Friday, March 19th: A Virtual Celebration of Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers

Please join the Studio One Reading Series and the Community of Writers on Friday, March 19th @ 5:30 PM PST/8:30 PM EST to celebrate the collection Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers

   Featuring readings from:

*Lisa Alvarez*
*Kazim Ali*
*Arlene Biala*
*Jennifer Swanton Brown*
*Blas Falconer*
*Molly Fisk*
*Major Jackson* 
*Danusha Laméris*
*Robert Lipton*

Register for the event here

Lisa Alvarez has edited two landmark collections: Writer’s Workshop in a Book: The Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction with Alan Cheuse and Orange County: A Literary Field Guide with Andrew Tonkovich. She is a fiction writer and poet whose work has appeared in Huizache, PANK, Santa Monica Review and others. Her commentary has been featured in the Los Angeles Times. She teaches writing at Irvine Valley College and co-directs the Community of Writers.

Kazim Ali first attended the conference as a participant in 1998 and has returned often as teaching staff. His writing spans genres, including poetry, novels, and essays along with translations. His poetry collection The Far Mosque won Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award in 2005, and Sky Ward was the winner of the 2014 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry. Cofounder of Nightboat Books, Ali is currently a professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego. His most recent books are The Voice of Sheila Chandra, a volume of three long poems; and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light: Power, Land and the Memory of Water.

Arlene Biala is a Pinay poet; the 2016–17 Santa Clara County poet laureate; and author of continental drift, her beckoning hands (2015 American Book Award), and one inch punch. She lives in Sunnyvale, California.

Jennifer Swanton Brown served as the second poet laureate of her hometown, Cupertino, California, and works at Stanford University in clinical research administration.

Blas Falconer is the author of three poetry collections, including Forgive the Body This Failure, and a coeditor of two essay collections, The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity and Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. His poems have been featured by Poetry, Harvard Review, and The New York Times, and his awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and Poets and Writers. He is a poetry editor for The Los Angeles Review and teaches in the MFA program at San Diego State University.

Molly Fisk edited California Fire &Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, the culmination of her 2019–20 Academy of American Poets Laureate fellowship, and is a writing teacher, radio commentator, and radical life coach in Nevada City, California.

Major Jackson first joined the conference staff in 2011. He is the author of five books of poetry, including Leaving Saturn, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. His edited volumes include Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and the Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. His honors include a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and fellowships including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. He is poetry editor of The Harvard Review and is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. His most recent book is The Absurd Man.

Danusha Laméris is the author of The Moons of August and Bonfire Opera and lives in Santa Cruz, California, where she served as poet laureate from 2018 to 2020.

Robert Lipton is the author of the collection A Complex Bravery and the winner of the 2018 Gregory O’Donoghue Competition at the Munster Literature Centre in Cork, Ireland, with his poem “Official Story”; he lives in Richmond, California, where he has served as poet laureate.