Past Readings

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October 8, 2023: Linda Michel-Cassidy, Koss, Yael Valencia Aldana

Yael Valencia Aldana is a Caribbean Afro-Latinx writer and poet, known for her chapbook “Alien(s)” and the upcoming poetry collection “Black Mestiza” (University Press of Kentucky, 2025). Winner of the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series Prize 2023, Yael has also been recognized as a finalist for the AWP Kurt Brown Scholarship and a semi-finalist for the Two Sylvia Press Wilder Poetry Prize. Her work has graced publications like Stone Coast Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Cutbank Literary Journal. Yael is an Associate Editor at West Trade Review, a Feedback Editor at Craft Literary, and a Guest Editor at Frontier Poetry and Palette Poetry. She teaches creative writing at FIU and resides in South Florida.

Linda Michel-Cassidy writes criticism and reviews for venues such as The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Heavy Feather Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, where she is senior reviews editor. For many years, she was a contributing editor at Entropy Magazine. Her writing appears in Rattle, Catamaran, Tahoma Review, No Tokens, Sky Island, and others. She is a metalsmith, installation artist, and teacher. Her story collection When We Were Hardcore, is forthcoming in early 2024. She holds an MFA in visual arts from the California College of the Arts, another in fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars, a third in poetry from Vermont College, as well as a J.D. from McGeorge, which she rarely uses. Her story collection When We Were Hardcore, is forthcoming in early 2024. She lives on a houseboat in Northern California. More at: lmichelcassidy.com

Koss is a queer writer and artist with over 220 publications in journals such as San Pedro River Review, Beaver Mag, Sage Cigarettes, diode poetry, Bending Genres, Five Points, Chiron, Prelude, Anti-Heroin Chic, Petrichor, Cincinnati Review (miCro), Gone Lawn, Outlook Springs, Spillway, and many others. They had work in Best Small Fictions 2020, Bending Genre’s Get Bent, and diode’s Beyond the Frame. They’ve received numerous Pushcart and BoTN nominations in poetry, CNF, fiction, and art. Find out more about them at https://koss-works.com.


August 13, 2023: Elizabeth Horner Turner, Joanna Fuhrman, Francesca Bell

Elizabeth Horner Turner, Joanna Fuhrman, and Francesca Bell

Elizabeth Horner Turner‘s work has been published in journals including Cutbank, Fairy Tale Review, Gulf Coast, Lost Balloon, and trampset. Her work has been selected for inclusion in Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50 and Long List. Her chapbook, The Tales of Flaxie Char, was published through dancing girl press, and her current manuscript has been a finalist in several chapbook competitions. She lives in San Francisco.

Francesca Bell is the author of Bright Stain, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Julie Suk Award, and What Small Sound, and the translator of Max Sessner’s Whoever Drowned Here, all from Red Hen Press. Her work appears in B O D Y, ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and Rattle. She is the former poetry editor of River Styx, the translation editor of Los Angeles Review, and the poet laureate of Marin County. She lives with her family in Novato, CA.

Joanna Fuhrman, an Assistant Teaching Professor in Creative Writing at Rutgers University, is the author of six books of poetry, the most recent of which is To a New Era. Her seventh book Data Mind, a collection of prose poems about the internet, is forthcoming from Curbstone/Northwestern University Press in 2024. She is a graduate of the University of Washington’s MFA program, which awarded her the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Joan Grayson Award. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The BelieverFence, Lit, and Quarterly West. Her poem “Stagflation” won a 2011 Pushcart Prize, and her poem “Lavender” was featured on The Slowdown podcast. She also creates poetry videos that are on her own Vimeo site and in literary journals including Posit, Triquarterly, Moving Poems Journal, Fence Digital and Requited. 


July 9, 2023: Barb Reynolds, Janet Jennings, Siân Killingsworth, Ken Haas

Barb Reynolds is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of two poetry chapbooks: Boxing Without Gloves and Drawing Words, both on Finishing Line Press; and the irreverent pandemic trilogy Isolation Journal, Volumes 1-3, on Bookbaby.com. Barb spent 22 years as an emergency response child abuse investigator, and she founded the Second Sunday Poetry Series in 2017. For the first three years of the series, poets read together at a pub — and in 2021 Barb handed the series off to Siân to continue on Zoom. Barb’s poetry has been published widely, and her work can be found on her website: barbreynolds.com

Janet Jennings’ poetry and flash fiction have appeared in 32 Poems, Baltimore Review, Nimrod, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, and Verse Daily, among others. She is the author of the chapbook Traces in Water. For twenty years she owned and ran Sunspire, a natural foods company. Janet lives in San Anselmo, California, with her husband and twin daughters. You can find more of her work here: janetjenningspoet.com/

Siân Killingsworth’s poems have been published in The Rise Up Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Typehouse Literary JournalStonecoast ReviewGlass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), & other journals and anthologies including When There Are Nine, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg tribute anthology. She holds an MFA in poetry from The New School and is the host/curator of the Second Sunday Readings series. Find her online at secondsundayreadings.com and on Facebook.

