Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

September has traditionally been the month to launch a new literary year with the twin events of the Sonoma County Book Festival and the Petaluma Poetry Walk.

This is our first year in a long time we won’t be gathering the tribes for the annual Book Festival. What a great run we had! Many thanks to all those in our literary community who worked (and played) to bring us together each September in an eclectic mix of writers, readers, publishers, book vendors, book lovers, rappers, and artists.

Our other September literary event is still going strong: the delightful moveable feast of poetry and music known as the Petaluma Poetry Walk, founded by writer, artist, and former Sonoma County Poet Laureate Geri Digiorno. This year’s Walk will begin on Sunday, September 21, 11 AM at the Seed Bank in Petaluma, then will proceed to five other venues downtown before ending up at the Aqus Café. Readers include Beverly Burch, Donna Emerson, John Johnson, Dick Bakken, Adelle Foley, Jack Foley, Michelle Baynes, Geri Digiorno, Nancy Keane, Joyce Jenkins, Jeanne Powell, Kim Shuck, Molly Fisk, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Nancy Daughterty, Nancy Long, Eileen Malone, Katherine Hastings, Ron Salisbury, Lynn Watson, Clara Bellino, Marvin Hiemstra, Kirk Lumpkin, and David Madgalene.

For a full list of readers, venues, and bios, here’s the link: www.petalumapoetrywalk.org/2014poetrywalkschedule.html.

“Get Lit” Literary Reading Series
Last month, the Literary Update post included a feature on the monthly reading series at the Aqus Café (Rivertown Poets: A-Muse-ing Mondays), and a mention of a reading series Kara Vernor and Dani Burlison are hosting in Petaluma, called “Get Lit.” For this month’s post, Kara Vernor composed this short feature to introduce the literary community to her monthly series.

“Get Lit” happens the fourth Wednesday of the month, 7:00-9:00 p.m., at the Corkscrew Wine Bar in Petaluma (100 Petaluma Blvd. N.). Three featured writers read during the first hour and open mic readers follow during the second, which is sometimes kicked off by a comedian or musician. Get Lit is a free and 21+ event that aims for lively, funny, heartbreaking and real, and the Corkscrew Wine Bar’s intimate space narrows the traditional divide between readers and the audience. September’s reading—featuring Molly Giles, Peg Alfred Pursell, and Siamak Vossoughi—will be the last one that takes place at Corkscrew until January 2015. October’s reading, entitled “Misfortunes in Love and Life: A Comedy / Storytelling Event,” will be held at the Elbo Room in San Francisco as part of SF Lit Crawl, and then Get Lit will break for the holidays in November and December. More info at facebook/GetLitReadings.

Heyday Books Celebrates 40 Years
Just today, The San Francisco Chronicle included an article about Berkeley-based Heyday Books, celebrating its 40th Anniversary. Founded by Malcolm Margolin, Heyday published stories no one else has told–from native peoples and newly arrived immigrants, stories about the delicate Calliope hummingbirds and 14,000 foot peaks, to the explorations of California’s most original thinkers, poets, and visual artists. The anniversary is marked by Kim Bancroft’s new book The Heyday of Malcolm Margolin: The Damn Good Times of a Fiercely Independent Publisher,

Margolin is author of several books, including The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay Area, named by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century by a western writer. He has received dozens of prestigious awards, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fred Cody Award Lifetime Achievement from the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, and a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation. He helped found the Bay Nature Institute and the Alliance for California Traditional Artists.

I especially like the way Margolin characterizes the common element in Heyday’s 350 titles: “‘The kitchen voice,’ the authentic unself-conscious voice that provides a window into the real lives of people who’ve contributed to our history and culture.”

Taurean Horn Press Also Celebrates 40 Years
On Thursday, September 11, at 7:30 p.m., Taurean Horn Press will celebrate its 40th anniversary at Many Rivers Books & Tea, 130 S. Main Street, Suite 101, Sebastopol. Founder Bill Varnaw will be reading with Avotcja, whose With Every Step I Take Taurean Horn published last year. Besides publishing so many great local writers, Bill Vartnaw is a fabulous poet who served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate from 2012-2013. He currently helps coordinate the Petaluma Poetry Walk, among his many generous contributions to our Literary Community.

Sixteen Rivers Celebrates 15 Years
Still a newcomer by comparison with Taurean Horn and Heydey’s 40 years, the Bay Area Poetry Publishing Collective Sixteen Rivers Press celebrates its 15th year this October. Inspired by the same egalitarian, non-hierarchical ethos that Taurean Horn and Heyday embody, Sixteen Rivers is a non-profit, all-volunteer collective press, with the goal of bringing into print beautiful books that reflect the voices of the greater SF Bay Area.

As one of the founders of the press, I’d like to extend a personal invitation to each of you to help celebrate our anniversary with a garden party and reading in a beautiful garden in Marin County, featuring Kay Ryan, Sixteen Rivers advisor and former U.S. poet laureate.

We’ve changed our annual fundraiser to a Sunday-afternoon event, October 5, 3:00-5:00 p.m., with tickets beginning at $25. The garden party and reception will be catered with outrageously good food and drinks; there will also be a silent auction, and books by Kay and press members will be available for purchase.We hope you’ll join us for this special garden party.

You can purchase tickets and get driving directions to the event at Brown Paper Ticket Site: http://sixteenriversfundraiser.brownpapertickets.com/

Sept. 27th is the next Global Event Day!
Three years ago, Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion sent out the following invitation: “Do you want to join other poets, musicians, and artists around the world in a demonstration/celebration to promote peace and sustainability and to call for serious social, environmental and political change?” The response was international and overwhelming, launching the 100 Thousand Poets for Change Movement.

On Friday, September 26, and Saturday, September 27, musicians, photographers, artists, and writers will be gathering in their communities all over the world to be the change they want in the world. Locally, there are events in Healdsburg, Petaluma, and Santa Rosa. To find out more or sign up to participate, check out the website at http://100tpc.org/ or send an e-mail to walterblue@bigbridge.org. You can also follow their blog at http://www.100tpcmedia.org/100TPC2012/.

Thoughts on the Drought
Since January, I’ve been inviting the Literary Update readers to send me their poems, stories, essays, and anecdotes on the drought. This month Sebastopol writer Patrice Warrender sent in her poem, “Autumn drop of apples, crackle of bone-dry grass.” Along with that, I am including “The Last Drought,” by Lee Perron, which Larry Robinson featured two days ago in his daily poetry e-mails.

Please send me your thoughts on the drought. Photos and artwork, too!

Congratulations to this month’s newly published authors in Sonoma County. See who’s in print at https://socolitupdate.com/sonoma-county-in-print.

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update co-editor

Autumn drop of apples, crackle of bone-dry grass

Exhausted by the last hot breath
of autumn, parched hills pale
against a blue sky, unburdened
by clouds. A solitary vulture
sweeps the sky, fingered wings
stirring still air for ripe scent of
what’s been left behind. It circles
once, twice,
drops down to wheel low
over a deserted orchard, where
a scraggy doe noses the dust
of drought. The deer bolts.

The bird gathers its wings, soars
up to circle the sky.

—Patrice Warrender

The Last Drought

Winds that bring no clouds
clouds that carry no rain
falling rain that doesn’t reach the ground

I grieve bitterly for the home that has been lost

tonight outside: sounds of rain, of a thin
brief rain falling to the piteous earth—
voices tender as ghosts
that claim neither present nor future

yet the memory of a birth-right to rain
lingers— crystalline, flawed
reaching across synapses
that are already doomed by delusion

we are dispossessed
we wait
but we are owed nothing by the sky.

— Lee Perron, © 2014.