City of Modesto Poets' Corner Reading & Reception
2024-05-19 13:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | McHenry Museum, 1402 14th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Join us at the McHenry Museum for a reception and reading for the annual Poets’ Corner contest.
When: Sunday, May 19, 2024
Where: McHenry Museum
Time: 1:00 pm
A copy of the Poets’ Corner anthology will be available to contributors.
Presented by the City of Modesto with assistance from the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Susan Cohen & Lenore Weiss
2024-08-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is proud to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Susan Cohen & Lenore Weiss
Date: Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg, Modesto CA 95350 (Roseburg Square Shopping Center)
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event.

Susan Cohen
Susan Cohen’s third collection, Democracy of Fire (Broadstone Books: 2022), was praised by Ellen Bass as a “wise and wonderful” vision of “our interconnectedness.” Her poetry honors include the Red Wheelbarrow Prize judged by Mark Doty, the Terrain Annual Poetry Prize judged by Arthur Sze, and a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIII. A former journalist and contributing writer for the Washington Post Magazine, she lives in Berkeley and has appeared in 32 Poems, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, Verse Daily, and many anthologies.
Praise for Susan Cohen & Democracy of Fire
A thread of elegy runs through Democracy of Fire, Susan Cohen’s wise and wonderful new poetry collection. Tenderly, precisely, these poems record a litany of the world’s ongoing losses: “Greenland’s ice sheet pooling like tears into the ocean,” elephants, beetles, democracies, “languages left behind like cloaks,” and “our own bones interred without ceremony.” Cohen shows us our interconnectedness, a reminder of both the beauty and value of what’s at stake. Yet, paradoxically, this vision makes Democracy of Fire a deeply comforting book. Of the planet Mercury she writes, “…a pinprick ablaze for longer than our species will exist…Between us and it, there’s a distance far beyond air, and beyond despair.” —Ellen Bass, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets & author of Indigo
At this historical, political and ecological moment, with democracy and our earth aflame, could there be a more timely or relevant collection than Susan Cohen’s powerful, wise and deeply humane book of poetry, Democracy of Fire? Here, the many losses we experience both daily and across time—losses both cultural and personal—are mitigated by the act of memory and a faith in, well, the facts of our world and our capacity for intimate reckonings. Once again, Susan Cohen has shown herself to be one of the most compassionate recorders of our complicated times. —David St. John, Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets & author of The Last Troubadour: Selected and New Poems
Lenore Weiss
Lenore’s past poetry collections form a trilogy about love, loss, and being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012); Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hakodesh Word Press, 2017). Her most recent collection, Video Game Pointers (WordTech Editions, 2024) issues a call for peace. Ethelzine published her hand-sewn poetry chapbook, From Malls to Museums. Alexandria Quarterly Press published her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love.
Lenore serves as the Associate Editor (Creative Nonfiction) for the Mud Season Review and lives in Oakland, California with Zebra the Brave and Granola the Shy. She earned an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University. You may find her at www.lenoreweiss.com.

Praise for Lenore Weiss and Video Game Pointers
“This mighty collection features limbs of a radical mass autobiography. Our aggregate imagination wedded to virtuosic architecture of wordplay and image. Through these poems, quilted revolutionary legacies of resistance find their best song.”—Tongo Eisen-Martin, 8th Poet Laureate of San Francisco, California
“This generous volume stretches the expansive geography of the author’s imagination, time, space, experience and world view. Weiss is a practitioner of the politics of being fully alive.”—Maw Shein Win, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn)

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Christina Lux, Kim McMillon, & Salvatore Salerno
2024-08-17 14:00 - 16:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt Poetry On Saturday Reading
August 17, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. PST
Carnegie Arts Center 250 N. Broadway Avenue, Turlock, CA
Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center’s (MoSt’s) Poetry On Saturday in-person readings on August 17 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock. Come enjoy some high-quality summertime respite and restoration via three fine poets’ words!
Our featured readers are Christina Lux, Kim McMillon, and Salvatore Salerno. An Open Mic time will follow the featured poets. For more details on the poets and their books, read their accompanying bios.
This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.

Christina Lux’s poetry has appeared on National Public Radio, in the Houston Chronicle, in textbooks by Oxford University Press, and in journals such as Women’s Studies Quarterly and North Dakota Quarterly. Her book of poems, War Bonds, is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press. Born in Pasadena, California, she lived in the Central Valley of California for several years before moving to Texas, then Québec, and finally spending five years in Cameroon, where she lived in the Bui Division of the Northwest Province as well as in Yaoundé before returning to the U.S. for university. She holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages from the University of Oregon and is currently Managing Director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Merced.

Dr. Kim McMillon is a producer, playwright, and contributor to the anthology Some Other Blues: New Perspectives on Amiri Baraka (Ohio University Press, 2021). McMillon is the editor of Willow Books’ anthology Black Fire—This Time, published March 15, 2022. McMillon produced the 2016 Dillard University-Harvard Hutchins Center Black Arts Movement Conference in New Orleans. With UC Merced’s Center for the Humanities, ASUCM, and the Office of Student Life, Ms. McMillon co-produced the 2014 UC Merced Black Arts Movement Conference, Fifty Years On. McMillon edited the April 2018 special edition of The Journal of PAN African Studies on the Black Arts Movement and contributed a chapter on the Black Arts Movement to the Black Power Encyclopedia (1965-1975). This two-volume reference work explores the emergence and evolution of the Black Power Movement in the United States. McMillon produced, wrote, and starred in her one-woman show, Confessions of a Thespian: When Spirit & Theatre Collide, directed by Margo Hall and staged at the Julia Morgan Theatre in Berkeley, CA, in March 2000. McMillon also produced, wrote, and directed Voyages, which premiered at the Nova Theatre in San Francisco in March 1986 and was produced at Zellerbach Playhouse in August 1987. In January 1988, Berkeley’s Black Repertory Group produced Voyages. Dr. McMillon’s children’s book, The Healing Book of Me, will be available in late 2024.