Ken Haas lives in San Francisco where he works in healthcare and sponsors a poetry writing program at the UCSF Children’s Hospital. Ken’s poems have appeared in over 50 journals and numerous anthologies. His first full poetry collection, Borrowed Light, praised by Joe Millar and Ellen Bass, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, won a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Rubery Book Award. Ken has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award, and has participated several times in the Community of Writers, on whose Board of Directors he currently serves. Please visit him online at kenhaas.org.


July 29, 2023: PRIDE & JOY special reading to close out Pride Month!

Nicole Tallman is a poet, ghostwriter, and editor. Born and raised in Michigan, she lives in Miami, serves as the Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County, Special Projects Editor for Redacted Books, Poetry and Reviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review, and a reader for South Florida Poetry Journal and The Los Angeles Review. She is the author of Something Kindred and Poems for the People (the Southern Collective Experience (SCE) Press). Her next book, FERSACE, is forthcoming in November 2023 from ELJ Editions. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @natallman and at nicoletallman.com

Andrea Deeken was born in rural Missouri. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Beyond Queer Words, The Blue Mountain Review, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, Spoon River Poetry Review, Valley Voices and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, Mother Kingdom, won the 2021 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition and was a finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards. A former book editor, she has worked in public libraries for fifteen years. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her wife and daughter.

Dior J. Stephens is a proud Midwestern Pisces poet. He is the author of SCREAMS & lavender001, and CANNON!, all with Ghost City Press. Dior holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Philosophy program at the University of Cincinnati. Dior hopes to be a dolphin in his next life. Dior’s preferred pronouns are he/they. He tweets at @dolphinneptune and Instagrams at @dolphinphotos.

griffin epstein is a non-binary white settler/occupier from NYC (Lenape land) working in education and community-driven research in Toronto (Dish with One Spoon/Treaty 13). They have been featured in Glad Day’s Emerging Writers Series, and their poetry has appeared in CV2, GrainThe Maynard, and Plenitude, among others. griffin is the author of the chapbook so we may be fed (Frog Hollow Press, 2021). They are also a musician and a member of the experimental videogame collective shrunken studios.

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry and a back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie was also named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut poetry full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, was published in 2021 by Cephalopress. Her fiction debut, Something Dead in Everything, is now out with ELJ Editions. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile or @NotALitMag, where she throws random writing contests and open mics.

Ben Kline is a poet, storyteller and information professional from the farmlands of Appalachia’s west foothills currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. He writes about the modern digital existence, his former lovers, the Eighties, assorted concepts in astrophysics, rural-urban dichotomies, and queerness as it was, is and might be. His chapbook of origin/astrophysics poems Sagittarius A* was released by Sibling Rivalry Press in October 2020. His chapbook Dead Uncles arrived in May 2021 from Driftwood Press. He is the host of the outdoor reading series POETRY AFIELD at The Littlefield in Cincinnati’s eclectic Northside neighborhood and Poetry Stacked at the University of Cincinnati. He is a cohost of MLVC – The Madonna Podcast. You can peruse Ben’s recent publications here.


June 11, 2023:  Susan Cohen, Amanda Moore, Chloe Martinez

Susan Cohen is the author of two chapbooks and the full-length collections Throat Singing (2012), A Different Wakeful Animal (2016), and Democracy of Fire (2022). A former science writer, journalism professor, and contributing writer to the Washington Post Magazine, she earned an MFA at Pacific University. Her poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Catamaran, Los Angeles Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Review, Verse Daily and many anthologies. Her recent honors include the Red Wheelbarrow Prize judged by Mark Doty and the Terrain.org Poetry Prize judged by Arthur Sze. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Amanda Moore’s debut collection of poetry, Requeening (HarperCollins/ECCO), was selected for the National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong, featured in Oprah Magazine‘s Favorite Things issue, and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award.  Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, Catapult, Ploughshares, and LitHub, and her essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Baltimore Review, and Hippocampus Magazine. Former poetry co-editor at Women’s Voices for Change and on staff at Bull City Press’s INCH, Amanda is a high school English teacher in San Francisco, where she lives by the beach with her husband and daughter. 

Chloe Martinez is a poet and scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press, 2020). Her poems and translations have appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, AGNI, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California on the traditional lands of the Tongva/Gabrielino people. See more at www.chloeAVmartinez.com.


April 9, 2023: Rebecca Evans, Matthew Thorburn, Sarah Ghazal Ali

Rebecca Evans is a memoirist, poet, and essayist with two MFAs: one in creative nonfiction and the other in poetry from Sierra Nevada University. She teaches creative nonfiction at Boise State University. In addition to writing, she mentors high school girls in the juvenile system and teaches poetry for those in recovery. She also co-hosts the radio program, Writer to Writer.  Rebecca is a disabled and decorated war veteran, a Jew, a gardener, a mother, a worrier, and more. She carries a passion for sharing difficult stories about vulnerability, woven with mysticism. She lives in Idaho with her sons, her Newfies, and her calico cat. Find her at rebeccaevanswriter.com

Matthew Thorburn’s most recent book is String, published by Louisiana State University Press. He’s also the author of seven previous collections of poetry, including The Grace of Distance, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Dear Almost, which received the Lascaux Prize. His work has been recognized with a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, as well as fellowships from the Bronx and New Jersey arts councils. Originally from Michigan and for many years a New Yorker, he lives with his family near Princeton, New Jersey. His poems, dogs and chickens appear regularly on Instagram (@thorburnpoet). 

Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of THEOPHANIES, selected as the Editors’ Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award, and forthcoming with Alice James Books in January 2024. A 2022 Djanikian Scholar, her poems appear in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Pleiades, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Sarah is the editor of Palette Poetry and lives in Lewisburg, PA where she is a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University.


March 12, 2023: Allison Thung, Shei Sanchez

Allison Thung is a poet and project manager from Singapore. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Chestnut Review, ANMLY, Heavy Feather Review, Maudlin House, Lumiere Review, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @poetrybyallison or at www.allisonthung.com.

Shei Sanchez is writer, photographer, and teacher from Jersey City, New Jersey. A Best of the Net nominee, Shei’s work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including, most recently One Art Journal, Still: The Journal, One by Jacar Press, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, The Braided Way, and Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak. When she is not working at a health foundation in West Virginia, she is herding goats, writing in the woods, teaching yoga, and trying to be a good human. Shei lives across the Hocking River with her partner and their family of farm animals in Appalachian Ohio.

Guest host Raegen Pietrucha writes, edits, and consults creatively and professionally. Her chapbook, An Animal I Can’t Name, won the 2015 Two of Cups Press competition; her debut poetry collection, Head of a Gorgon, was published by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in 2022; and she has a memoir in progress. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she was an assistant editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has been published in Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Connect with her at raegenmp.wordpress.com and on Twitter @freeradicalrp.


February 12, 2023: Zoë Fay-Stindt, Krista Lukas, Lannie Stabile

Zoë Fay-Stindt (she/Z/they) is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, featured or forthcoming in places such as Southern Humanities, Ninth Letter, and Poet Lore, and gathered into a chapbook, Bird Body, winner of Cordella Press’ inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. She lives in Ames, Iowa, where she is an MFA candidate at Iowa State University and community farm volunteer. You can learn more at www.zoefaystindt.com

Krista Lukas is a writer whose essays, stories, and interviews have been published in The Sun, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the author of a poetry collection, Fans of My Unconscious, poems from which have been selected for The Best American Poetry 2006 and The Writer’s Almanac. Raised in a small-business family—with Old Country ancestors who were farmers, mail carriers, dishwashers, risk-takers, and immigrants—she took detours into circuit board assembly and teaching. Yet she never lost her love, sparked by her favorite teacher in third grade, of reading and writing.

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry and a back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie was also named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut poetry full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, was published in 2021 by Cephalopress. Her fiction debut, Something Dead in Everything, is now out with ELJ Editions. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile or @NotALitMag, where she throws random writing contests and open mics


January 8, 2023: Shiksha Dheda, Julia Guez, Matthew E. Henry

Shiksha Dheda is a South African of Indian descent. She uses writing to express her OCD and depression roller-coaster ventures, but mostly to avoid working on her master’s degree. Sometimes, she dabbles in photography, painting, and baking lopsided layered cakes. Her writing has been featured (on/forthcoming) in Wigleaf, Passages North, Brittle Paper, Door is a jar, and Epoch Press amongst others. She is the Pushcart-nominated author of Washed Away (Alien Buddha Press, 2021). She rambles annoyingly at Twitter: @ShikshaWrites. You can find (or ignore her) at https://shikshadheda.wixsite.com/writing

Julia Guez is a writer and translator based in the city of New York. The Certain Body is her second collection of poetry, written while she was recovering from COVID in the spring of 2020. For her poetry, fiction and translations, Guez has been awarded the Discovery/Boston Review Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship and The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation as well as a translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For the last decade, Guez has worked with Teach For America, New York; she’s currently the senior managing director of design and implementation there. She teaches creative writing at NYU and Rutgers. You can find more of her work online at www.juliaguez.net and if you are so inclined, can buy all of her books directly from Four Way Books, Bookshop.Org or your local bookstore.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of the Colored page (Sundress Publications, 2022), Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020) and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020). He is EIC of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes. MEH’s poetry appears in The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Shenandoah, and Solstice. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. He writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground at www.MEHPoeting.com


December 11, 2022: griffin epstein, Andrea Deeken, Nicole Tallman

griffin epstein is a non-binary white settler/occupier from NYC (Lenape land) working in education and community-driven research in Toronto (Dish with One Spoon/Treaty 13). They have been featured in Glad Day’s Emerging Writers Series, and their poetry has appeared in CV2, GrainThe Maynard, and Plenitude, among others. griffin is the author of the chapbook so we may be fed (Frog Hollow Press, 2021). They are also a musician and a member of the experimental videogame collective shrunken studios.

Andrea Deeken was born in rural Missouri. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Beyond Queer Words, The Blue Mountain Review, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, Spoon River Poetry Review, Valley Voices and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, Mother Kingdom, won the 2021 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition and was a finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards. A former book editor, she has worked in public libraries for fifteen years. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her wife and daughter.

