Second Tuesday with Eliot Schain & Salvatore Salerno
2026-03-10 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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 Emeritus Salvatore Salerno with Sixteen Rivers Press poet Eliot Schain
Date: Tuesday, March 10, 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

ELIOT SCHAIN
Eliot Schain’s poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Santa Monica Review, and Miramar, among others, as well as in a number of anthologies, including Bear Flag Republic: Prose Poems and Poetics from California and The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed. His book, The Distant Sound, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2020. Earlier books include American Romance and Westering Angels, both from Zeitgeist Press.
Selections from The Distant Sound have been recorded and released as a digital album in collaboration with guitarist Harrison Flynn, available on Apple Music and Spotify. A newer collaboration Drive, They Said, also with Harrison Flynn, is available as well. Schain has served as program director for The Poetry Society of America, taught high school, and currently works as a psychotherapist in Berkeley, California, where he lives with his wife, Mary D’Elia.
ABOUT THE DISTANT SOUND
The Distant Sound is a prismatic meditation on what it means to be human, especially when the body and mind seek their own paths to heaven. The poems employ the long Whitmanian breath and are often narrative, but with mysterious syntax whose goal is to bypass reason and activate the heart.

SALVATORE SALERNO

Salvatore Salerno has an M.F.A. from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was awarded The Academy of American Poets University Prize. He has worked as a playwright and poet in the North Carolina Visiting Artist Program. After retiring from teaching English at Davis High School, Salvatore became a founding member of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center. He was the Poet Laureate of Modesto from 2020-24. His sixth book of poetry is After Thoughts.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Escritores del Nuevo Sol/Writers of the New Sun
2026-04-14 19:00 - 20:30
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
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.

Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Mai-Linh Hong and Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco
2026-07-14 19:00 - 20:30
Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center is pleased to present Second Tuesday Poetry featuring Merced poets Mai-Linh Hong and Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco.
Date: Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Time: 7:00 pm; doors at 6:30 PM
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. Event is free; refreshments and books available for purchase at Bookish!

MAI-LINH HONG
Mai-Linh Hong is a Vietnamese American refugee poet and literary scholar. Her debut poetry collection, Continental Drift, won the 2025 Trio Award and was published by Trio House Press in July 2026. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Waxwing, Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Wildness, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Maine Review, and elsewhere. She publishes essays on Asian American and refugee literature in scholarly journals and anthologies. A lifelong crafter, she is coauthor and coeditor of The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice (University of California Press, 2021). She teaches literature at the University of California, Merced.

ELIZABETH MCMUNN-TETANGCO
Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California’s Central Valley and co-edits One Sentence Poems and First Frost. She also works as a librarian at UC Merced. Her work has appeared in many online and print journals, and her most recent book, Salt Shaker Girls, is available through Cuttlefish Books.

Second Tuesday Poetry presents Poems That Found Us Open Mic
2026-08-11 19:00 - 20:30
Poems That Found Us
An Open Mic Reading
What poem has stayed with you? What lines do you return to again and again?
Join us for an evening where readers share poems by other poets—words that have meant something, sparked something, changed something. Each reader brings one poem– one voice and 3-4 minutes of space to read the poem.
Whether you’re a longtime poetry lover or curious about the form, whether you’ve found your poem already or you’re still looking, you’re welcome to joins us.
Event free; books and refreshments available for purchase.
August 11, 2026 | 7:00 PM
Bookish Modesto