Salvatore Salerno has an M.F.A. from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was a poet and playwright in the North Carolina Visiting Artist Program. Salvatore is a retired English and drama teacher from Davis High School. He was the Poet Laureate of Modesto from 2020-24 and is still the president of Stanislaus Audubon Society. His sixth poetry book is After Thoughts.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tom Myers and Stella Beratlis, with special guest Zoe Byron
2024-09-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tom Myers and Stella Beratlis, with special guest Zoe Byron, Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate
Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg, Modesto CA 95350 (Roseburg Square Shopping Center)
Join us for this special reading to celebrate the release of Tom Myer’s first full poetry collection, Tremor in my Bones. Also featuring Stella Beratlis, author of Dust Bowl Venus. With special guest Zoe Byron, new Youth Poet Laureate for Stanislaus County.
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Reading host: Gillian Wegener
Tom Myers
Tom Myers is a retired elementary school teacher and a founding board member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt). He enjoys the wilds of nature and a sense of place frames much of his poetry. His poems have been published in hardpan, Quercus Review, More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets, Collision II and VII, Homestead Review, Cosumnes River Journal, and Steam Ticket. He has four chapbooks. His first full-length book, A Tremor in my Bones, was just published in August.
Stella Beratlis
Stella Beratlis is the author of Dust Bowl Venus (2021) and Alkali Sink, both published by Sixteen Rivers Press. Alkali Sink was a 2016 nominee for the Northern California Book Award. Stella’s poems have appeared in journals and anthologies as well as in the grand rotunda of the San Francisco Transbay Terminal, as part of a giant LED installation by artist Jenny Holzer. Stella was Modesto’s poet laureate from 2016-2020; is the coordinator of the Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate program, and works as a librarian at Modesto Junior College. She also collects typewriters, if you want to sell yours.
Zoe Byron
Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron, a junior at Oakdale High School, was recently appointed to serve as the county’s second youth poet laureate. Zoe, whose parents are both English teachers, is a confirmed poetry fanatic whose initial exposure to performance poetry (thanks, Mom!) during the pandemic sparked a curiosity for and love of the form. Zoe’s early work was published in Oakdale Junior High’s annual poetry anthology; more recently, her work appeared in Penumbra, the Stan State literary journal. Zoe is also a regular participant in the Stanislaus County Poetry Out Loud competition.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Patricia Caspers & Molly Fisk
2024-10-08 19:00 - 20:30 | The Artist Lab at Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Patricia Caspers and Molly Fisk
Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Artist Lab at the Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto CA 95354
Join us for this special reading featuring Patricia Caspers and Molly Fisk, both of Nevada City. Patricia’s collection The Most Kissed Woman in the World was published by Kelsay Books earlier this year; she is the editor of the poetry journal West Trestle Review. Molly Fisk is the poet laureate of Nevada City and received a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets to create the anthology California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology. Her new collection, Walking Wheel, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2026.
Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener
Patricia Caspers
Patricia Caspers is an award-winning writer and the founder/publisher of West Trestle Review. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: The Most Kissed Woman in the World (Kelsay Books, 2024), Some Flawed Magic (Kelsay Books, 2021), and In the Belly of the Albatross (Glass Lyre Press, 2015). She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and her work has appeared widely in journals such as Ploughshares, Malahat Review, and Sugar House Review.
About The Most Kissed Woman in the World:
“There is so much beauty in Patricia Caspers’ The Most Kissed Woman in the World, and a lot of darkness, too. In each “Portrait of God” Caspers finds the sacred somewhere unexpected: a pungent ginkgo tree; an assisted living facility; a dysfunctional family; the self in all its gorgeous imperfections. These lyrical, surprising poems look at the world with hard-won clarity and tenderness, embracing joy without turning away from suffering. “God is the kitchen knife that misses,” Caspers writes, as well as “the crash of abundance.” Exactly. The Most Kissed Woman is sharp and generous and wise, reminding us where we hurt and also, in its revelatory unfoldings, why we go on.” –Chloe Martinez, author of Ten Thousand Selves

Molly Fisk

Molly Fisk edited California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, with a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. Author of The More Difficult Beauty, Listening to Winter, and five volumes of radio commentary, her new collection Walking Wheel is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2026. Fisk, who lives in the Sierra foothills, has also won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She was the inaugural poet laureate of Nevada County and is current poet laureate of both KVMR-FM, Nevada City and Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder, UT.

Dos Rios State Park Nature Poetry Walk
2024-10-27 09:00 - 12:00 | Dos Rios State Park, 3559 Shiloh Rd, Modesto, CA, 95358, United States
A special event for poetry lovers! Join a State Park Interpreter and special guest, poetry author, Salvatore Salerno. Bring your favorite poem or poetry book about nature and share with other poetry enthusiasts. Walk 2.5 miles round-trip to the amazing pond Oaks. Share or just listen to poems that connects us to nature. Please bring good walking shoes, sunscreen, snack, and water. Bring lunch to eat at the day use area, along the pond, following the poetry walking tour. Register: https://www.parks.ca.gov/EventDetails/16477

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Christina Lloyd & Alice Templeton
2024-11-09 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
MoSt Poetry On Saturday Reading
November 9, 2024
2:00 p.m. PST
Carnegie Arts Center
250 North Broadway Avenue, Turlock, CA

Join host Gary Thomas for the latest edition of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center’s (MoSt’s) Poetry On Saturday in-person readings on November 9 at 2:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Arts Center (250 North Broadway Avenue) in Turlock. Our featured poets are Christina Lloyd and Alice Templeton, both with new books out from Sixteen Rivers Press. An Open Mic time will follow the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be provided.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Manila and San Francisco, Christina Lloyd holds a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her work appears in a wide variety of publications, including Canadian Woman Studies, EcoTheo, Hive, Meniscus, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, Poet Lore, The North, and SWWIM. Women Twice Removed, published by Sixteen Rivers Press, is her first full-length collection. She lives in San Francisco.