Nicole Tallman is the Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County, and Poetry and Interviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review. She is the author of Something Kindred (The Southern Collective Experience Press), and her next two books, FERSACE and POEMS FOR THE PEOPLE, are forthcoming next year. She is also the editor of STAY GOLDEN, a Golden Girls-inspired special zine published by The Daily Drunk, and co-editor with Maureen Seaton of We Who Rise from Saltwater, Let’s Sing!, a collaborative Heroic Sonnet Crown for the Mayor and residents of Miami-Dade County. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.


November 13, 2022: Elizabeth M. Castillo, Jenn Givhan, Jose Hernandez Diaz

Elizabeth M. Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet, writer, and a two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Elizabeth explores the different countries and cultures she grew up with, as well as themes of race & ethnicity, motherhood, womanhood, language, love, loss and grief, and a touch of magical realism. Her writing has been featured in publications and anthologies in the UK, US, Australia, Mexico and the Middle East. Her bilingual, debut collection Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, y Otras Locuras is for sale on Amazon, and her debut chapbook Not Quite an Ocean will be published by Nine Pens Press in 2022/2023. You can connect with her on Twitter and IG as @EMCWritesPoetry, or on her website www.elizabethmcastillo.net

Jenn Givhan is a Mexican-American and indigenous poet, novelist, and transformational coach from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices. Jenn is the author of five full-length poetry collections, most recently Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press), and the novels Trinity SightJubilee, and River Woman, River Demon (Blackstone Press). Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, POETRY, and many others. Follow her at jennifergivhan.com.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Boulevard, Conduit, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches creative writing for various organizations including Beyond Baroque, Litro Magazine, The Writer’s Center in DC, and elsewhere.


October 9, 2022: Yeva Johnson & Sera Gamble

Yeva Johnson, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and musician whose work appears in Bellingham Review, Essential Truths:  The Bay Area in Color Anthology, Sinister Wisdom, Yemassee, and elsewhere, explores interlocking caste systems and possibilities for human co-existence in our biosphere.  Yeva is a past Show Us Your Spines Artist-in-Residence (RADAR Productions/SF Public Library), winner of the 2020 Mostly Water Art & Poetry Splash Contest, and poet in QTPOC4SHO, a San Francisco Bay Area artists’ collective.  Yeva’s first chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, will be published by Nomadic Press in 2023.

Sera Gamble’s poetry has appeared in publications such as Typehouse, Sky Island Journal, Tinderbox, Nine Mile Magazine, Harpur Palate and Birdcoat Quarterly. She also writes film and television; most recently, she co-created the TV series YOU and THE MAGICIANS. Sera lives in Los Angeles with her husband and dog, who also enjoy poetry. 


September 11, 2022: Shannon Wolf, Addie Tsai, Malvika Jolly
Three oval portraits of poets Shannon Wolf, Addie Tsai, and Malvika Jolly. Text reads: 2nd Sunday Readings, Sunday September 11, 2022 3pm PST Register to attend

Shannon Wolf is a British writer and teacher living in Denver, Colorado. She received a joint MA-MFA in Poetry at McNeese State University and also has degrees from Lancaster University and the University of Chichester. She is the Co-Curator of the Poets in Pajamas Reading Series. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction (which can also be found under the name Shannon Bushby) have appeared in Bending Genres, The Forge, No Contact Mag, and HAD, among others. You can find her on social media @helloshanwolf.

Addie Tsai, a queer, nonbinary artist and writer of color, teaches Creative Writing at the College of William & Mary, in Goddard College’s MFA Program in Interdisciplinary Arts, and Regis University’s Mile High MFA Program in Creative Writing. They earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. She is the author of the queer, Asian, young adult novel Dear Twin and Unwieldy Creatures, an adult, queer, biracial Asian retelling of Frankenstein. They are the Fiction Co-Editor and Editor of Features & Reviews at Anomaly, Staff Writer at Spectrum South, and Founding Editor & Editor in Chief at just femme & dandy.

Malvika Jolly is a writer and translator. Her poetry, essays, and criticism are featured or forthcoming in Chicago magazine, Frontier Poetry, Liminal Transit Review, The Margins, MIZNA, Poetry Online, Poetry Northwest, South Side Weekly, and Violet, Indigo, Blue, Etc. She curates the New Third World, a monthly poetry reading series inspired by the Non-Aligned Movement.


August 21, 2022: Special reading for WHEN THERE ARE NINE, a chapbook celebrating the life and achievements of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Featuring poets Susan Rich, Siân Killingsworth, Shaneen A. Harris, Krista Lukas, & Gayle Brandeis

Krista Lukas has read her work and led workshops in the United States and Europe. Her essays, short stories, and interviews have been published in The Sun, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the author of a poetry collection, Fans of My Unconscious, poems from which appear in The Best American Poetry 2006 andThe Writer’s Almanac.

Siân Killingsworth (she/her) has been published in Roi Fainéant Press, Typehouse Literary Journal, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), & elsewhere. She is the Anthology Editor for the Marin Poetry Center, host/curator of the 2nd Sunday Readings series, and a poetry reader for the Kitchen Table Quarterly. Find her on Twitter: @sianessa and @2ndSundayPoetry.

