Tuesday, June 1st: A Virtual Reading with Cole Swensen, Forrest Gander & C.S. Giscombe

graphics by François Luong; Forrest Gander photo credit to Ashwini Bhat

RSVP through the Zoom registration form to have the link emailed to you.

Cole Swensen has published 19 volumes of poetry and a collection of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise. Her most recent book, Art in Time, which just came out from Nightboat, focuses on innovative landscape art. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and has been awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, and the National Poetry Series. She has also translated over 20 volumes of poetry, prose, and art criticism from French and has won the PEN USA Award in Literary Translation. www.coleswensen.com

Forrest Gander, a writer and translator with degrees in geology and literature, was born in the Mojave Desert and lives in northern California. His books, often concerned with ecology, include Be With, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize, the novel The Trace, and Twice Alive, just out (now!) from New Directions. Gander’s translations and co-translations include Alice Iris Red Horse by Gozo Yoshimasu, Spectacle & Pigsty by Kiwao Nomura, and Then Come Back: the Lost Neruda Poems. 

C. S. Giscombe’s poetry books are Prairie Style, Giscome Road, Here, etc.; his prose books are Into and Out of Dislocation, Border Towns, and Ohio Railroads (“a poem in essay form”).  Recognitions include the Stephen Henderson Award, an American Book Award (for Prairie Style) and the Carl Sandburg Prize (for Giscome Road).  Forthcoming poetry texts are Similarly (a “selected and new” volume) and Train Music (a collaboration with the painter Judith Margolis) both due in 2021.  Other books are in progress.  He teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.  He is a long-distance cyclist.

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.

Thursday, January 7th *Virtual Reading* feat. Gillian Conoley, Ezequiel Zaidenwerg, and Robin Myers

Graphics by François Luong

Please RSVP for the reading here to have the Zoom link emailed to you. 

 *We hope you and your loved ones are safe & well, and we look forward to sharing this experience with you!*

Gillian Conoley’s A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems, with Nightboat Books, won the 39th annual Northern California Book Award in 2020. She received the 2017 Shelley Memorial Award for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America, and was also awarded the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award. She is the author of seven previous books, including PEACE, an Academy of American Poets Standout Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Conoley’s translations of three books by Henri Michaux, Thousand Times Broken, appeared in 2014 with City Lights. Conoley is Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English at Sonoma State University where she edits VOLT.

Ezequiel Zaidenwerg is a poet, translator and essayist, not necessarily in that order. His most recent book is 50 estados: 13 poetas contemporáneos de Estados Unidos, a novelized anthology of recent American poetry. He translates a poem a day at zaidenwerg.com, produces the podcast series Orden de traslado, and writes on poetry, translation and politics for El Malpensante.

Robin Myers lives in Mexico City and works as a translator. Her poems have recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, PANK Magazine, 32 Poems, and the Massachusetts Review, among other publications. Her book-length collections have been translated into Spanish (mostly by Ezequiel Zaidenwerg, also featured in this reading) and published in Mexico, Argentina, and Spain. She writes a monthly column on translation for Palette Poetry. You can find her at robinepmyers.com.

Friday, November 6th, *Virtual* Reading feat. Brenda Hillman, Cynthia Parker-Ohene, & Andrew Zawacki

Graphics by François Luong

Please RSVP for the reading here to have the link emailed to you.

we hope you and your loved ones are safe & well,

and we look forward to sharing this experience with you!

Brenda Hillman’s most recent book is Extra Hidden Life among the Days (2018). Hillman has co-edited and co-translated numerous volumes, including Ana Cristina Cesar’s At Your Feet (Parlor Press, 2018), co-translated from Portuguese with her mother Helen Hillman. Her awards for poetry include the 2020 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award for Innovation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  She teaches at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California and currently serves as a Chancellor at the Academy of American Poets. https://blueflowerarts.com/artist/brenda-hillman/

Cynthia Parker-Ohene is a graduate of the MFA program at the Saint Mary’s College of California where she was the Chester Aaron Scholar for Excellence in Creative Writing. She is a Tin House Summer Writer’s Conference alum, awarded the Pittman Scholarship from Juniper at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, an awardee at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a Callaloo Fellow and Hurston/Wright Fellow, among others . Her poems have appeared or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Kweli, Bellevue Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, Yellow Medicine Review, and others. She is a Pushcart Nominee, and the winner of the 2017 chapbook prize for Drapetomania published in 2017 by Backbone Press.

