Annual Benefit Gala

Please join us for Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center’s 5th Annual Benefit, April 30, 2017!

Our annual benefit will be held from 2-5 p.m. at the Barkin’ Dog Grill. Join us for an afternoon of music, food and drink, poetry fun and games, a silent auction, and supporting the arts in our area.

Tickets are $20, and they are available online at mostbenefit.eventbrite.com or at the door! All proceeds will benefit the work of MoSt as we continue to promote poetry throughout Stanislaus County with poetry contests, the Modesto Poetry Festival, publications, poetry readings throughout the region, Poetry-on-the-Spot, and many other activities. See our Annual Gala page for photos of the fun we’ve had in previous years.

Aileen Jaffa Poetry Contest Awards Ceremony

Come join us at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock for the Awards Ceremony for this year’s Aileen Jaffa Young Poets Contest! First, second and third place winners in each category will receive cash awards from the MoSt Poetry Center. Prizes are: First Place $25, Second Place $15, Third Place $10. In addition, the Modesto Branch of the National League of American Pen Women will award a $60 Aileen Jaffa Outstanding Poem award in each of two combined categories, Categories 1 and 2, and Categories 3 and 4. The current president of the NLAPW Modesto chapter will present the awards, and you’ll get to hear a reading featuring the winning poems.

Aileen Jaffa Young Poets Contest Deadline

Today is the postmark deadline. Please see the Aileen Jaffa contest page for more information!

Aileen Jaffa Young Poets Contest is Open!

Check out our contests section for information on the Aileen Jaffa Young Poets Contest, a poetry competition for K-12 students in Stanislaus County! Winners will be honored with cash prizes and will be invited to read their work in a ceremony at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock on Sunday, May 21st. Read more about it on the contest page, download the entry form, and please feel free to spread the word!

Poetry on Sunday @ Carnegie

FebCarnegieFlyerOur Poetry on Sunday quarterly reading series at Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock continues on December 4th at 2 pm–feel free to print and distribute the flyer, available as a PDF right here.

Featured readers:

Noel Crane began writing poetry six years ago and hasn’t stopped. Her poetry explores her childhood struggles with listlessness and excessive daydreaming. Noel has a Bachelor’s degree in English. When she’s not writing, she enjoys yoga, hiking, and plants. Noel is currently working on another degree in Horticulture.

Tom Myers is a retired elementary teacher who was raised and still lives in the Great Central Valley with his wife and assorted pets. Wild places sustain him and frame much of his poetry. He is a founding board member of MoSt. Desert Treasure is his third chapbook.

Lillian Vallee is a writer, translator, retired college instructor and amateur naturalist who lives at the center of the world, in Modesto, in California’s Great Central Valley, a region of immense riches and only partially realized potential.  Vallee’s work expresses her region’s telluric mysteries, its profound failings and everyday striving for healing and wholeness.

Gillian Wegener has had poetry published in Spillway, Packinghouse Review, Sow’s Ear, and Wherewithal. Her chapbook Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other was published by In the Grove Press in 2001, and her first full-length collection of poetry, The Opposite of Clairvoyance was published in 2008 by Sixteen Rivers Press. Her second collection, This Sweet Haphazard, will be published in early 2017. In the meantime, she hosts the monthly 2nd Tuesday Reading Series, is founding president of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, and served as poet laureate for the City of Modesto from 2012-2016.