Gayle Brandeis is the author, most recently, of the memoir The Art of Misdiagnosis, and the novel in poems, Many Restless Concerns. Earlier books include the poetry collection The Selfless Bliss of the Body, the guidebook Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write, and the novels The Book of Dead Birds, which won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction of Social Engagement judged by Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison, and Maxine Hong Kingston, Self StorageDelta Girls, and My Life with the Lincolns, which was chosen as a state-wide read in Wisconsin. Her poetry, essays, and short fiction have been widely published in places such as The New York TimesThe Washington PostO (The Oprah Magazine), The RumpusSalonLongreads, and more, and have received numerous honors, including a Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award, Notable Essays in Best American Essays 2016, 2019, and 2020, the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award and the 2018 Multi Genre Maverick Writer Award. She served as Inlandia Literary Laureate from 2012-2014 and currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Antioch University Los Angeles.

Susan Rich is the author of four books of poetry including Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel,and The Cartographer’s Tongue published by White Pine Press and co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders with Ilya Kaminsky and Brian Turner. Her awards include a PEN USA Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Times Literary Supplement Award. Rich’s poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, New England Review, O Magazine, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She has two books forthcoming: Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected from Salmon Press and Blue Atlas from Red Hen Press.

Shaneen A. Harris (editor) is a poet and programmer. She has published two books of poetry: Reflections of My Thoughts: I used to believe in unicorns, and I still do and Because God Said So, as well as Simply Complex, a spoken word CD.  Her poem “Clergy Woman Eats Her Shadow” was a finalist in the Wolverine Farm Broadside Poetry Prize, and her pieces have appeared in Postcard Poems and Prose MagazineRubbertop ReviewCrab Orchard Review: Cha-Ching the Money EditionWatershed Review, and Rattle. Shaneen received a BS in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, and an MFA in Creative Writing poetry emphasis from Sierra Nevada University. She served as the host of Poetry Unchained, a web based poetry show, and TBN’s Joy in Our Town. Shaneen is married and the proud mother of 3 adult children.


August 14, 2022: Stephen Roberts, David Baker, Rebecca Foust

Stephen Thomas Roberts is a poet living in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York, with occasional side trips into Manhattan where he practices law. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including The Tishman Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Blue Unicorn, Third Wednesday, The Cape Rock, The Driftwood Press, The Worcester Review, The Ocean State Review, and Cagibi, among others. He has been a finalist in the William Wisdom-William Faulkner Writing Competition and for the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize. He considers Anne Waldman, Diane di Prima, and Sharon Olds to be influences.

David Baker is author of thirteen books of poetry, recently Whale Fall, published in July by W. W. Norton, and Swift: New and Selected Poems, as well as six books of prose about poetry. Among his awards are prizes and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, Mellon Foundation, and Poetry Society of America. Baker’s poetry and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry, and others.  He served for many years as Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review, where he continues to curate the annual eco-poetry issue, “Nature’s Nature.” Baker lives in Granville, Ohio.

Rebecca Foust‘s new book, ONLY, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in September 2022. Foust is the author of three chapbooks including The Unexploded Ordnance Bin, winner of the 2018 Swan Scythe Chapbook Award and four books including Paradise Drive, winner of the Press 53 Award for Poetry. Recognitions include the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry judged by Kaveh Akbar, the CP Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes, a 2017-19 Marin Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from The Frost Place, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. Recent poems are in The Cincinnati Review, The Hudson Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, POETRY, and elsewhere. 


July 10: Ashley Kunsa & Mab Jones

Ashley Kunsa is a poet and writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her prose has been published in the Los Angeles ReviewForge Literary Magazine, Sycamore Review, and The Writer Magazine, and her poetry is forthcoming from Massachusetts Review, Bennington Review, Radar Poetry, and Cream City Review, among other journals. Currently she is assistant professor of creative writing at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT, where she lives with her husband and two children. Find her online at www.ashleykunsa.com.

Mab Jones has read her work all across the UK, in the US, France, Ireland, and Japan. She is the author of three poetry collections and three pamphlets, and the winner of various accolades, including a John Tripp Spoken Poetry award, the Word Factory Neil Gaiman Short Story competition, a Royal Society of Literature award, the Aurora Poetry Prize, the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival Prize, and the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize.  She has presented on BBC Radio 4, written for the New York Times, teaches at Cardiff University, and is resident writer in Cardiff Wetlands. http://www.mabjones.com/ 


June 12: Erin Redfern, Nancy Gomez Miller, Leonora Simonovis

Erin Redfern’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Hopkins Review, New Ohio Review, New World Writing, and The Massachusetts Review. She earned her PhD at Northwestern University, where she was a Fellow at the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence. Her chapbook is Spellbreaking and Other Life Skills (Blue Lyra Press). She has served as poetry judge for the San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts Festival and a reader for Poetry Center San Jose’s Caesura and DMQ Review. She teaches poetry classes and workshops online. www.erinredfern.net.