Alice Templeton’s poems and short stories have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Calyx, North American Review, Poetry, and other publications. Her work was a finalist for the 2020 Neruda Prize from Nimrod, and her chapbook Archaeology won the 2008 New Women’s Voices Prize in Poetry from Finishing Line Press. She is also the author of a critical book on Adrienne Rich’s poetics and scholarly articles on contemporary poetics, cultural criticism, and literary theory. Originally from Tennessee, Templeton lives in Point Richmond, California.

Poetry Reading and Open Mic featuring Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron
2024-11-23 12:00 - 13:00 | Oakdale Library, 151 South First Avenue, Oakdale, CA, 95361, United States
Please join Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and Stanislaus County Library at a poetry reading and open mic at the Oakdale Library, featuring Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron. Bring a poem—your own or a favorite–to share at open mic. Reading starts at 12:00; free and open to all.
Zoe, a student at Oakdale High School, was selected by a panel of judges to serve as the county’s second Youth Poet Laureate. The Youth Poet Laureate program is a partnership between MoSt Poetry, Stanislaus County Library, SCOE, and MJC’s School of Language Arts & Education. For more info: ypl@mostpoetry.org.

Reading/Open Mic & Book Launch for Gary Thomas's O YES WE BREATHE
2024-11-26 19:00 - 20:00 | Prospect Theater Project, 1214 K Street, Modesto, CA, United States
O Yes We Breathe is a collection of earthborn connections, a ragged inquiry into our commonalities and yearnings as humans. Divided into four sections (Hard News & Kittens in Trees, If Memory Serves, Liaisons Ordinaires, and Ready to Step Into Waves) these poems address “current” events, the acts of recollection and reminiscence, mortal-to-mortal relationships, and unexpected spiritual encounters and connections. Embedded and resting at rock bottom in this landscape of dusty farms, remnants from news and history, summonings of childhood scraps and souvenirs, and arguments for and within love is the awareness that each of us matters simply because of what we all share.
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Gary Thomas writes with a gentility that belies razor-sharp observations of the human condition, and the humans conditioned to excuse, ignore and embrace it. O Yes We Breathe is stuffed full of poems posing questions. Will you reminisce, nodding in agreement, despair and clench in anger, gasp at a sudden nuance, squirm with uncomfortable recognition? Yeah, you will. But mostly you’ll just marvel…
——Tama L. Brisbane, Literary Arts Consultant, Stockton Poet Laureate Emerita
In his new collection, O Yes We Breathe, Gary Thomas seamlessly weaves days-gone-by boyhood pastoral with the post-pandemic political and spiritual present. Moving between poems, I was transfixed by the gentle music within these pages. “I am beholden to beauty that breathes any way it can—” As inhale, Thomas’ keen eye for detail sharpens the blade of these poems on the sandstone grit of his father’s lessons on life. As exhale, Thomas delivers poignant and tender incantations summoning the deeper, higher self. “If all we ever have is what we trade invisibly in our hulls of flesh and fluidity, we can learn to care for what we have. We can partake our full portion as family. We can breathe easy.” Each poem is a circle within itself “still working with some astonishment,” rippling outward, a whole world. This collection: “Let it light the corners.”
——Kai Coggin, Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, Arkansas, author of Mother of Other Kingdoms and Mining for Stardust
O Yes We Breathe chronicles a poet’s joyful boyhood and explores, with wonder, a changing world. A farmer’s son, Thomas writes with precision and imagination about nature and human nature through the lens of a “sandstone fireplace,” “ten prayer things,” or the miracles of everyday life. He writes, “I wish we were us again instead of our shadows. I wish/ you were the weather and here. I wish I was abundance.” This is a large-hearted poet, a book of abundance, a pleasure through and through.
——Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate, author of In Praise of Late Wonder:
New and Selected Poems and Scar and Flower

Gary Thomas grew up on a peach farm outside Empire, California. Prior to retirement, he taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven. He has presented poetry workshops for literary organizations, festivals, and conferences. His poems have been published or accepted for publication in The Comstock Review, MockingHeart Review, Atticus Review, River Heron Review, Barzakh, Blue Heron Review, Split Rock Review, Book of Matches, Hole in the Head Review, and The Banyan Review among others, and in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is a founding member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) and of the Stanislaus County writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.

Second Tuesday: Members' Holiday Open Mic & Potluck
2024-12-10 18:00 - 19:30 | The Dragonfly Art for Life, 1210 J Street, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
The Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center presents Second Tuesday: Members’ Holiday Open Mic and Potluck. Bring a dish to share, and help us celebrate 15 years of bringing poetry to the community through our Second Tuesday series. If you’re not a MoSt member yet, you are warmly encouraged to attend and join us at the door.
On Tuesday, December 10 at the Dragonfly Art for Life, 1210 J Street, Modesto CA 95354.
MoSt Poetry is proud to serve our community with free poetry events, including the Second Tuesday Poetry series, Poetry on Saturdays at the Carnegie Arts Center, Free Summer Poetry Workshops at the Library, New Year’s Poetry Challenge, Poetry Everywhere initiative at Stanislaus County K-12 public schools, and more. Programs we administer or in which we partner include Poetry Out Loud, Aileen Jaffa Youth Poetry Contest, Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate, and the City of Modesto’s Poets’ Corner Contest.
On Facebook, Instagram, and Threads: @mostpoetry.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Bob Stanley and Dane Cervine with Open Mic
2025-03-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Bob Stanley and Dane Cervine.
Date: Tuesday, March 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 Modesto poet laureate emeritus & author Gillian Wegener.

