Don’t miss the Second Tuesday reading in February, when Fresno poet laureate emeritus Joseph Rios joins us to read with Vielka Solano at Bookish Modesto, 7:00 pm. Open mic follows featured poets; free! Read more about our poets.
Second Tuesday Feb. 11: Joseph Rios & Vielka Solano
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Vielka Solano and Joseph Rios
Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener.
Vielka Solano
Born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, Vielka Solano obtained her Doctor of Medicine degree from the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo. After immigrating to Modesto, California, Vielka started working for Golden Valley Health Centers, providing healthcare to the underserved, rural community of Patterson, California. Professionally and as a poet, Vielka’s work focuses on social injustice, the trauma of war, and domestic violence. She is the founder of “Poesia y Arte Curando el Alma,” an outreach program designed to give those who have suffered domestic violence a voice through the arts. She is the founder of Noche de Poesia and host of Grito de Mujer in Modesto. In 2019, Vielka was among the recipients of the Outstanding Woman of the Year award from the Stanislaus County Commission for Women, and has also received the Concilio Unsung Hero Award. Vielka is part of Influencers4Justice, a program funded by Blue Shield of California Foundation.
Joseph Rios
Joseph Rios headshot
Joseph Rios was born in the San Joaquin Valley in 1987. He is a Xicano writer and the author of Shadowboxing: Poems & Impersonations (Omnidawn, 2017), winner of a 2018 American Book Award. A Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, Rios is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Community of Writers, CantoMundo, Letras Latinas, and the California Arts Council. Rios lives on Yokuts land in Fresno, California, where he served as poet laureate from 2022-2024. In 2024, he received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. He is the founder of Doña Helen’s, a poet’s residency at his grandparents’ longtime home in the San Joaquin Valley.
As an exuberant collection of relentless declamations against the existing economic order, “Shadowboxing” contains fresh poems of elemental protest, open reflections on politically motivated murders and disappearances, and lyric proclamations praising the inherent superiority of collective identity over the relic of the personal. —Sonja James, The Journal
Second Tuesday Poetry: The Meter Maids’ 35th Anniversary Reading
For our Second Tuesday Poetry reading in January, help us celebrate one of the longest-running poetry groups in our region, the Meter Maids! Reading starts at 7:00 pm at Bookish Modesto in Roseburg Square.
Dec 16
13th Annual MoSt Poetry Festival – Feb. 1, 2025
Featuring workshop facilitator and guest poet Michael Meyerhofer: Pulling Up the Floorboards: Two Radical Approaches to Revision.
RSVP $40 + ticketing fee. Price includes continental breakfast and a light lunch.. Saturday, February 1, 2025 · 10am – 2pm PST. Doors at 9:45am.
13th Annual MoSt Poetry Festival with Michael Meyerhofer: Pulling Up the Floorboards
For poets and poetry lovers, MoSt Poetry Festival is the place to be on Saturday, February 1.
Join us as we meet fellow poets and create space to write new poems in supportive community. This event features a generative workshop led by author Michael Meyerhofer, whose workshop Pulling Up the Floorboards: Two Radical Approaches to Revising Poems, will guide you through the process of writing as well as revision.
RSVP $40. Price includes continental breakfast and a light lunch.
If you are a poet with a publication, feel free to bring your books to sell. Bring poetry books to exchange at our community table.
About Michael Meyerhofer
Michael Meyerhofer is a contemporary poet and fantasy author who believes those two genres genuinely can get along. His fifth poetry book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press. His fourth, What To Do If You’re Buried Alive, was originally published by Split Lip Press, then recently re-released by the fine books at Doubleback Press (click here to download it for free!). His third, Damnatio Memoriae (lit. “damned memory”), won the Brick Road Poetry Book Contest. His previous books are Leaving Iowa (winner of the Liam Rector First Book Award) and Blue Collar Eulogies (Steel Toe Books, finalist for the Grub
Street Book Prize).
In addition to his poetry books, he has published two fantasy trilogies. His debut fantasy novel, Wytchfire (Book I in the Dragonkin Trilogy), was published by Red Adept Publishing, and went on to win the Whirling Prize and a Readers Choice nomination from Big Al’s Books and Pals.
He has also published six poetry chapbooks: To the Person Who Tends My Body (out now from Finishing Line Press), Pure Elysium (winner of the Palettes and Quills Chapbook Contest), The Clay-Shaper’s Husband (winner of the Codhill Press Chapbook Award), Real Courage (winner of the Terminus Magazine and Jeanne Duval Editions Poetry Chapbook Prize), The Right Madness of Beggars (winner of the Uccelli Press 3rd Annual Chapbook Competition), and Cardboard Urn (winner of the Copperdome Chapbook Contest).
Michael has won the Marjorie J. Wilson Best Poem Contest, the Laureate Prize for Poetry, the James Wright Poetry Award, and the Annie Finch Prize for Poetry. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Arts & Letters, River Styx, Quick Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and other journals.
He received his BA from the University of Iowa and his MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. An avid weightlifter, medieval weapons collector, and unabashed history nerd, he currently lives, teaches, and inhabits various coffee shops around Fresno, CA.