The Occasional Poem in the Wild

@Shizue76. A reading by diverse writers of conscience from Lake, Mendocino & Sonoma Counties, Santa Cruz/Watsonville, and the Bay Area. Featuring Adela Najarro, Amanda Cruise, Beulah Vega, Esperanza Cabrales, Georgina, Marie Guardado, MK Chavez, Norma Smith, Peggy Morrison, Shaquam Edwards, Shizue Seigel, and Tehmina Khan. Adela Najarro. The author of five poetry collections, Adela Najarro serves on the Círculo de Poetas & Writers board of directors. Her extended family emigrated from Nicaragua. More information about Adela can be found at her website: www.adelanajarro.com. Amanda Cruise lives in Mendocino on unceded Northern Pomo land. Her poetry and visual art have appeared in the Noyo Review, The Bloom, The Spirit of Place: Mendocino County Women Poets Anthology, and elsewhere. Amandacruise.com Beulah Vega is a first-generation Latine political poet, horror writer, and theatrical artist living in the North Bay Area. Her poems were most recently published in Writers' Resist and La Raiz and she produces plays through the series Heroines, Harlots, and Harpies: A Woman Speaks. Brenda Marie Yeager, Poet Laureate of Lake County, co-hosts New Darlings online monthly. A finalist for the 2022 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize, she’s been published in Noyo Review and The Bloom, and is seeking publication for her chapbook, Captain America. Esperanza Cabrales is a queer Xicana slam poet, performer, teaching artist, zine maker, earring creator, and pun enthusiast who grew up in the San Joaquin Valley and now lives in Oakland. Georgina Marie Guardado is the Poet Laureate Emerita of Lake County (2020-2024) and Poets Laureate Fellow (Academy of American Poets). She is Board President of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. She’s been published by Poets.org, Gulf Coast Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, The Muleskinner Journal, and more. MK Chavez is an Afro-Latinx writer, educator, and founder of Ouroboros Writing Lab, which offers creative coaching, workshops, and community engagement. The author of Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, and Virgin Eyes, she has been honored with the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Norma Smith, author of Home Remedy, is a writer, social researcher, editor, writing coach, and organizer. She grew up in Fresno in an Ashkenazi Jewish household and has been active in anti-racist/anti-oppression work since high school. Peggy Morrison is a European-American poet who raised her daughter in Watsonville while working as a bilingual teacher. She’s been published in multiple journals and anthologies. She co-edited the anthologies Day Without Art (2019) and Colossus:Body (2023). Shaquam Edwards is an emerging Richmond writer. After a teaching career in early childhood and higher education, she is diving into a memoir about her struggle for belonging as a biracial Black/White female growing up amidst unhealed generational trauma. Shizue Seigel, director of Write Now! SF Bay, is Japanese American writer, visual artist and community activist based in San Francisco. She was most recently published in Panorama, Journal X, and Porter Gulch Review. Tehmina Khan, daughter of Indian immigrant scientists, teaches College Writing at UC Berkeley and Poetry for the People at City College of San Francisco. Her work appears in Civil Liberties United, The City is Already Speaking, Muslim American Writers at Home, and more. About Write Now! SF Bay (https//:www.writenowsf.com) Write Now! SF Bay has supported 400+ writers and artists of color since 2015 through free writing workshops, readings, art exhibitions, mini publications, and five anthologies. Write Now! is fiscally sponsored by Intersection for the Arts and has been supported by the California Arts Council, California State Library, San Francisco Arts Commission, and others.

Do you feel that democracy is eroding? Come be inspired by creators and activists who haven’t given up! Shizue Seigel hosts. Readers include: James Cagney, prize-winning poet and author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory and Martian: The Saint of Loneliness Tara Dorabji, documentary filmmaker and author of Call Her Freedom Chloe Gentile-Montgomery, ethnic studies educator and author of Rustlings of the Spirit Georgina Marie Guardado, Lake County Poet Laureate and Board President of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference Susan Ito, author of I Would Meet You Anywhere Tehmina Khan, teacher of Poetry for the People at City College of San Francisco Jason Santiago LaCour, Santa Cruz slam poet Tureeda Mikell, author of The Body: Oracle of Memory and Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine Shizue Seigel, director of Write Now! SF Bay and author of Courting a Man Who Doesn’t Talk Betty Shamieh, American playwright, author of Too Soon, screenwriter and actor of Palestinian descent Kimi Sugioka, Alameda Poet Laureate and curator of the Last Supper Party reading series Kelechi Ubozoh, mental health advocate and co-editor of We’ve Been Too Patient Beulah Vega, poet and producer of the Santa Rosa theater series Heroines, Harpies, and Harlots – A Woman Speaks Brenda Yeager, Lake County Poet Laureate