15th Annual Petaluma Poetry Walk

September 19, 2010

Poet Bios

PETALUMA ART CENTER 11 am.

MC: Terry Ehret

Margaret Kaufman published five books of poetry, including letterpress editions by Gen Press (London), The Janus Press (Vermont) and Protean Press San Francisco), and a full-length collection, Snake at the Wrist (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2002). She lives in Kentfield, CA., leads poetry workshops and teaches at the U.C. Fromm Institute.

Gwynn O’Gara is Sonoma County’s sixth and current poet laureate. A teacher with California Poets in the Schools, she is the author of three chapbooks of poetry: Winter at Green Haven (Change Series, WordTemple Press), Fixer Upper (dPress), Snake Woman Poems (Beatitude Press).

Toni Wilkes’s chapbook Stepping Through Moons (Finishing Line Press) was nominated for the California Book Award and the PEN USA Literary Award. One of her poems was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. Her work appears in Cream City, Confrontation, Hayden’s Ferry, In Posse, Poetry East, Southern Humanities Review, among others. She lives in Santa Rosa.

JUNGLE VIBES 12 pm.

MC: Susan Bono

Eileen Malone’s poetry and short stories appeared in over 500 literary journals and anthologies. She has taught with California Poets in the Schools and San Francisco Community Colleges. She is a Bay Area syndicated columnist, a television show producer and a mental health activist.

Mimi Albert was born in New York and has lived in Northern California for 30 years. She taught at Napa Valley College, Sonoma State University, Napa State Hospital and currently teaches online seminars in the UC Berkeley’s Post Baccalaureate Writing Program. She has published two novels, Second Story Man and Skirts. She has received a YADDO foundation grant and eight California Arts Council grants. She is a contributing editor of Poetry Flash.

Kit Kennedy’s book of poems INCONVENIENCE, co-authored with Susan Gangel, is published by Littoral Press, Oakland. When Eating Oysters is forthcoming from CLWN WR, Brooklyn. Kit hosts the Gallery Reading Series in San Francisco.

Smooth Toad with G.P. Skartz, Bob Ernst and Hal Hughes, will also be playing at this venue

APPLE BOX, 1 pm.

MC: Martin Hickel

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the winner of the 2008 American Book Award and editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She founded and directs the Poetry Center at PCCC and is Professor/Director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University-SUNY.

Sharon Doubiago’s My Father’s Love/Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl, Vol. 1 (Wild Ocean Press, 2009) was a finalist in the Northern California Book Awards in Creative Non-Fiction, 2010. Vol. 2 is forthcoming. She is the author of Love on the Streets: selected and new poems (Univ. of Pittsburgh, 2008) and two dozen books of poetry and prose. She received three Pushcart prizes for poetry and fiction and one Oregon Book Award for Poetry.

APPLE BOX, 2 pm.

MC: Susan Bono

Amber Tamblyn is an American actress and poet. She self published two chapbooks of poetry: Of the Dawn and Plenty of Ships. She is the author of Free Stallion (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 2005) and a new collection of poetry Bang Ditto(Manic D Press, 2009).

Ed Mycue was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and has lived in San Francisco since 1970. His published books include damage within the community (1972), root route and range the song returns (1979), the singing man my father gave me (1980), torn star (1986), pink gardens brown trees (1990), because we speak the same language (1995), night boats (2000), and more.

Marginalized urban Lakota poet Luke Warm Water has won Poetry Slam competitions from California to Germany. He was the first spoken-word poet to receive an Archibald Bush Foundation individual artist fellowship in literature. Luke was a featured poet at the prestigious Geraldine R. Dodge 12th Biennial Poetry Festival.

PHOENIX THEATER 4 pm.

MC: Delia Moon

Eugene Ruggles, a poet of great heart best described as “a wanderer in search of the American conscience,” was born December 4, 1935 in Pontiac, Michigan and died in Petaluma, California June 3, 2004. A tireless promoter of the art of poetry and a staunch supporter of all of its practitioners, Eugene Ruggles organized hundreds of well-attended poetry readings to support the causes of youth, peace and justice he believed in so passionately. His book, The Lifeguard In The Snow, (University of Pittsburgh Press Pitt Poetry Series 1977) won the Great Lakes Colleges Association Award in Poetry for 1978, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. The reading from Roads of Bread: Collected Poems of Eugene Ruggles will include his son Benjamen, his brother Glenn, Michelle Baynes, Geri Digiorno, Sharon Doubiago, Ramon Sender, Carl Macki. and others.

Eugene's friend poet Merybehn Pelter will also be remembered at this reading.

PELICAN ART GALLERY 5 pm.

MC: Bill Vartnaw

Doren Robbins has authored two recent collections published by Eastern Washington U.P.: Driving Face Down (awarded the Blue Lynx Prize) and My Piece of the Puzzle (PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Poetry Award, 2008.) Forthcoming are: Twin Extra (highmoonoon press, 2010) and Amnesty Muse (Lost Horse Press, 2111). Doren teaches creative writing and literature at Foothill College.

