Backyards: Poets for Local Change 2013-Alameda, California

ORGANIZER-Sharon Coleman

CONTACT: sharoncoleman@comcast.net

Backyards: Poets for Local Change 2013—as part of the world-wide reading 100 000 Poets for Change

Saturday September 28, 2013—7:00-9:00pm at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru St., Alameda, California 94501

A reading by~

Pamela Brenman

MK Chavez

Cassandra Dallett

Patricia France

Shanna Hullaby

Paul Corman Roberts

John Oliver Simon

Maw Shein Win

Curated by Sharon Coleman, hosted by Jeanne Lupton and Sharon Coleman

Pamela Brenman writes historical fiction and poetry that draws upon the voices of a menagerie of characters inspired by myth, dreams, and fairy tales. Recent publications include the journals Milvia Street, Blink-ink, and Riverbabble. Pamela resides in the East Bay where she teaches English and Humanities. Aside from her writing habit, she is an avid runner and cyclist. Favorite self-quote: “There are two sides to a story: the surface story and the inner story. The one I write on paper and allow others to read and the untold story that resides between the lines. It takes awesome courage for writers to allow others to peek into their strange, personal worlds.”

MK Chavez is the author of Virgin Eyes (Zeitgeist Press, 2009)
Visitation, Next Exit #9 (with John Sweet), and Pinnacle
(Kendra Steiner Editions 2009-2010.) You can find her recent and upcoming work in Generations, 1611, and Zone 3. She has been a fellow at Squaw Valley Writers Conference, and Antioch Writers Workshop.
She edited of Mill’s College Award winning journal The Walrus (2010), Cherry Bleeds Literary Journal, and the Milvia Street art and literary ournal, and is co-founder and co-curator of the Berkeley based monthly reading series Lyrics & Dirges.

Cassandra Dallett occupies Oakland, CA. Cassandra writes of a counter culture childhood in Vermont and her ongoing adolescence in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has published in Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, Hip Mama, Bleed Me A River, Criminal Class Review, Enizagam among many others. Look for links and chapbooks on cassandradallett.com

Shanna Hullaby is a third wave feminist punk rock priestess who was raised in the rural south by a military family. She is working on her BA in English with a focus on Creative Writing at Mills College, and is applying to MFA programs where she plans to focus on poetry and short fiction. Shanna’s work can be found in The Walrus and Milvia Street art and literary journal.

Patricia France is a Bay Area native, born and raised. Her writing is inspired by her childhood and Oakland and, more recently, by Ireland. She is just finishing an MFA at Stonecoast, Maine and is teaching at Laney College. Her poetry is published in Milvia Street art and literary journal.

Paul Corman Roberts is the author of the poetry collections 19th Street Station, Neocom(muter) and Coming WorldGone World . He is the fiction editor for the on-line periodical, Full of Crow. He is the producer of the spoken word showcase “Brew Review” and a founder of Oakland’s annual Beast Crawl Festival. A former airman and chief union steward, he spent the night of the Rodney King riots barricaded inside a Circle K convenience mart and has communed with shape-shifters in the Mojave Desert.

John Oliver Simon is author of several collections of poetry including Caminiante that follows his travels from the US border to Argentina. He’s a long-time Berkeley resident who’s taught in California Poets in the Schools and is presently the Artistic Director for Poetry Inside Out that teach both poetry writing and translation in grammar schools. Simon is also a renowned and prolific translator of contemporary Spanish language poetry from Mexico, Central and South America.

Maw Shein Win is the author of three chapbooks, Tales of a Lonely Meat Eater, The Farm Without Name, and most recently Ruins of a glittering palace, with artist Mark Dutcher. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Big Bridge, Chiron Review, Hyphen, and No Tell Motel. She’s a co-founder of Comet and is currently a co-publisher for Stretcher and a co-curator of Broadside Attractions: Vanquished Terrains. She is a college instructor and lives in Berkeley, California.

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