, a veteran teacher of writing and
activist poet, is a mainstay in the San Francisco Bay Area poetry
community. Her latest collection is
Landings from Kelsay Books. She has two previous books:
Something About from
Blue Light Press, a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient and
Traveling in Reflected Light from Pig Iron Press, a Kenneth Patchen Prize. She also compiled and edited
Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry from
Scarlet Tanager Books. Her poetry has earned accolades for free verse,
form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She is Features Editor
at
PoetryMagazine.com and founder of the Women’s Poetry Salon.
4:00 PM
201 Washington St.
A celebration of
Red Indian Road West, Native American Poetry from California, edited by Kurt Schweigman and Lucille Lang Day (Scarlet Tanager Books)
Dave Holt, born in Toronto, Canada, of Irish,
English, and Anishinaabe/Ojibwe Indian ancestry, graduated from SFSU’s
Creative Writing program (’95). His book,
Voyages to Ancestral Islands, won a Cultural Literary Award from Artists Embassy International (2013). His poems are included in three anthologies,
Red Indian Road West,
Native American Poetry from California;
Descansos, Words from the Wayside, where his poem received a Pushcart Prize nomination; and
Shaped by Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry from California. Beginning
with his founding at Wells Fargo Bank of a Native Peoples employees
group for California Indians, he’s done community service for the
American Indian community since 2005.
Linda Noel is a California native of the Koyunkowi
(Konkow) people from the northern Sierra. She has published one
chapbook titled “Where You First Saw the Eyes of Coyote” and has been
published in a variety of anthologies and magazines. She has a poem
included in the permanent collection at the Autry Museum of the West and
another has been adapted and performed by the Pasadena Choir. She has
read her work throughout the country including Princeton University.
She was the Poet Laureate of Ukiah from 2003-2005.
Kurt Schweigman is co-editor of
Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California (Scarlet
Tanager Books, 2016). He was a featured poet at the prestigious
Geraldine R. Dodge 12th Biennial Poetry Festival and recipient of
various literature grants. Kurt is an enrolled member of the Oglala
Sioux Tribe.
20 Fourth St.
Phyllis Meshulam will be reading with Sonoma County California Poetry
in the Schools students who write poetry in English and Spanish.
Phyllis Meshulam is the author of
Land of My Father’s War from Cherry Grove Collections, and several chapbooks. Her work has appeared in magazines from Ars Medica to
Teachers & Writers. She’s a teacher for
California Poets in the Schools and coordinator for
Poetry Out Loud, and was a finalist in
The Dickens contest judged by Billy Collins and Robert Haas.
She has been a presenter at the AWP and
Split this Rock conferences. Meshulam has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. For
CalPoets’ 50
th anniversary, she edited,
Poetry Crossing, a joyful collection of lessons and poems.
6:00-8:00 PM
Foundry Wharf, 189 H St.
Q.R. Hand, Jr originally published in the 1968 classic,
Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro American Writing, edited by Amiri Baraka (Leroy Jones) and Larry Neal, is the author of three poetry books,
i speak to the poet in man(jukebox press),
how sweet it is(Zeitgeist Press) and
whose really blues, new & selected poems (Taurean
Horn Press). He is a member of the Wordwind Chorus, a Bay Area
quartet, now trio, that performs poetry with jazz. Wordwind Chorus has a
cd,
we are of the saying, recorded in 2000. He received the Pen Oakland Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.
E.K. Keith enjoys the lively poetry scene in San
Francisco where you can find lots of places to hear from poets from the
curmudgeonly to the rant-tastic to the sublime. She is a Latinx poet
whose work can be enjoyed in print, on the radio, online, and in person.
She organizes San Francisco’s annual open mic celebration of poetry
inside City Hall, Poems Under the Dome. Nomadic Press will publish
E.K.’s first book of poetry,
Ordinary Villains, in Fall 2018.
Originally from San Francisco,
Tongo Eisen-Martin is
a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass
incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the
United States. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black
people,
We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His poems have been published in
Harper’s Magazine and the
New York Times Magazine. His book of poems titled,
Someone's Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book "
Heaven Is All Goodbyes"
was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, won the
California Book Award and is currently shortlisted for the upcoming
Griffin Poetry Prize.
Kim Shuck always wants to make these bios funny but
is concerned that people will find jokes disrespectful to the craft of
writing. Kim Shuck has an MFA not in writing, but in studio art,
textiles. She has had many poems and essays published in periodicals,
anthologies and online publications of various descriptions. Her latest
solo book is
Clouds Running In. She has won various awards her two favorites being the Diane Decorah Award and the Mary Tall Mountain Awards. Kim is the 7
th Poet Laureate of San Francisco.
Take the Train to the Petaluma Poetry Walk!
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