Nancy Miller Gomez’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2021, Best New Poets 2021, The Adroit Journal, New Ohio Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, River Styx, The Rumpus, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Punishment, was published in 2018 as part of the Rattle chapbook series. She co-founded, with Ellen Bass, an organization that provides poetry workshops to incarcerated women and men. She grew up in Kansas and currently lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Leonora Simonovis (she/her/ella) is the author of Study of the Raft, winner of the 2021 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Kweli Journal, Diode Poetry Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Rumpus, among others. She has been the recipient of fellowships from Women Who Submit (WWS), VONA, and the Poetry Foundation. A Venezuelan American poet, Leonora lives in San Diego, CA, and teaches Latin American literature and creative writing in Spanish at the University of San Diego. 


May 15, 2022: George Lober, Barbara Quick, Raegen Pietrucha

George Lober is the author of two books of poetry Shift of Light and A Bridge to There. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and e-zines, including the Monterey Poetry Review, Homestead Review, Eclectic Literary Forum (ELF); Quarry West; The Sandhill Review; Porter Gulch Review, Red Wheelbarrow, The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poetry and The Listening Eye. He is a former winner of the Ruth Cable Memorial Prize for Poetry and currently lives in Monterey, California.

Barbara Quick won the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize for her debut chapbook, The Light on Sifnos (2021: Blue Light Press). A widely published writer, she is best known as author of the 2007 novel Vivaldi’s Virgins, translated into a dozen languages and currently in development as a mini-series. Five of Barbara’s poems were recorded by Garrison Keillor and featured on The Writer’s Almanac last year. She has been the featured guest several times on Grace Cavalieri’s program from the Library of Congress, “The Poet and the Poem.” Barbara’s newest novel is What Disappears(May 17, 2022: Regal House).

Raegen Pietrucha writes, edits, and consults creatively and professionally. Her chapbook, An Animal I Can’t Name, won the 2015 Two of Cups Press competition; her debut poetry collection, Head of a Gorgon, is forthcoming with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in May; and she has a memoir in progress. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she was an assistant editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has been published in Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Connect with her at raegenmp.wordpress.com and on Twitter @freeradicalrp.


April 10, 2022: Diane Lee Moomey, Prartho Sereno, Kai Coggin

Kai Coggin (she/her) is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021) and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council and Arkansas Learning Through the Arts, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award and named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Cultural WeeklySOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary ReviewTABEntropy, SWWIM, Split This Rock, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Tupelo Press, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. 

Prartho Sereno’s 4 prizewinning poetry collections include Indian Rope TrickElephant RagaCall from Paris, and her illustrated Causing a Stir: The Secret Lives and Loves of Kitchen Utensils. Poet Laureate Emerita of Marin County (2015-17), MFA Syracuse University (2013), and Radio Disney Super Teacher (2005), she was a Poet in the Schools for 21 years and currently teaches The Poetic Pilgrimage: Poem-Making as Spiritual Practice online. Prartho holds over four years in an Indian ashram as her strongest creative influence, but she also credits excursions into other art forms: counseling psychologist, vegetarian cook, mother of 2, meditation and yoga instructor at Cornell University, book and cover illustrator, and amateur singer-songwriter. In January 2022, she was named Artist of the Month by the Pt. Reyes Dance Palace, which celebrated her with a virtual show, “Poems & Paint in Conversation,” pairing Prartho’s watercolor paintings with recitations of simpatico poems. https://www.prarthosereno.com 

Diane Lee Moomey has lived and wandered around the US and Canada and now lives in Half Moon Bay, California, where she co-hosts a monthly series, “Coastside Poetry”. (www.coastsidepoetry.org) She has also taught Poetry Appreciation to older adults through Foothill College’s Disability Resource Program. A regular reader at San Francisco Bay Area poetry venues, Diane’s work has appeared in The MacGuffin, Light, THINKMezzo CamminMacQueen’s Quinterly, and others, and been nominated for three Pushcart prizes. She is also the author of four poetry collections — the most recent, Make For Higher Ground, is available now from Barefoot Muse Press. www.barefootmuse.com. Diane is also a watercolorist and collage artist, an experience that both seeds and is seeded by, her poetic imagery. Visit her at www.dianeleemoomeyart.com      


March 13, 2022: Dion O’Reilly, Sage Ravenwood, Jordan Franklin

Dion O’Reilly’s debut book, Ghost Dogs, (Terrapin 2020) was shortlisted for several prizes including The Catamaran Prize and The Eric Hoffer Award. Her work appears in such journals as The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Narrative, New Letters, American Journal of Poetry, and The New Ohio Review. With The Hive Poetry Collective, she produces podcasts, radio shows, and events. She also leads private workshops with small groups of poets from all over the United States and Canada (dionoreilly.wordpress.com).


Jordan E. Franklin is a poet from Brooklyn, NY. She earned her MFA from Stony Brook Southampton. Her work has appeared in the Southampton Review, Breadcrumbs, easy paradise, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Frontier, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2017 James Hearst Poetry Prize and the 2020 Gatewood Prize as well as a finalist of the 2019 Furious Flower Poetry Prize. Her first poetry collection, when the signals come home, was published by Switchback Books in March 2021. Her first poetry chapbook, boys in the electric age, was published by Tolsun Books in August 2021.


Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Contrary, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Pioneertown Literary, Grain, The Rumpus, Lit Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, Savant-Garde, ANMLY (Anomaly), River Mouth Review, and more. Twitter: https://twitter.com/SageRavenwood, FB: https://www.facebook.com/sage.ravenwood, Email: [email protected], Website: https://sageravenwood.blogspot.com/


February 13, 2022: In memory of Susan Bonetto
Amanda Moore, Ken Haas, Janet Jennings, Barb Reynolds, Siân Killingsworth

Headshot of smiling blonde woman, Susan Clare Bonetto

Susan Clare Bonetto was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, put herself through college and graduate school, and became a highly respected human resources professional who worked for the United Nations as well as companies like Schwab and Williams Sonoma. She, in the words of Thoreau, “lived the life she had imagined,” creating homes for herself and her loved ones in Argentina, Fiji, and San Francisco. She wrote short stories about her time in the South Pacific, which are published in journals and collected in a book called Living Barefoot. Susan lost her battle with lymphoma last fall, leaving her partner, Ken Haas, and a son, Alejandro, who is currently getting his marketing degree at the University of San Diego. Susan was beautiful, wonderful, amazing, courageous, life-affirming, and so much fun. Everyone loved her and she was everyone’s friend. This reading is held in her honor.

About the poets:

Ken Haas lives in San Francisco where he works in healthcare and sponsors a poetry writing program at the UCSF Children’s Hospital. Ken’s poems have appeared in over 50 journals and numerous anthologies. His first full poetry collection, Borrowed Light, praised by Joe Millar and Ellen Bass, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, won a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Rubery Book Award. Ken has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award, and has participated several times in the Community of Writers, on whose Board of Directors he currently serves. Please visit him online at http://kenhaas.org.

Barb Reynolds was the founder of Second Sunday Poetry Series. She holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology and spent 22 years as an emergency response child abuse investigator. Barb’s first chapbook, Boxing Without Gloves (Finishing Line Press), was shortlisted for the 2015 Rubery International First Book Award. During COVID seclusion Barb published the trilogy Isolation Journal, Vol’s 1-3 (bookbaby.com), and her latest chapbook Drawing Words (Finishing Line Press) was released last October. Barb is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and she divides her time between Los Angeles and Provincetown, MA.  barbreynolds.com  

Siân Killingsworth has been published in Blue Earth Review, Typehouse Literary Journal, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), andother journals and anthologies. She is the Anthology Editor for the Marin Poetry Center and Curator for the Second Sunday Poetry Series. Find her on Twitter: @sianessa and @2ndSundayPoetry.

Janet Jennings’ poetry and flash fiction have appeared in Agni Online, Baltimore Review, Nimrod, Shenandoah, and Verse Daily, among others. She is the author of Traces in Water, a poetry chapbook and lives in San Anselmo, California with her husband and twin daughters.

Amanda Moore, whose debut poetry collection Requeening (Ecco, 2021) was selected for the National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong, is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as ZZYZVA, Catapult, and Best New Poets. Poetry Editor for Women’s Voices for Change and a reader at Bull City Press and VIDA Lit, Amanda is a high school teacher and avid ocean swimmer and surfer. She lives in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. 


January 9, 2022: Barbara Berman, Claire Blotter, Linda Michel-Cassidy

Flyer showing headshots of Barbara Berman, Claire Blotter, and Linda Michel-Cassidy for Second Sunday Poetry Series January 9, 2022

In 1979, in Washington, DC, Barbara Berman organized one of the first Independent Press Festivals in the country. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Village Voice, The Washington Post, Gargoyle, Lilith, Narrative Northeast and other publications. She is the author of a poetry chapbook, THE GENEROSITY OF STARS, from Finishing Line Press, and CURRENTS, a full-length collection of poetry from Three Mile Harbor Press. She has lived in San Francisco for 34 years, with her husband, Clifford Lee, an environmental lawyer. Her books can be purchased at Small Press Distribution-SPD.

Claire Blotter writes & performs poetry with movement & body percussion. She represented San Francisco in National Poetry Slams in Boston and Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Spillway, Plant-Human Quarterly, California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology, among other journals and anthologies, & in 3 chapbooks. She was a finalist for the Fischer Prize and judged the 2019 competition. She has taught writing at S.F. State University, John F. Kennedy University, Dominican University & College of Marin. She teaches poetry writing to children and teens through the California Poets in the Schools & Poetry Out Loud Programs.

Linda Michel-Cassidy‘s writing appears or is upcoming in RattlePainted BrideNo Tokens, Catapult, The Tahoma Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is a senior reviews editor at Tupelo Quarterly, a board member at The Marin Poetry Center, and a former contributing editor at Entropy. Michel-Cassidy holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and another, in visual arts, from the California College of the Arts. She is working on two poetry chapbooks and a poetry/image installation to be shown at the Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model. She lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, CA. More at: lmichelcassidy.com


December 12, 2021: Kate Peper, Erin Rodoni, Danusha Laméris

Kate Peper loves to paint watercolors, garden, and walk with her husband and semi-feral dog, Hannah, in Northern California. She’s a five-time Pushcart nominee and her poems can be found in The American Journal of Poetry, Baltimore Review, Cimarron Review, Potomac Review, Rattle, Tar River Review, and others. Her chapbook, Dipped In Black Water, won the New Women’s Voices Award from Finishing Line Press, 2016. Buy Kate’s chapbook HERE.