BOB STANLEY
Bob Stanley studied poetry at Caltech and UCLA, and he taught English and Creative Writing at Solano College, Sac City College, and Sac State before retiring in 2021. Sacramento’s Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012, Bob has organized poetry events in California for many years. His collections include Walt Whitman Orders a Cheeseburger (2009), Miracle Shine (2013), and Language Barrier (2024). Bob and his wife Joyce live in Sacramento and organize online poetry seminars that help support nonprofit organizations.
Bob’s most recent collection, Language Barrier, which is published by CW Books, is available on the Random Lane Press website: randomlanepress.com
ABOUT LANGUAGE BARRIER
“Language is no barrier to our enjoyment of the experiences Bob Stanley has distilled and decanted in these poems. His keen eye for detail takes us first on a passionate tour of China and then on a reminiscent journey through America, described through the prism of many poetic forms. As he says, ‘I could write with both care and abandon,’ and he has done just that. Here you will find tragedies in miniature, but also wonder at nature and the past. Through it all runs Stanley’s raconteurial charm, a Poundian respect for the world of the senses, and a tireless yearning for song: ‘keep the discord in the chord, / sing what’s hard to sound soft.’ The result, in Stanley’s own words, is ‘peach-perfect.’”—Brad Buchanan

DANE CERVINE
Dane Cervine’s recent books of poetry include DEEP TRAVEL – At Home in the [Burning] World (Saddle Road Press), The World Is God’s Language (Sixteen Rivers Press), Earth Is a Fickle Dancer (Main Street Rag), and The Gateless Gate – Polishing the Moon Sword (Saddle Road Press). Dane’s poems have won awards from Adrienne Rich, Tony Hoagland, the Atlanta Review, Caesura, and been nominated for multiple Pushcarts. His work appears in The SUN, the Hudson Review, TriQuarterly, Poetry Flash, Catamaran, Miramar, Rattle, Sycamore Review, Pedestal Magazine, among others. Dane lives in Santa Cruz, California. Visit his website at: https://danecervine.typepad.com/
ABOUT DEEP TRAVEL
“I love the way [Dane has] taken the haibun back to its origins with Bashō—what a brilliant and perfectly executed form for [his] observations and musings. It’s such a rich book. Some of [the] haiku are so beautifully apt, little marvels, and one of my favorites is the one inspired by Ocean Vuong:
I am a book—of bone,
raft and river
That seems to me emblematic of the entire book and [Dane’s] intents—to offer insights and responses without any trace of self-importance, and then to return to shore. –Lynne Knight

Second Tuesday Poetry with Soul Vang and Gary Thomas
2025-04-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Gary Thomas & Soul Vang
Date: Tuesday, April 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
SOUL VANG
Soul Vang is the author of three collections of poetry: Of Tigers and Wars (Sahtu Press, 2024); Song of the Cluster Bomblet (HER Publisher, 2024); and To Live Here (Imaginary Friend Press, 2014).
Poet, educator, and U.S. Army veteran, Vang received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno, and is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC).
Vang’s writing has appeared in Academy of American Poets (poets.org), Water~Stone Review, Abernathy Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, Fiction Attic Press, In the Grove, The Packinghouse Review, Southeast Asia Globe, and The New York Times, among others.
His awards and honors include the 2014 Imaginary Friend Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Horizon Artist Award from the Fresno Arts Council.
About TO LIVE HERE
To Live Here is a triumph: a pure and graceful portrait of the poet from Sky Mountain and the Dragon River, as a young man in the United States Army, and as a parent and poet in Fresno. Part emotional cartography and pure mastery of the craft, this vital glimpse into the Hmong American experience is a heart, a history, and a gift of hard-earned wisdom. Each poem is an artifact, a piece of art, and an important addition to American literature. This is poetry built to last. You will not forget it. –Lee Herrick, Fresno Poet Laureate
GARY THOMAS
Gary Thomas grew up on a peach farm outside Empire, California. Prior to retirement, he taught eighth grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven. His poems have been published in The Comstock Review, MockingHeart Review, Atticus Review, River Heron Review, Barzakh, Blue Heron Review, Split Rock Review, Book of Matches, and Hole in the Head Review, among others, in the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets, and in Tule Review 2024. He is a founding member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) and of the Stanislaus County writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press. His latest poetry collection, O Yes We Breathe, was published in November 2024 by Manzanita Writers Press.
ABOUT O YES WE BREATHE:
In his new collection, O Yes We Breathe, Gary Thomas seamlessly weaves days-gone-by boyhood pastoral with the post-pandemic political and spiritual present. Moving between poems, I was transfixed by the gentle music within these pages. “I am beholden to beauty that breathes any way it can-” As inhale, Thomas’ keen eye for detail sharpens the blade of these poems on the sandstone grit of his father’s lessons on life. As exhale, Thomas delivers poignant and tender incantations summoning the deeper, higher self. “If all we ever have is what we trade invisibly in our hulls of flesh and fluidity, we can learn to care for what we have. We can partake our full portion as family. We can breathe easy.” Each poem is a circle within itself “still working with some astonishment,” rippling outward, a whole world. This collection: “Let it light the corners.”
-Kai Coggin, Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, Arkansas, author of Mother of Other Kingdoms and Mining for Stardust

Stanislaus Cty Youth Poet Laureate Reading & Open Mic with Zoe Byron
2025-04-19 12:00 - 13:30 | Nick W. Blom Salida Regional Library Branch, 4835 Sisk Road, Salida, 95368, United States
Join Zoe Byron, 2024-2025 Youth Poet Laureate of Stanislaus County, as she reads poems in celebration of National Poetry Month. Be sure to bring a poem or two to share at the Open Mic, following Zoe’s reading. They don’t have to be poems you’ve written! Just come have some fun with us.
At the Salida Library, April 19 at noon.

Nature Poetry Reading and Walk: Dos Rios State Park
2025-05-03 09:00 - 11:00 | Dos Rios State Park, 3559 Shiloh Rd, Modesto, CA, 95358, United States
NATURE POETRY READING AND WALK
DOS RIOS STATE PARK

Saturday, May 3, 2025 – 9:00-11:00 a.m.
Hosted by Sal Salerno, member of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center and state park volunteer.
Share your own nature poetry or poems on nature from other authors. The reading (9:00 a.m.)will be at the tables by the parking lot, followed by an optional hike (10:00) around the oxbow pond.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tama Brisbane & Rosa Lane
2025-05-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Rosa Lane (Maine, East Bay) & Tama Brisbane (Stockton)
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Orangeburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center
Limited open mic; sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener & Stella Beratlis

