Our Poetry on Sunday quarterly reading series at Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock continues on December 10th at 2 pm in the Gemperle Gallery–click here or on the image at right to view the PDF flyer.

Featured readers for the December reading:

Angela Morales Salinas was born in Cerritos, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and emigrated to the United States as a child. She has lived in the San Joaquin Valley for most of her life, and taught Kindergarten for twenty-seven of her forty-year career as an educator. She has been published locally, and was proud to be included in More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Review Press, 2011). Angela was there when the Licensed Fools came into existence, and is happily continuing her foolish ways.

Born in Los Angeles, Mark Nicoll-Johnson has lived in Modesto since 1980. In 2014, he retired after nearly 40 years of teaching, the last 24 of which as a member of the Department of English at Merced College, where at one time or another he counted among his colleagues Angela Morales and Meg Withers.

Linda Toren is a retired elementary school teacher who lives in the foothills of Calaveras County along with her husband, a horse, chickens, two goats, a box turtle, and cats and dogs.  She teaches poetry in two local schools, is an active Friend of the Library and belongs to two writer’s groups—Licensed Fools (Modesto/Turlock) and Pine Grove Writer’s Group (PGWG—“Pig Wigs”.) Her most current poems appear in Out of the Fire by Manzanita Press.

Meg Withers has been writing to save her sanity since she was about 9. She has been published in literary journals and other creative projects. She has been anthologized, and has three published books: Must Be Present to Win (Ghost Road 2005), A Communion of Saints (TinFish 2008). Shadowed: Unheard Voices (Press at Fresno State 2014). The latter was edited with Joell Hallowell. The basis for Meg’s work is concern with the attempt to silence voices.