Pablo Rosales is a poet, songwriter, bandleader and music producer. He performs regularly at various clubs and venues in San Francisco and the East Bay, including Yoshi’s. He has produced 2 CDs entitled "The One" (poetry and jazz) and Cats & Dogs (eclectic) and a DVD recording called Pablo LIVE!

J. R. Brady is an actor, playwright and poet. Her plays have been produced in the U.S. and Scotland. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as 3300 Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, 3300 Review, North Coast Literary Review and more. She has published three chapbooks and a collection of poems, The Space Between (2010).

AQUS CAFE 6 pm.

MC: Carl Macki

Vincent Carella 

Vincent Louis Carrella (born June 26, 1965) is a pioneering interactive story-teller and game developer and an American fiction novelist and short story writer. His debut novel, Serpent Box (Harper Perennial), was published in 2008, based on an initial short story,"The Serpent Box and the Poison Jar." The short story won the 2000 Literal Latte Fiction Award.

Geoffrey Todd Lake

I am a third generation, Bay Area, Californian, who born in the projects of Lockwood Gardens, Oakland in 1953. I moved, at the age of three, to the hills of Hayward and was raised in a dying agricultural dairy community. I draw on my youth, in the hills of Hayward, culminating with my living in Brazil. I have earned my living working in the arts for thirty years. I have worked for The San Francisco Opera, The San Francisco Ballet; and for the last eighteen years, have specialized as a Greens Designer for film.
My first book of poetry is called, Songs to the Sky (Small Poetry Press). I am presently in the process of publishing my second book of poetry “Pearls before Swine’ the Love Poetry of Geoffrey Todd Lake” (Lying Mexican Press). Published in “Songs to the Sky,” Small Poetry Press, and “Reflections On September 11th Collected Poems,” The Marin Poetry Center:

I was described to by my American Indian Family to the Traditions and the Culture of my Blood. Used to dance at the Pow Wows in Los Angeles as a child for the Crazy Horse Drum.  I am a Potter as my Indian mother before me and am aware of that Sacred Space between the my hands and the clay, our mother the earth. Marine Vietnam veteran,1968, and attended UCLA with a special interest in History and Literature. One book of poetry, Ghost Chants, Songs of a Warrior and am known in the scalded literary underground of the Bay Area as being active for all that have been savaged by the 'Wasichu' (Dark Hearts). Wrote a small story, along with other writers, for Gerald Nicosia's adornment of Jan Kerouac, my beloved little, wild friend; in Jan Kerouac, A Life in Memory (Noodlebrain Press, 2009), along with magazines and short stories. However, I am a Potter who has a way with words when about the Council Fires relating Sagas, and enjoys singing them.

Adam David Miller

Adam David Miller (born October 8, 1922) is an African-American poet, writer, publisher, and radio programmer and producer. Born in Saint George, South Carolina, Miller published one of the first collections of modern African-American poetry, as well as four books of poetry and a memoir,Ticket to Exile about his life growing up in the Jim Crow South.

AQUS CAFE 7 pm.

MC: Gerald Nicosia hosts a selection of readings by post-beat and eco-erotic Pacific Coast poets. 

Gerry Nicosia is best known for his biography of Jack Kerouac, MEMORY BABE. He is also the author of HOME TO WAR: A HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM VETERANS’ MOVEMENT. He has published 3 books of poetry, LUNATICS, LOVERS, POETS, VETS & BARGIRLS; LOVE, CALIFORNIA STYLE; and EMBRACE OF THE LEPERS.

He has published hundreds of poems in dozens of different literary magazines, including the NEW YORK QUARTERLY, GARGOYLE, THE CHIRON REVIEW, THE 3300 REVIEW, BEATITUDE, BLACK ACE, HOUSE ORGAN, and many others.

His poems are included in many anthologies, including THE OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN POETRY, and have received several Pushcart nominations. Most recently, he edited and published a biography of novelist Jan Kerouac, called JAN KEROUAC: A LIFE IN MEMORY.

Among them:

Latif Harris

ruth weiss was born in 1928 in Berlin, and escaped to Vienna in 1933.  She emigrated to New York in 1938, and was already writing her first poems. In NY she switched to writing in English. She lived in Chicago in her teens, where she lived a life of “bohemia and be-bop,” and met many famous underground Chicago characters such as Eddie Balchowsky. She then moved to Greenwich Village in NY, the French Quarter in New Orleans, and eventually North Beach in SF, where she gave some of the earliest jazz poetry readings at The Cellar in 1956. She became good friends with Jack Kerouac and many other Beat writers. She has published 14 books and written several plays, of which three were performed recently in Vienna. Recent books include three bilingual editions: A NEW VIEW OF MATTER, published in Prague in 1999; FULL CIRCLE 2002 in Vienna; and NO DANCING ALOUD 2006 in Vienna. She is also an actress and a watercolor painter. She now lives in Albion on the California Coast near Mendocino.

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