Rosa Lane
Rosa Lane, poet and architect, was found to be the youngest girl to have built a house. She was 11 years old when she built her 1st home, which is featured in a book entitled Making Ourselves at Home: Women Builders and Designers (Papier Mache Press, 1995). But Lane’s primary love is poetry. She is the author of four poetry collections: Called Back (Tupelo Press, 2024); Chouteau’s Chalk (University of Georgia Press, 2019); Tiller North (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2016); and Roots and Reckonings, a chapbook published by Granite Press East under a grant from the Maine Arts Commission.
Most recently, her work was selected as the Best of Poetry for the 2024 Geminga Prize, winner of the 2023 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Award, runner-up for the 2023 River Heron Poetry Prize, and named finalist for the 2023 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition (Cork, Ireland) and the 2023 Australian Book Review‘s Peter Porter Prize (Melbourne) among other awards.
Lane’s latest poems have appeared in Catamaran, Crosswinds, Five Points, Nimrod, RHINO, River Heron Review, Southword, Third Coast, and elsewhere. She splits her time between the North Bay and coastal Maine, her native home where she lives with her wife. Website: www.rosalane.com

About CALLED BACK
“Rosa Lane’s Called Back breaks through the membrane that separates us from Dickinson’s time. Here, we enter Dickinson’s world brand new with the vigor of research re-imagined, obsession expressed with prolific inventiveness and mounting urgency, and language that astonishes in its apt, abundant, and irresistible embrace of sound. This is a book fearless in its approach and lavish in its accomplishment.”
– Rebecca Kaiser Gibson, author of The Promise of a Normal Life: A Novel

Tama Brisbane
TAMA L. BRISBANE is the City of Stockton’s Poet Laureate Emerita. She served four historic terms
from 2015-2023, presenting well over 300 times, including the inauguration of the city’s first Black
Mayor, Michael Tubbs. Her debut Laureate project helped engineer Stockton’s return to All-American
City status with an innovative spoken word presentation incorporating dozens of multigenerational,
multiethnic voices. Her performance as Guest Poet at The King Center and Ebenezer Baptist Church in
Atlanta led Martin Luther King III to say to her, “your words matter.” She remains in constant demand as
a keynote speaker and spoken word artist.
Tama is also President of With Our Words LLC, and a Program Director with Concrete Development Inc.
In her capacity as a literary and performing arts consultant, she develops curricula, programs, and events
across the United States and around the world. The impact of her words and her works have positively
shifted creative and cultural landscapes in Stockton and beyond.
“Mama T” is a published author, a Susan B. Anthony Award Winner for Creative Arts, a Black Women
Organized for Political Action Honoree, a University of the Pacific Woman of Distinction, an Action on
Behalf of Children Honoree, and a founding member of the National Black Poet Laureates Group. Her
tireless efforts on behalf of youth – particularly youth of color and from marginalized communities – have
been celebrated and recognized by both houses of the California Legislature, by the United States House
of Representatives, and the United States Senate.
Tama is grateful to her Creator for her earthly assignment. She takes inspiration and guidance from her
two favorite quotes. The first is from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “The salvation of humanity lies in the
hands of the creatively maladjusted.” The second is attributed to an Eastern proverb: “If you sit on the
bank of the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.”

Youth Poet Laureate Send-Off Reading & Open Mic: Zoe Byron
2025-05-17 13:00 - 15:00 | Oakdale Library, 151 South First Avenue, Oakdale, CA, 95361, United States
Please join us as we bid a fond farewell to 2024-2025 Youth Poet Laureate Zoe Byron, whose tenure as youth laureate is complete at the end of May. She’s the second ever Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate and has done a beautiful job representing the voice of youth through her poems.
This final reading will take place at the Oakdale Public Library, 151 S. First Avenue, Oakdale CA 95361. Please bring a poem to share at open mic! Reading starts at 1:00 p.m. in the Community Room just inside the front entrance.

Welcome 2025-2026 Youth Poet Laureate: Reading & Reception
2025-05-31 13:00 - 14:00 | Modesto Junior College West Campus, 2201 Blue Gum Avenue, Modesto, CA, 95358, United States
We’ll be celebrating our incoming youth poet laureate, Valentina Zeff, at a reading/reception at Modesto Junior College’s Science Community Center. Come listen to a few poems, meet youth poets, and learn about the youth poet laureate program.
Valentina Zeff is a sixteen-year-old poet from Modesto, California who is currently enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program at Modesto High School. Zeff has been writing free verse and ballad poetry since her freshman year of high school.
Zeff is active within her community and school through social and environmental activism, extracurricular projects, and volunteering. She was selected to be a member of the Park’s Youth Committee (April 2024-current), Modesto Youth Commission (October 2024-current), and student representative for Modesto High School’s Student Senate for both ninth and tenth grade. During the 2023-2024 Speech and Debate season, she was a top finalist for Original Spoken Word Poetry at State Qualifications. She is also the founder and Co-President of Modesto High School’s Book Club where she leads discussions on novels and poems of interest. Additionally, she is the Secretary and head layout editor/designer of the Panther Press, Modesto High School’s monthly newspaper.
Please welcome our incoming Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate, Valentina Zeff!
The Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate program is administered by Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt Poetry) with partners MJC Library & Learning Center & MJC School of Language Arts & Education, Stanislaus County Office of Education, Stanislaus County Library, and Stanislaus Library Foundation.