Erin Rodoni is the author of three poetry collections, most recently And if the Woods Carry You, winner the 2020 Southern Indiana Review Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry NorthwestBlackbirdCimarron Review, Best New Poets, and Fairy Tale Review, among others. Her honors include The Montreal International Poetry Prize, a Ninth Letter Literary Award, and an AWP Intro Journals Award. She teaches at the Writing Salon, oversees the High School Poetry Contest and Anthology for the Marin Poetry Center, and raises two small humans. Buy Erin’s book HERE.

Danusha Laméris is the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her poems have been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The SUN Magazine, Tin HouseThe Gettysburg Review, and Ploughshares. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and winner of a 2021 Northern California Book Award. The 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, she teaches poetry independently, and is a Poet Laureate emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California. She is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program. Buy Danusha’s book HERE.


November 14, 2021: Judy Juanita and Tureeda Mikell


October 10, 2021: Margaret Stawowy, Kathe Jordan, and Cathryn Shea


September 12, 2021: Georgina Marie, Siân Killingsworth, and MK Chavez


SSPS Readings Pre-Pandemic



MARCH 8, 2020
REBECCA FOUST
RON CAMPBELL
DION O’REILLY


FEBRUARY 9, 2020
BARBARA SWIFT BRAUER
CATHRYN SHEA
JEFF KINGMAN

JANUARY 12, 2020
A Special Poet Laureate reading
RAFAEL JESÚS GONZÁLEZ (Poet Laureate Berkeley)
DANUSHA LAMÉRIS (Poet Laureate Santa Cruz)
TERRY LUCAS (Poet Laureate Marin)

DECEMBER 8, 2019
CHRISTINA HUTCHINS
ELIOT SCHAIN
GEORGE LOBER

NOVEMBER 10, 2019
DAVID ROSENTHAL
ROBERT WILLIAMS
WHIT SCHWEIZER
GUEST HOST FOR NOVEMBER: AMANDA MOORE

OCTOBER 13, 2019
JOHANNA ELY
D.R. GOODMAN
RON PARKER

SEPTEMBER 15, 2019
LILY IONA MACKENZIE
REGINA MARIE
SIAN KILLINGSWORTH

AUGUST 2019
KIM ROSEN
ALISON LUTERMAN
DAWN MCGUIRE

JULY 2019
MAUREEN MURPHY
JUDY JUANITA
ALAN BERN

JUNE 2019
KAYE CLEAVE
JUDY BEBELAAR
SALLY ELESBY

MAY 2019
AMANDA MOORE
BARB REYNOLDS
KEN HAAS
JANET JENNINGS

APRIL 2019
RON CAMPBELL
GRACE GRAFTON
KATHRYN JORDAN

MARCH 2019
MERYL NATCHEZ
FRANCESCA BELL
WILLIAM BREWER

FEBRUARY 2019
SIAN KILLINGSWORTH
KATE PEPER
MARGARET STAWOWY

JANUARY 2019
JOHANNA ELY
DAVID ROSENTHAL
BONNIE MCMANIS

DECEMBER 2018
MARY MACKEY
ANDRENA ZAWINSKI
LUCILLE LANG DAY

NOVEMBER 2018
JUDY JUANITA
RON PARKER
ROBERT WILLIAMS

OCTOBER 2018
GEORGE LOBER
CHRISTINA HUTCHINS
ELIOT SCHAIN

SEPTEMBER 2018
LENORE WEISS
GILLIAN WEGENER
LYNNE BARNES

AUGUST 2018
JENNIFER LAGIER
WHIT SCHWEIZER
PENELOPE BARNES THOMPSON

JULY 2018
LILY IONA MACKENZIE
KATHRYN JORDAN
D.R. GOODMAN

JUNE 2018
EDIE HARTSHORNE
JACQUELINE BERGER
K.T. LANDON

MAY 2018
DONNA EMERSON
CATHRYN SHEA
SUSAN SUNTREE

APRIL 2018
MARGARET STAWOWY
GREG MAHRER
KATHLEEN WINTER

MARCH 2018
MERYL NATCHEZ
BARB REYNOLDS
AMANDA MORRE

FEBRUARY 2018
KIM ROSEN
ALISON LUTERMAN
DAWN MCGUIRE

JANUARY 2018
ANDRENA ZAWINSKI
JUDITH OFFER
CASEY FITZSIMONs

DECEMBER 2017
GEORGE LOBER
LENORE WEISS
ROBERT WILLIAMS

NOVEMBER 2017
KATE PEPER
DOREEN STOCK
GRACE GRAFTON

OCTOBER 2017
NO READING – BLOCH MEMORIAL

SEPEMBER 2017
ROBERT WILLIAMS
AMOS WHITE
CAROL DORF

AUGUST 2017
JANET JENNINGS
ALICE TEMPLETON
BONNIE MCMANIS

JULY 2017
KEN HAAS
WHIT SCHWEIZER
SHEILA DAVIES-SUMNER

JUNE 2017
BARB REYNOLDS
KATHRYN JORDAN
PENELOPE BARNES THOMPSON