Andrew Zawacki is the author of the poetry books Unsun : f/11 (Coach House), Videotape (Counterpath), Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman House), Anabranch (Wesleyan), and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia). His work has appeared in Poems for Political Disaster, Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries, Great American Prose Poems, The Eloquent Poem, and other anthologies, as well as The New Yorker, The Nation, and The New Republic. His translation of Sébastien Smirou, My Lorenzo (Burning Deck), received a French Voices Grant, and his translation of Smirou’s See About (La Presse) earned an NEA Translation Fellowship and a fellowship from the Centre National du Livre. He was a 2016 Howard Foundation Fellow.

Friday, September 11th *Virtual* Reading feat. Aricka Foreman and July Westhale

                                                                                                Graphics by François Luong

*****

Please RSVP for the reading here to have the link emailed to you.

we hope you and your loved ones are safe & well,

and we look forward to sharing this experience with you!

Aricka Foreman is an American poet and interdisciplinary writer from Detroit MI. Author of the chapbook Dream with a Glass Chamber and Salt Body Shimmer (YesYes Books), she has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She serves on the Board of Directors for The Offing, and spends her time in Chicago, IL engaging poetry with photography & video. https://www.arickaforeman.com/

July Westhale is an essayist, translator, and the award-winning author of Trailer Trash, and Via Negativa, which Publishers Weekly called "stunning" in a starred review. Her most recent work can be found in McSweeney’s, The National Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, CALYX, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Huffington Post, among others. She also has an inventively-named collection of salty chapbooks. When she’s not teaching, she works as a co-founding editor of PULP Magazine. www.julywesthale.com

Friday, June 12th *Virtual* Reading feat. Jeff Alessandrelli and Alix Coupet, Jr.

Please join us on Friday, June 12th from 6:30-7:10 pm PDT

for a virtual reading featuring

Jeff Alessandrelli and Alix Coupet, Jr.! 

*****

author bios & photos below.

Zoom link to be emailed to participants & posted on social media 

on the day of the event.

Please RSVP for the reading here to have the link emailed to you.

If you're in a position to give, we will be asking for contributions to Community Ready Corps' Black Solidarity Fund. #BlackLivesMatter. Dismantle white supremacy! 

or contribute today: https://blacksolidarity.org/donate

we look forward to sharing this experience with you!

Jeff Alessandrelli is most recently the author of the poetry collection Fur Not Light (Burnside Review Press, 2019). Forthcoming is a chapbook on the literary work of the deceased writer and environmental activist Mark Baumer and a full-length book centered around masculinity and shyness. In addition to his own writing, Alessandrelli also runs the literary record label/press Fonograf Editions. He’s at https://jeffalessandrelli.net/.

Alix Coupet, Jr. is both poet and educator who teaches writing and tricksterdom to public school youth. His aim is to land the plane somewhere between playful pain and peace. Born in Chicago, Alix jokes that many people say subjective things about his city, but that, objectively, Chicago is the greatest city in the world. Since the time of this writing, he has been rejected from six more publications.

Friday, May 8th *Virtual* Reading feat. Garrett Caples and Ava Koohbor

Please join us on Friday, May 8th from 6:30-7:10 pm PST

for our first ever virtual reading featuring

Garrett Caples and Ava Koohbor!

*****

author bios & photos below.

Zoom link to be emailed to participants & posted on the day of event.

Please RSVP for the reading here to have the link emailed to you.

we hope you and your loved ones are safe & well,

and we look forward to sharing this new experience with you!

Garrett Caples is a poet living in San Francisco. His most recent book of poems is the bilingual Noches Apátridas: Poesía escogida, 1999-2019 (Unstated Nights: Selected Poems, 1999-2019) (Juan Malasuerte, 2019). He's an editor at City Lights Books, where he curates the Spotlight Poetry Series.

Ava Koohbor is a native Farsi speaker, poet and visual artist. Her poems have appeared in various publications. Her chapbooks include Triangle Squared (Bootstrap Press) and Sinusoidal Forms (Lew Gallery). Death Under Construction is her first full collection of poetry in English by Ugly Duckling Presse. She believes that each artist is a medium to transfer the world of possibilities to what is.