City of Modesto Poets' Corner Reading & Reception
2025-06-01 13:00 - 15:00 | McHenry Museum, 1402 14th St, Modesto, CA, 95354, United States
The Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Department and the City of Modesto’s Poets’ Corner Committee are pleased to offer an Annual Poets’ Corner Contest.
Contest Winners
Poets will be invited to read their winning poems on Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 1:00 P.M. at the McHenry Museum, followed by light refreshments.
Winning poems will be printed in a booklet that will be placed in the Poets’ Bookshelf, which contains published works by local writers and will be kept at the McHenry Museum. Each winner will receive a copy of the booklet.
Winners will be notified by email (or mail, when email is unavailable.)
For more info go to https://www.modestogov.com/558/Poets-Corner-Contest

Second Tuesday Poetry with Aideed Medina and Russell Reza-Khaliq Gonzaga
2025-06-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
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, 2025Time: 7:00 pm PSTWhere: 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 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.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Sherre Vernon and Paula Sheil
2025-07-08 19:00 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
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: Modesto Poet Laureate Angela Drew + Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate Valentina Zeff
2025-08-12 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Modesto Poet Laureate Angela Drew with special guest Valentina Zeff, Stanislaus County Youth Poet Laureate
Date: Tuesday, August 12, 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
ANGELA DREW
Angela Drew is a mother, dancer, author, poet, and self-proclaimed linguistic artist who has loved the rhythm of words for as long as she can remember. Born in Berkeley, California, she began writing at age eight, and has always understood that words have the power to soothe, stir, or solidify connection. She has played with the magic of storytelling ever since. Angela is the winner and first-place slam champion of Modesto’s 2021 ILL List 16 Poetry Slam. She has performed her spoken word poetry at an array of venues, just to name a few: Yoshi’s Jazz Club, Oakland, California; Gallo Center for the Arts and the State Theater, Modesto, California; Brickhouse Art Gallery, Sacramento, California, and Apache Cafe, Atlanta, Georgia–a landmark poetry lounge that is home to some of Atlanta’s finest creatives.
She is the author of ElderBerry Wine, a children’s book written in poetic verse that celebrates the beauty and majesty of our elders, and the richness they bring by simply being a part of our lives. Join Angela on her poetic journey on all social media platforms. Her book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers.

VALENTINA ZEFF
Valentina Zeff is a sixteen-year-old poet from Modesto, California who is currently enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program at Modesto High School. Zeff has been writing free verse and ballad poetry since her freshman year of high school.
Zeff is active within her community and school through social and environmental activism, extracurricular projects, and volunteering. She was selected to be a member of the Park’s Youth Committee (April 2024-current), Modesto Youth Commission (October 2024-current), and student representative for Modesto High School’s Student Senate for both ninth and tenth grade. During the 2023-2024 Speech and Debate season, she was a top finalist for Original Spoken Word Poetry at State Qualifications. She is also the founder and Co-President of Modesto High School’s Book Club where she leads discussions on novels and poems of interest. Additionally, she is the Secretary and head layout editor/designer of the Panther Press, Modesto High School’s monthly newspaper.

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Joshua McKinney & Cecil Morris
2025-08-30 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
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.

Second Tuesday Poetry presents FIVE FOR TEN: Five Central Valley Poets
2025-10-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry: Five for Ten, featuring five Central Valley poets:

Casey Giffen
Daley Perry
Cynthia Barstad
Paloma Contreras
Melchor Sahagun III

Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg 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
CASEY GIFFEN:
A retired teacher of 40 years, Casey enjoys creating on-demand poems on his manual, Smith-Corona typewriter. His poetry has been published in Modesto Poets’ Corner Contests, Penumbra, and the Hughson Chronicle. Acts of Becoming is his second poetry collection.
PALOMA CONTRERAS:
Paloma Contreras is a Mexican, bilingual poet and educator. Most of her writing is autobiographical and deals with themes of loss.
MELCHOR SAHAGUN III:
Melchor Sahagun III is a poet and corny romantic who lives in Stockton. His collection, Sorry I’m Late, was published by Tuleberg Press.
DALEY PERRY:
Daley Perry is a Central Valley native who lived in Tennessee for 15 years before (very happily) returning home in 2019. She loves writing angsty poetry that explores themes of spirituality, smashing the patriarchy, pop culture, and loving our bodies.
CYNTHIA BARSTAD: Cynthia Barstad, an early childhood educator for 30 years before she retired, has shared her words with her family, friends, and strangers for years. She has been published in Stanislaus Connections along with her granddaughter Jenissa, who shares Cynthia’s passion for words.

MoSt Poetry on Saturday featuring Lucille Lang Day and Carl Landauer
2025-11-22 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Please join host Gary Thomas at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 22, 2025 at Carnegie Arts Center (250 North Broadway Ave., Turlock, California) for a poetry reading featuring Lucille Lang Day and Carl Landauer. There will be light refreshments and an open mic time following the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public.

Lucille Lang Day is the author of four poetry chapbooks and seven full-length collections, most recently Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place. She has also edited three poetry anthologies and published two children’s books and a memoir. Her work appears in more than 200 magazines and anthologies, such as The Cincinnati Review, The Hudson Review, River Styx, The Threepenny Review, Scientific American, ZYZZYVA, and Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology. Her many honors include the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Awards, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and eleven Pushcart Prize nominations. She is founder and publisher of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books. https://lucillelangday.com

Carl Landauer taught history at Yale, Stanford, and McGill and is currently a contributing editor for Poetry Flash and a visiting scholar with UC Berkeley’s Institute for South Asia Studies. His poetry has appeared in Kenyon Review, Exacting Clam, and Poetry Flash. His writing on poetry and cultural history has appeared in Beat Scene, The American Scholar, Salmagundi, Confrontation, Renaissance Quarterly, German Studies Review, and Poetry Flash—as well as a critical analysis of Project 2025 published by Public Seminar. He is currently writing a long series of poems he calls “refracted ekphrases,” each of which focuses on a movie that is adapted from literature.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Tara Rico & Juan Luzuriaga
2026-01-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Inaugural Poet Laureate of Manteca Tara Rico and San Luis Obispo poet Juan Luzuriaga
Date: Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center
The reading is free; drinks, snacks, and books are available for purchase at Bookish. Open mic following featured poets (3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener
Tara Rico
Tara Rico (she/her/ella) is a local writer, advocate, performer, and educator. She is the City of Manteca’s first Poet Laureate; her work can be found in collections such as the Tuleberg Press anthology The Fire Within: Labor, Art, and the Human Spirit.
Tara is also the founder of MAS Improv 209 and POETICAS Institute, a new nonprofit committed to bringing written, performing, and other creative art to the Central Valley and under-resourced communities.
Tara is an actor and comedian who has performed recently at the Pam Kitto Black Box Theater of Stockton, Modesto’s Prospect Theater, and at the Central Valley Gender Health and Wellness Center’s “Kings, Queens, and Comedians” drag show of 2024.

