Judy Halebsky

Judy Halebsky is the author of three poetry collections, including Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged). With Ayako Takahashi, she co-translated Since Fukushima by Wago Ryoichi. Honors include fellowships from MacDowell, the Vermont Studio Center, Millay, the New Issues Poetry Prize, and a Graves Award. She directs the MFA in Creative Writing at Dominican University of California.

Reading at the Hotel Petaluma

Patrick Cahill

Patrick Cahill is the author of The Machinery of Sleep (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2020) and a two-time winner of the Central Coast Writers Award. Cofounder of Ambush Review and contributing editor for Digging Our Poetic Roots: Poems from Sonoma County (WordTemple Press), he holds a PhD from UC Santa Cruz. He lives in San Francisco, where he volunteers in habitat restoration.

Reading at the Hotel Petaluma

Cathryn Shea

Cathryn Shea is the author of Ghost Matinee (2025) and Genealogy Lesson for the Laity (Unsolicited Press). A Best of the Net nominee, her poetry has appeared widely, including in Rust + Moth, Poet Lore, Quiddity, and Gargoyle. A fourth-generation northern Californian, she lives with her family in Fairfax, CA. More at www.cathrynshea.com.

Reading at Keller Street CoWork

LeeAnn Pickrell

LeeAnn Pickrell’s debut collection is Gathering the Pieces of Days (Unsolicited Press, 2025). Her work has appeared in a variety of online and print journals, including One Art, Atlanta Review, and Unbroken. Her chapbook Punctuated was published by Bottlecap Press in 2024 and her book Tsunami will be published by Unsolicited Press in 2026. She lives in Richmond, California. www.leeannpickrell.com.

Reading at Keller Street CoWork

Kerry Donoghue

Kerry Donoghue’s work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Painted Bride Quarterly, Permafrost, The Louisville Review, and The South Carolina Review, among other journals. She earned an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. MOUTH is her debut short story collection. Learn more at kerrydonoghue.com

Reading at Keller Street CoWork

Grayson Thompson

Grayson Thompson [he/him] is a Black, Jamaican-American, queer transgender poet and therapist. He is the author of the chapbook Sand Bodied Florida Boy (Foglifter) and winner of Foglifter Press’s 2024 Start A Riot! Chapbook Prize and Write Bloody Publishing’s 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize.

Reading at The Phoenix Theater.

Original Giotis

Original Giotis is a culture writer and poet. His wide-ranging interviews and explorations are published in The SUB_SCRIBE Newsletter. His poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and the collections Daybreak (FMRL Press, 2019) and Razor Bloom (Blew, 1998), along with the print and audio book, Live in Santa Cruz (2025).

Photo by Erin Wrightsman

Reading at The Phoenix Theater.

Bernice Espinoza

Bernice “bere” Espinoza is a civil rights activist and immigration lawyer with a lifelong dedication to social justice. Her poetry has been featured in Palabra by Teatro Campesino and I Love Immigrants at San Jose City College.

Reading at The Phoenix Theater.

Cassandra Dallett

Cassandra Dallett is the author of Wet Reckless (Manic D Press), Collapse (Nomadic Press), and A Pretty Little Wilderness (Be About It Press). She was named a “writer to watch” by 7×7 Magazine in 2016 and co-hosts the OnTwoSix writing workshop and Moon Drop Productions reading series. Find her work in over 100 publications at cassandradallett.com

Reading at the Big Easy.

Tureeda Mikell

UCB ISI 1996, award winning poet, writer, cultural activist, BP Party Alum, author of Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine (2020) nominated for the California Book Award and The Body: Oracle of Memory (2024) both published by Black Lawrence Press, NY. In 2024, Mikell received Berkeley Poetry Festival’s LifeTime Achievement Award.

Reading at the Big Easy.

Paul Corman Roberts

Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of 19th Street Station Volume 2 (2025) and Bone Moon Palace (2021, Firecracker nominee). His micro-fiction Cemetery One Nighter is nominated for the 2025 Best American Short Fiction award. He teaches creative writing across the Bay Area and moonlights as a drummer for bands like US Ghostal Service and The There Their They’re.

Reading at the Big Easy.

Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux is the author of Life on Earth (2024), Only As the Day is Long (a Pulitzer Prize finalist), The Book of Men (Paterson Prize winner), Facts About the Moon (Oregon Book Award winner), Awake, Smoke, and What We Carry (a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist) and a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She also co-authored The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry and recently released Finger Exercises for Poets, a collection of craft essays and exercises.

Reading at Copperfield’s Books

photo by Kim Addonizio

Joseph Millar

Joseph Millar’s work includes Overtime (finalist for the 2001 Oregon Book Award), Fortune, Blue Rust, Kingdom, Dark Harvest, and Shine (2024). He earned fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, and a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in DoubleTake, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, APR, and Ploughshares. A Johns Hopkins graduate, he worked blue-collar jobs before returning to poetry. He teaches in Pacific University’s low-residency MFA Program.

Reading at Copperfield’s Books

photo by Dorianne Laux

Nancy Morales

Nancy Morales, a 1st-generation American of Puerto Rican parents, earned a doctorate in education from Columbia University. She’s taught at Dominican University, Sonoma State University, and others, and served as a board member for the Northern California Chapter of the Fulbright Alumni Association. She’s a co-translator of the Plagios series. Awards include a Northern California Book Award for California Poetry in Translation and a Pushcart Prize nomination.

