Poets for Change, Saturday September 27

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an international celebration of poetry

 to promote serious social, environmental, 
& political change

Backyards: Poets for Local Change 2014
a free poetry reading with refreshments

Saturday September 27

7:00 pm

Frank Bette Art Center

1601 Paru Street, Alameda.

Hosted by Jeanne Lupton.
Curated & MC'd by Sharon Coleman

Wilfred Galila
Kristen Hanlon
John Isles
Sara Anika Mithra
Rafael Jesús González
Vince Storti
Harold Terezon
Joyce Young

 

Born and raised in the Philippines, Wilfred Galila is in pursuit of deciphering the ramifications of cultural hybridity in his postcolonial mind. As a writer, his work has been published in Beyond Lumpia, Pansit and Seven Manangs Wild, an anthology of short prose and poetry by Filipino-American writers. He has contributed art, design, and prose for the Milvia Street Art and Literary Journal of Berkeley City College. As a photographer, he was commissioned for the Kodakan Project, exploring and making visible the various identities of Filipinos in San Francisco through still and moving images. The exhibit will be remounted at the I-Hotel Manilatown Center in San Francisco starting on October 2015. He also makes music and rocks out with his psychedelic garage punk band ElectroSonic Chamber.

Rafael Jesús González taught Creative Writing and Literature at Laney College, Oakland where he founded the Mexican & Latin American Studies Dept. He has been Poet in Residence at Oakland Museum of California and Oakland Public Library. In 1996 he won a Poets & Writers award. He has thrice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English for his writing 2003 and 2009 by the City of Berkeley for his writing, art, teaching, social activism. His book of poems La musa lunática/The Lunatic Muse (Pandemonium Press, Berkeley, California) was published in 2009. http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/

Kristen Hanlon's poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Volt, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. A chapbook, Proximity Talks, was published by Noemi Press in 2005. She lives in Alameda and works in downtown Oakland, which means a good portion of her time is spent on the 51. She likes to hang out with her kids, Delia and Liam, and her husband, John, in their backyard where occasionally poems are written. As a contributor to The Alamedan, Kristen curated the Alameda Bookshelf feature and interviewed local poets, journalists, writers and teachers of writing.

John Isles is the author of Inverse Sky (Iowa, 2008) and Ark (Iowa, 2003) and coeditor of the Baltics section of New European Poets. He received an award from the Los Angeles Review in 2004 and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005. His poems have appeared in such journals as American Letters & Commentary, the Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, and Pleiades. He currently teaches at City College of San Francisco.

Sara Anika Mithra performs poetry to give voice to characters ekeing out an existence on stubble, dregs, and leavings. She's featured at Expressions, Frank Bette, and Art House and enjoyed performing at Mudpuddle Music Shop, Berkeley Center for the Arts, and FUSE Festival. Watch her poem videos on Vimeo or listen to her dramatic readings on SoundCloud. She also fashions handmade chapbooks.

Vince Storti was recently published in the online Parisian literary journal Levure Literaire (issue #8).  His work has most recently been included Carol Louise Moon's Dad's Desk. He's editor and publisher of the North Coast Literary Review. He currently helps run a poetry workshop for the Alameda Island Poets. Vince believes prefers poetry as solace rather than poetry as confusion. He is currently enjoying a workshop with Poetry Flash's Richard Silberg.

harold terezón is an educator and poet from Pacoima, CA. He received the San Francisco Foundation's James D. Phelan Literary Award in 2013. He served as a teaching artist for WritersCorps from 2011-2013, helping San Francisco youth find their voice through poetry and writing. His work has appeared in  POECOLOGY, Puerto del Sol, PALABRA, Rushing Waters Rising Dreams: How the Arts Are Transforming a Community, and The Acentos Review, among other publications.  He is currently teaching poetry at City College of San Francisco and working on Hunting Izotes, a collection of poems inspired by his family's immigrant experience.

Joyce E. Young's work has appeared in riverbabble, New Voices of the American West, Temba Tupu! (Walking Naked): The Africana Woman's Self-Portrait, Paint Dreams on Walls, Milvia Street, The Squaw Review, Writing for Our Lives, and Skin Deep: Women Writing About Color, Culture and Identity. Joyce received grants from the California Arts Council, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and a Writers on Site residency through Poets & Writers, Inc. She teaches at John F. Kennedy University and is at work on her novel Parallel Journey. She's also a semi-retired dancer and practitioner of T'ai chi and yoga.  She loves to be near water- ocean, river, stream or lake.