Juan Luzuriaga
Juan Luzuriaga was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and immigrated to the U.S. at 16 in 2000. He studied Neuroscience at Rutgers University and English at UC Merced. He teaches poetry in prisons, at Cuesta College, and California Poets in the Schools. He has been a featured panelist at UC Merced, Cuesta College Central Coast Writers’ Conference, Litfest and more, and he is a featured panelist at the 2026 San Francisco Writers Conference Poetry Summit.
He has been published in Acentos Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, Monterey Poetry Review, Cholla Needles, Poetry Breakfast, Matchbox Magazine, and in the anthologies Silence Is Consent, To Be Completely Honest, and Method Writers Speak. His collection, Chimborazo Whispers, is forthcoming from Blue Light Press.

UPDATED: Poetry at the Carnegie featuring Jesse Wolfe and Stella Beratlis
2026-02-21 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
PLEASE NOTE: Due to a necessary scheduling change, Jesse Wolfe will read with Stella Beratlis on 2/21/26. Cleo Griffith will be a featured reader at a future date to be determined. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Please join host Gary Thomas at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 21, 2026 at Carnegie Arts Center (250 North Broadway Ave., Turlock, California) for a poetry reading featuring Jesse Wolfe and Stella Beratlis. There will be light refreshments and an open mic time following the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public.
Jesse Wolfe is a poet, scholar, and English Professor at CSU Stanislaus, where he has taught since 2006. His debut poetry chapbook, En Route, was published in 2020 by Cathexis Northwest Press, who will also publish his new volume, Breathe Again: A Polyphony, in 2026. He is the author of two scholarly books about modernist literature and the history of intimacy. He is currently working on a third scholarly book about African American modernism and ideas of progress.

Stella Beratlis is the author of Dust Bowl Venus. Her first collection Alkali Sink was a nominee for the 2016 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Harbor Review, California Quarterly, and In Posse Review. among others, and in the anthologies The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed and California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. She was Modesto’s poet laureate from 2016-2020 and works as a librarian at Modesto Junior College.

Nature Poetry Reading & Walk at Dos Rios State Park
2026-03-21 10:00 - 12:00 | Dos Rios State Park, 3559 Shiloh Rd, Modesto, CA, 95358, United States
Nature lovers and fans of poetry are welcome to celebrate Spring at the 4th Nature Poetry Reading and Walk at Dos Rios State Park on Saturday, March 21 at 10:00 a.m.. Participants can bring a few of their own nature poems to read, or read poems from their favorite nature poets. After the one-hour reading at the ramadas, an optional hike will be offered by park staff along the 1.8-mile trail around the oxbow pond. Loaner binoculars are available.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun
2026-04-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
THE ANTIDOTE IS POETRY. COME TO POETRY.
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring members of Sacramento-based writing group Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun: Zheyla Henriksen, Paul Aponte, Janet Rodriguez, JoAnn Anglin, Marco Contreras, and Lorena Rodriguez.
Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Time: 7:00 pm PST
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg 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.
Zheyla Henriksen is an Ecuadorian poet, researcher, artist, and retired college & university teacher including at UC Davis where she received her PHD in Latin American and Spanish Literature. She has been awarded several times including in 2004 when she received La Medalla de Oro al Merito Cultural in Cuenca Ecuador. Zheyla was included in the Who’s Who of Distinguished Professionals, and in History & Anthology of Ecuadorian Literature (2023).
Paul Aponte is a Chicano Poet,co-coordinator of Escritores Del Nuevo Sol / Writers of the New Sun, and member of Círculo De Poetas & Writers. He has been published in the Tecolote Press anthology Poetry In Flight, Tule Review 2024, in the anthology Soñadores – We Came To Dream, in the Los Angeles Review Volume 20 – Fall 2016, and in Cold River Press Voices 2022-2025. His colorful book of poetry DEL CACTUS is available through Prickly Pear Press and other sources.
Janet Rodriguez is an author, teacher, editor, and the author of Making an American Family: A Recipe in Five Generations (Prickly Pear Publishing, 2022), a family memoir. Her short story, “The Key in the Tignanello Bag” was recently published in the regional anthology, Sacramento Noir, edited by John Freeman. Her work has also been featured in Hobart, Pangyrus, Eclectica, The Rumpus, Cloud Women’s Quarterly, American River Review, and Calaveras Station. Her short stories, essays, and poetry usually deal with themes involving morality in faith communities and the mixed-race experience in a culturally binary world.
JoAnn Anglin is a leading member of Escritores Del Nuevo Sol and has been a teaching poet in the schools, including at Shriners Children’s Hospital, and at New Folsom Prison. Her chapbooks include Words Like Knives, Like Feathers and Heat, and her poems have been published in Tule Review, Sable & Quill, Sacramento Voices, Rattlesnake Review, The Pagan Muse, 100 Poems about Sacramento, Acorn, and Cosumnes River Journal. In 2012, JoAnn received an Arts Program Award from the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors and the Sacramento City Council and in 2024 she was honored by the California Senate for her contributions as a poet and leader to the community.
Marco Contreras is from Stockton and currently resides in Sacramento. He has been published in UCLA’s Daily Bruin and La Gente De Aztlan magazine. He also has contributions in several anthologies, including his latest about his trip to the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.
Lorena Rodriguez has roots in the Andes, born and raised in a land where the cultivation of potatoes and corn is a way of life. A multidisciplinary artist, Lorena uses performance and theater as a tool for activism, community building, and healing. She is a writer, performer, fermenter, dancer, and textile artist, and through her work, she shares practical actions for health and well-being while inspiring the reimagining of systems that address collective needs and foster healing.