Reading at Usher Gallery

Photo by Erin Ashford

Terry Ehret

Terry Ehret, a founder of Sixteen Rivers Press, is the author of four poetry collections, including Night Sky Journey (Kelly’s Cove Press). Her honors include the National Poetry Series, Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, NEA Translation Fellowship, a Northern California Book Award for California Poetry in Translation, and eight Pushcart nominations. She served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006.

Event presenter at Hotel Petaluma and reading at Usher Gallery

Amanda Moore

Amanda Moore is a poet, essayist, translator, and teacher. Her debut poetry collection, Requeening, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong. Find her at amandapmoore.com

Reading at Usher Gallery

Photo by Erin Ashford

Meg Hamill

Meg Hamill, Executive Director of California Poets in the Schools, is the author of two poetry collections including My Roots, My People and editor of numerous youth anthologies. A passionate advocate for arts education, she believes in its power to inspire curiosity, creativity, and lifelong engagement in young people.

Reading at the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum

Lisa Zheng

For Lisa Zheng, a junior at Maria Carrillo High School, poetry is an empty Google Doc or a fresh leaf of paper where she can escape the rules of school essays to pour out her rawest experiences. A “word nerd”, Zheng’s purpose for poetry, besides personal catharsis, is giving voice to the psychological turmoils many teens experience that are often hidden due to shame, in order to give them hope and cause for change.

Reading at the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum

Anaya Ertz

Anaya, a senior at Marin Academy, began writing poetry in 6th grade. For her, it became a way to process emotion and inspire change. Editor-in-chief of Echoes and a KQED student journalist, she sees writing as community engagement. Her inspirations include people, place, and passions like world history, Formula 1, and neuroscience. 

Reading at the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum

Jennifer Barone

Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and author of three books of poetry. Her latest book is Saporoso, Poems of Italian Food & Love (Feather Press). She is a winner of the 2007 and 2012 San Francisco Public Library’s Poets Eleven contest for North Beach, where she resides. jenniferbarone.wordpress.com

Reading at Aqus Café

Justin Cole Demeter

Justin is a queer/trans poet and painter living and loving in Oakland, CA. He’s had work published in New Words 3rd Issue (New Words Press), Trans Bodies, Trans Selves 2nd Edition (Oxford University Press), and We Apologize for the Inconvenience (Beyond the Veil Press). He loves climbing, thinks diastemas are wildly sexy, and peddles mental health paperbacks. justindemeterart.com

Reading at Copperfield’s Books

Ingrid KEIr

Ingrid Keir runs Feather Press, an indie women’s literary press. She’s co-founder of the WordParty, a San Francisco poetry and jazz series and has written several chapbooks: The Secrets of Like (2004),  Toward the Light (2007) and The Choreography of Nests (2016). She was shortlisted for the Litquake poetry contest and won the International Turas d’Anam Samhain Poetry Contest.

Reading at Aqus Café and event presenter at Big Easy.

Dave Seter

Dave Seter is a poet and environmental engineer. He writes about the intersection of the human built and natural worlds. His chapbook Somewhere West of the Mississippi was published by Mammoth Publications of Healdsburg in 2025. He is serving as Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2024-2026. More at: daveseter.com

Reading at Aqus Café

Kelechi Ubozoh

Kelechi Ubozoh, a Pushcart nominee, is a Nigerian-American writer and mental health advocate. Originally from Brooklyn, she was the first student journalist featured in The New York Times. She co-hosts the Bay Area reading series MoonDrop Productions and is the co-editor of the book, We’ve Been Too Patient, that explores psychiatric mistreatment. Her work appears in sPARKLE & bLINK and Multiplicity.

Reading at Aqus Café

Bill Vartnaw

Sonoma County Poet Laureate Emeritus Bill Vartnaw was born and raised in Petaluma and has been the publisher of Taurean Horn Press for 50 years. He’s the author of two books and four poetry chapbooks. He’s worked with the Petaluma Poetry Walk and Geri Digiorno, for 25 years. His latest work, The Nile & The Milky Way, is on sharpgiving.com

Reading at Aqus Café

Daedalus Howell

Renowned for his postmodern narratives in film and literature, Daedalus Howell’s written works include Quantum Deadline and I Heart Sonoma, and two feature films Pill Head and Werewolf Serenade. Howell’s work offers insights into interconnected storytelling and the exploration of identity in a changing world. He is the editor of the North Bay Bohemian. dhowell.com

Event Presenter at Keller Street CoWork.

Josh Windmiller

Josh Windmiller has been an advocate for the arts in the North Bay for 17 years. He started with a homemade zine and a music laboratory called The Crux in 2007 and has slowly been working his way through every aspect of the music and arts ecosystem ever since. Josh is the Festival Director of Railroad Square Music Festival,

Event Presenter at the Phoenix Theater.

Kary Hess

Kary Hess, MFA, is an author, artist, and filmmaker exploring how themes of place and seasonal perception contour our lived experience. Works include 1912, Poems of Time, Place, and Memory, the SparkTarot®, and two feature films. She’s the editor of Made Local Magazine and writes for the North Bay Bohemian, Pacific Sun, and North Bay Magazine. Karyhess.com

Event Presenter at Copperfield’s Books and Aqus Café.

John Johnson

Johnson is the author of Toss Repeat, winner of the 2024 James Tate Prize (SurVision Books, 2025), and co-translator of Plagios/Plagiarisms, the poetry of Ulalume González de León, winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award for poetry in translation. His poems and translations have appeared most recently in Uut Poetry, The Prose Poem, Hidden Peak Press, Right Hand Pointing, and Clade Song.

Event Presenter at The Petaluma Historic Library Museum.