Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

Second Tuesday Poetry presents FIVE FOR TEN: Five Central Valley Poets
2025-10-14 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: 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.

Second Tuesday Reading featuring Marisol Baca & Gillian Wegener at Bookish
2025-11-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Please join us at Bookish Modesto as we feature two tremendous Central Valley poets: Gillian Wegener and Marisol Baca.
Marisol Baca teaches English, Literature, and Creative Writing at Fresno City College. She teaches Honors in the Leon S. Peters Honors Program, and she also teaches as a part of the RAIN program (Resources for American Indian Needs). Baca is the author of a book of poems called Tremor, and she was named Fresno’s first woman and first Chicana/Latinx Poet Laureate (2019-2021). Marisol’s poem about the naming of Fresno has been designated the city’s official poem.
Gillian Wegener is the author of one chapbook and two full-length collections of poetry: Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other (In the Grove Press, 2001), The Opposite of Clairvoyance (2008), and This Sweet Haphazard (2017), both from Sixteen Rivers Press. She is also the founding president of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center, a previous Poet Laureate for the City of Modesto (2012-2016), and a two-time recipient of the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. She is a long-time educator in Oakdale and has lived in Modesto longer than she’s lived anywhere else.
The reading starts at 7:00 at Bookish Modesto. With open mic following featured poets.

Second Tuesday - MoSt Member Potluck/Open Mic
2025-12-09 18:00 - 20:00 | The Dragonfly Art for Life, 1210 J Street, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Join us for our December reading at The Dragonfly- Art for Life for a joyful open mic and potluck for members of Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center.
We’d love to have you there! It’s not too late to join MoSt–you can join at the door, even.

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.

Second Tuesday Feb. 10 - William O'Daly and Linda Marie Prather
2026-02-10 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 Linda Marie Prather and William O’Daly
Date: Tuesday, February 10, 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!
WILLIAM O’DALY
William O’Daly, co-founder of Copper Canyon Press, is a poet and translator whose published works include eight books of translation of the late-career and posthumous poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda and Neruda’s first volume, Book of Twilight — all published by Copper Canyon Press. Book of Twilight was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in Translation of Poetry for 2018. His most recent book of poems, The New Gods, was published by Beltway Editions in September 2022.
In addition to The New Gods, he is the author of four books of poems. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, recipient of the American Literary Award from the bilingual Korean American journal Miju Poetry and Poetics, and four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems, translations, essays, and reviews have been published in numerous journals and as part of multimedia exhibits and performances.
About The New Gods
“We need to sit on the rim/ of the well of darkness/,” Pablo Neruda wrote, “and fish for fallen light/ with patience.” In the poems of The New Gods, William O’Daly sits with us beside this well, each stunning metaphor shaping world after world of possibility. Here the dark currents of bitterness and grief, arrogance and war give way to the sweetness of a daughter’s questions or the shiver of a Sierra lake. From the charred rubble of Iraq to the snowy Andes of Neruda’s exile, O’Daly’s deep music guides us beyond the “machinery of destruction” into a new Parnassus where “every word blossoms erotic,” where heron, waterfall, moonlit pools, and sea all burn with the “inexhaustible light” of beauty and desire, and we “recognize this burning as our own.”
~ Terry Ehret, author of Lost Body and Night Sky Journey
LINDA MARIE PRATHER
Linda Marie Prather has been widely recognized, winning honors in both, poetry, and visual art. She has been featured in More Than Soil, More Than Sky/The Modesto Poets, Stanislaus Connections, and KCBP, and KQBM radio, Two Roads/A program of Art & Science, Poets Corner, A Circle of Voices, Penumbra, Poetry of the Sacred, The Story Teller, and others. She is a two-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize and was the recipient of the Pegasus Award from California Federation of Chaparral Poets. Linda co-edits the poetry quarterly, Song of the San Joaquin, and is an Arts and Letters member of the National League of American Pen Women.
Her latest and ninth book of poetry Everyday Mercies was released in 2025 and is available on Amazon.`
About Everyday Mercies
Everyday Mercies is a contemplative collection of poems that finds meaning in the often overlooked ordinary. From the quiet glory of morning light to the surprising resilience found in seasons of uncertainty, these poems invite us to pause and ponder the mercies granted us anew every morning.

Second Tuesday with Eliot Schain & Salvatore Salerno
2026-03-10 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 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 | 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 | Bookish Modesto, 811 W. Roseburg Ave, Modesto, CA, 95350, United States
Join us on Tuesday, May 12, as we present Gustine-based poet Kathy Pon and Nevada City poet Chris Olander, poet laureate emeritus of Nevada County.
At Bookish Modesto, 7 pm. Doors at 6:30 pm.