HISTORY OF LOS ESCRITORES DEL NUEVO SOL

Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol emerged from a literary program of La Raza Galería Posada (LRGP), the Sacramento Chicano/Native American arts center founded in 1972. Our roots can be followed to an initial poetry event organized by the Royal Chicano Air Force and other groups. That event in 1978 was called “One More Canto”. It was held at the Reno Club, a downtown neighborhood bar and dance club. This idea of poetry for the community grew and future poetry, song and performance art events continued. LRGP took sponsorship of the Canto Series well into the 1980’s and 1990’s with those events occurring at La Raza Galería Posada, Luna’s Café, the Benny Barrios Studio and the Odd Fellows Hall.
In the 1990’s LRGP board members Arturo Mantecón and Francisco X. Alarcón organized a Floricanto series featuring Latino poets. Seeing favorable community interest, they started a writers’ workshop, Taller Literario. The Taller philosophy was to foster, preserve, and present the best of Chicano/Latino and native American writing. The first meetings attracted about a dozen local writers. Alarcón and Mantecón drew on their experience in publishing and working with writing groups to guide this group to be given recognition and to be established in October of 1993.
The Taller became an essential part of La Raza Galería Posada readings and became connected with other significant cultural events – Day of the Dead, Cinco de Mayo, exhibition openings, etc.In time, events were added such as the Valentine’s Day and the all-Spanish readings.
Eventually the group adopted a new name suggested by Graciela Brauer Ramírez: Escritores del Nuevo Sol / Writers of the New Sun. This recognized the 2012 coming of El Sexto Sol, the dawning of a new world consciousness based on the Mesoamerican worldview.
As the years passed, Los Escritores became a known part of the Sacramento literary community. In 2002, José Montoya, a member of Los Escritores, was appointed Sacramento’s Poet Laureate. Los Escritores participated in his activities resulting in more visibility. In 2020’s, two additional members were named Poet Laureate – Lara Gularte (El Dorado County) and Nancy González St. Clair (Lodi, CA) also contributing to more recognition and visibility for Escritores del Nuevo Sol.
With the publication of our 2004 anthology, Voices of the new Sun, Poems and Stories / Voces del Nuevo Sol, Cantos y Cuentos, the group’s written work took tangible form. The 25th Anniversary anthology was published in 2017, and in 2025 the anthology Then and Now came to cheer the past and present.
While the circle has grown, it also acknowledges the loss of loved ones who were a part of its start: Phil Goldvarg, José Montoya, Helen and Esteban Villa, Luz María Gama, Max Schwartz, Sam Ríos, Jean y Winn Starr, and Escritores co-founder Francisco X. Alarcón. We remember them well.

Second Tuesday Poetry with featured poets Kathy Pon and Chris Olander
2026-05-12 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Chris Olander, performance poet & poet laureate Nevada County (2017-2019) and Central Valley poet/farmer/educator Kathy Pon.
Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Time: 7:00 pm PST; doors at 6:30 PM
Where: Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, in the Roseburg Square shopping center
Open mic following featured poets (2-3 min per poet); sign up at the event. Hosted by Gillian Wegener. Event is free and open to the public; refreshments and books available for purchase at Bookish.
Kathy Pon
Kathy Pon earned a doctorate in education, but in retirement returned to her life-long passion for reading and writing poetry. Her husband is a third-generation farmer, and they live in the middle of a Central California almond orchard with their two dogs. She is a member of two monthly poetry groups, is an avid pickleball player, and enjoys hiking and swimming. Her work has been published in Passengers Journal, Canary, Rock Paper Poem, Wild Roof Journal, The Closed Eye Open, The Gilded Weathervane, Rockvale Review, and in other places including the anthology, Women in a Golden State (Gunpowder Press). She recently received honorable mention for the Bearing Witness Contest (Slingo Creek). Her chapbook, Orchard Language (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2025. You can find her at kathleenpon@gmail.com.
Chris Olander
Chris Olander, poet, performer, teacher and bio-educator with California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) since 1984, blends performance techniques with spoken word to create an Action Art Poetry: musical image phrasing to dramatize relative experiences—a poetry arising from oral and bardic traditions.
Chris is the author of 3 full-length collections including this year’s Who Are We, Cold River Press as well as four chapbooks and 8 CDs. His work is included in the anthology Silent Motif: Conference of Poets. Chris was Nevada County’s poet laureate from 2017-2019 and for over 25 years was an organizer and featured reader in the Berkeley Watershed Poetry Festival, sponsored by Poetry Flash and U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass.
He was the Artistic Director for the Nevada County Poetry Series in Grass Valley from 2000-2013, the Artistic Director for Poets Playhouse Series in Nevada City for 10 years, and the poet coach for Poetry Out Loud in Nevada, Placer, Sacramento and El Dorado Counties. In 2008, his student Roshawnda Bettencourt won the CA statewide POL championship, with numerous other Nevada County POL winners taking 2nd and 3rd place in that competition through the years.

Saturday at the Carnegie featuring poets Cleo Griffith & Sheila D. Landre
2026-05-16 14:00 - 15:00 | Carnegie Arts Center, 250 N. Broadway, Turlock, CA, 95380, United States
Please join host Gary Thomas at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 16, 2026 at Carnegie Arts Center (250 North Broadway Ave., Turlock, California) for a poetry reading featuring Cleo Griffith and Sheila D. Landre. There will be light refreshments and an open mic time following the featured poets. This event is free and open to the public.
Cleo Griffith has been widely published in journals such as Main Street Rag, Straylight, and Westward Quarterly. She has been on the editorial board of Song of the San Joaquin since it began in 2003. She lives with her cats, Amber and Mister, and an assortment of barn swallows, lizards, scrub jays and other creatures among the artist-rich environment of the Central Valley. Her first book, The Yellow Dress, was published last year.
Sheila D. Landre is a retired English and Spanish teacher, a minister, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She was raised in a military family and has lived in Ohio, Louisiana, San Antonio, Yokohama, Washington, D.C., and Heidelberg. She came to Santa Cruz in 1965, then Capitola and Salinas before coming to Modesto in 1976. She is a graduate of Cal State Stanislaus and taught at Turlock Junior High until her retirement. Sheila has been writing poetry since childhood. Her work has been appeared in many California publications including ZamBomba!, In the Grove, Song of the San Joaquin, Stanislaus Connections, Penumbra, and Modern Bride Magazine. She is currently finishing Volume 124 of her journal.
