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!

Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga

Russell 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.