MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Joshua McKinney & Cecil Morris

Please join host Gary Thomas at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, August 30, 2025 at Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock, CA for a poetry reading featuring Joshua McKinney and Cecil Morris. There will be light refreshments and an open mic following the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public.

Joshua McKinney’s fifth book of poetry, Sad Animal (2024), was the recipient of the John Ridland Poetry Prize from Gunpowder Press. His work has appeared in such journals as Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, New American Writing, and many others. He is co-editor of the online ecopoetics journal, Clade Song.

Cecil Morris taught high school English for 37 years in Roseville, the small northern California city where he grew up. At Work in the Garden of Possibilities is his debut poetry collection. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, Morris has poems in The 2River Review, Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, Lascaux Review, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere. He and his wife, the mother of their children, divide their year between their California hometown and the cool Oregon coast, where they walk the beach and marvel at the sea and tide pools and joyful romping dogs.

 

 

MoSt Summer Poetry Workshop – The Journey Itself is Home: Haibun as Travel Journal

Haibun——the blending or braiding of prose poetry and haiku——has been a vehicle to reflect upon and write about human journeys——external and internal——since the days of the 17th Century Japanese poet Bashō. Join MoSt board member Gary Thomas as we consider and make some sense of the journeys we take in life. Writing supplies will be provided, but feel free to bring your favorite pen, pad, tablet, and/or travel photos!

As always, this MoSt Summer Poetry Workshop is free and open to the public. We hope to see you from 1:00-3:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 16th at the Salida Public Library, 4835 Sisk Road, Salida CA.

Free Poetry Workshop: Paint Chip Poetry at the Library

Join Stella Beratlis at the Salida Library on July 19, 2025 at 1:00 p.m. in a cool, fun, and relaxed environment to try out a variety of poetry prompts inspired by the descriptive language of paint chips. All ages invited.

Feel free to bring your own extra paint chips to add to the prompt possibilities.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Sherre Vernon and Paula Sheil

Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Sherre Vernon (Merced) and Paula Sheil (Stockton)

Date: Tuesday, July 8, 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

Paula Sheil 

Paula Sheil is a Professor of English at San Joaquin Delta College. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts from Raymond College and a Master of Arts in Writing from New College of California. She founded, with friends, Tuleburg Press in 2012 and The Write Place in 2017.

She taught elementary education, moved on to arts administration, and then journalism before joining the faculty at Delta. In the 1990s, she ran an open mic that prompted her interest in publishing. She and the late Julia Holzer published ¡ZamBomba!, a poetry quarterly that was read from Seattle to San Diego, until 2000. At Delta, Sheil started the Writer’s Guild and Artifact, the college literary magazine. 

Her work has been published in too many small journals, magazines, and newspapers to mention. She’s prouder yet of the poets and writers she has published and remains committed to empowering and amplifying the voices of Stockton and San Joaquin. 

Sherre Vernon

Sherre Vernon (she/her/hers) is the award-winning author of Green Ink Wings, The Name is Perilous, and Flame Nebula, Bright Nova. Sherre has been published in journals such as Tahoma Literary Review and The Chestnut Review, nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and anthologized in several collections including Fat & Queer and Best Small Fictions.

We welcome these poets, both new to the Second Tuesday series!

Second Tuesday Poetry with Aideed Medina and Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga

Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Fresno’s newest Poet Laureate and spoken word artist Aideed Medina with Tracy poet, teacher, and spoken word artist Russell Reza-Khaliz Gonzaga
Date: Tuesday, June 10, 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

Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga

Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga portrait in black and whiteRussell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga has hosted and organized events and workshops including the Sierra Poetry Festival, the Center Camp Spoken Word Stage at Burning Man, and the weekly ELYSEUM Writers Workshops at Harbin Hot Springs. Russell is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Lake County (2012-2014) and has represented San Francisco for three years at the National Poetry Slam. As an Arts Educator, he has worked with several organizations including YouthSpeaks and WritersCorps. He is also the recipient of the Certificate of Honor from the Board of Supervisors and a Mayor’s declaration of “Russell Gonzaga Day” in San Francisco. Currently, Russell is Poetry Editor for The Fabulist, hosts the monthly Word Bubbles Open Mic in Tracy CA, and is caretaker for his beloved Auntie Rosie.

Aideed Medina

Aideed Medina is Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, award-winning spoken word artist and playwright, and is the author of 31 Hummingbird: A Suite of Poems (Editorial Xingao, 2023) and Segmented Bodies (Prickly Pear Press,  2024). Her poetry and prose have been featured in many publications, including Fresno State’s Club Austral Literary Magazine, Chicano Writers and Artists Association Journal, La Bloga, Poets Responding, Split This Rock, and Nueva York Poetry Review, among many others, as well as in compositions for the 559 Mural Project and Fresno Grand Opera’s Opera Remix. Aideed is also a California Naturalist, and practices “flor y canto” as part of her poetic process and exploration of California’s natural history. This past April, Aideed was appointed Fresno’s seventh poet laureate. She will serve through March 2027.