Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

Off to Antartica!
Our incredible engine behind the Sonoma County Literary Update, Jo-Anne Rosen, will be briefly on hiatus from January 17 through February 4. Jo-Anne is off on a cruise to Antarctica with her sisters! I’ve asked her to send us photos and notes about her journey, and she has promised a write-up for the February post. During Jo-Anne’s time away, she will not be available to update the blogsite, and the February Literary Update will be delayed… unless a volunteer steps up to cover her absence. (Knowledge of WordPress and MailChimp needed.) If you can help out, please contact Jo-Anne at sonomacountyliteraryupdate@gmail.com.

Board of Supervisors Honors Poet Laureate Elizabeth Herron
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors will adopt the Gold Resolution honoring Elizabeth Herron as our 12th poet laureate at their meeting on December 12, 2023, 1:30 pm. Elizabeth and her guests will arrive around 1:15 pm. I hope some of you can join us in person!

The address is: 
Board of Supervisors Chambers
575 Administration Drive
Room 102A
Santa Rosa, CA 95403

Elizabeth will be offering a Being Brave Project Poetry Workshop on Saturday, January 20, 1:00-3:30 p.m. Occidental Center for the Arts Literary Series. Details and registration forthcoming: occidentalcenterforthearts.org/upcoming-events

Send Us Your Poetry Selections for 2024
Regular readers of the SCLU know that I conclude each post with a poem for the month, sometimes honoring the season, sometimes celebrating a local author or honoring a literary voice we have lost. I always enjoy reading through the many possibilities to find the one I think will complement the content of the month’s post. But it occurred to me that I’d really like to be featuring more work by Sonoma County authors.

I’ve tried this several times before: first in 2014 with poems on the drought, then in 2020 with pandemic poems, and one other time with poems that summed up the year in a few lines. These were great!

Starting this month, I’m inviting you to send me poems (or short prose pieces), your own or by someone else, and in any style. Choose something that you think fits the season and is not too long. (Readers are often in “skim mode” by the end of the post).

During the month of December, send me poems/prose that reflect upon the new year. We’ll start there and see how it goes. Here are the guidelines—I’ll keep it simple:

Send your submission to me at tehret99@comcast.net, with the words “SCLU Poem of the Month” in the subject heading.

Send me just one submission, no more than a page (or less).

These can be previously published, provided you identify the publishing source. If the poem is not your own, provide the author’s name and source. The author should be a Sonoma County voice, and if contemporary, please ask the author’s permission to submit.

Deadline: You can send the submission any time during the month, but I’ll need to receive your submission a few days before the month’s end to give me time to read, make my choice, and contact the author of the piece selected..

California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick’s Our California Project
Here’s a great opportunity to join in a state-wide conversation about living in California. Our state poet laureate Lee Herrick and the California Arts Council invite all Californians to write a poem about their city, town, or state, exploring what they love about it, what joy they find in it, what they would change about it, or what they hope for.

Guidelines: Please note the following:
Please submit one poem per person.
Submissions must be unpublished works.

We will not censor any poems, but we reserve the right to remove poems from our service if they are plagiarized or if they contain content deemed offensive on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

If you don’t know Lee Herrick’s work, you’re in for a treat. Lee was born in Korea, and came to California when he was adopted at 10 months old. He grew up in Danville and now lives with his family in the Fresno area. Lee served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role. His poems are infused with his deep compassion and humanity, his ear for music, and his love of place.

Here is the link to read more about Lee Herrick and this project. The link will also take you to the page where you can submit your poem. https://capoetlaureate.org/ourcalifornia

At the end of this post, I have included Lee Herrick’s poem “My California” from his 2012 collection Gardening Secrets of the Dead. To hear the author read this poem, use this link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/play/77155.

Upcoming Literary Events
Miss Austen’s Mistake?
I am an Austen aficionado. I don’t collect memorabilia or tea cozies (though my sister once gave me a Jane Austen action figure). Instead, I read her books. During Covid, I reread them all. Recently my husband asked me to recommend an Austen novel he might read. I considered Sense and Sensibility, but it runs a bit long—“too many notes,” as the Emperor of Austria once said of an early Mozart opera. Don’t get me wrong; I’m still in awe of the 19 year old Austen who could draft such a book! The opening of that novel is a brilliantly funny and scathing portrait of how the wealthy convince themselves it’s in their poor relations’ best interest to be denied their inheritance. But in the end I steered him to Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion, my personal favorites for their compression and elegance.

So I’m curious about a Book Passage event coming up on Saturday, December 9, 2:00 p.m. Charles Swensen will read from his featured book: Miss Austen’s Mistake: The Real Story Behind Sense and Sensibility. A reading in the Book Passage Corte Madera store, followed by a Q&A. Event hosted by the Left Coast Writers®. More details: bookpassage.com

Readers Theater Presents Two Holiday Classics
Kick off your holiday season with a Petaluma tradition, Petaluma Readers Theatre’s annual Christmas show: Two holiday classics, Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

These are two of my favorite holiday stories, ones I’ve taught countless times and read to my own kids till they have them memorized. I’ve attended the Readers Theater productions in the past, and if you’ve never treated yourself to this (or like me, missed these performances during the Covid years, mark your calendar for Friday, December 15, Saturday, December 16, 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, December 17, 2:00 p.m. Polly Klaas Community Theater, 417 Western Avenue, Petaluma. Tickets: brownpapertickets.com/event/6138216

Calls for Submissions: December 2023
Jo-Anne maintains a Calls for Submission page of the Literary Update, and if you’re looking for a publishing home for your writing, this is a terrific resource. Here are a few that caught my eye.

Landlocked Magazine Biannual Call for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry
Deadline: December 10
LandLocked seeks writing that is innovative, that pushes beyond the dense thicket of the unexplorable. We accept all genres―speculative, realistic, and those hybrid bodies of works yet to be named. We want new voices, experienced voices, and everything in between.
landlocked-magazine.com/submissions

The Good Life Review: Open Call for Micro Prose and Short Poems
Ends on Friday, December 29
Work submitted here will be considered for our “Micro Monday” segment (online) and not our quarterly issues. We currently pay $25 per piece for work published in this segment. Maximum word count: 500
Guidelines: thegoodlifereview.submittable.com/submit

Call for 10-Minute Play Submissions
Ten-minute plays sought from local authors for the Inaugural Grand Central Petaluma 10×7 BY THE RIVER. Bare stage, with some giant cubes, no additional scenery, 1-4 characters, very limited props and costumes.

Any subject matter is okay — suitable for a general audience in a daytime outdoor setting. To be performed on an outdoor stage in the rear of Grand Central, 226 Weller Street, Petaluma.

Reviewing submissions through the end of 2023.
Production scheduled for Summer of 2024.
Deadline: December 31, 2023
Send pdf to: ndrwbrier@gmail.com

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts
Sixteen Rivers Press invites Northern California authors to submit book-length poetry manuscripts between November 1, 2023 and February 1, 2024. All manuscripts will be read blind, and typically one or two manuscripts are selected for publication. The winner/s will be announced on the press’s website during Summer 2024. Selected manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in Spring 2026.

Sixteen Rivers values diversity. We encourage poets of color, young poets, and LGBTQ poets to submit. If you’ve submitted in the past and not been selected, please don’t be discouraged. Because we only publish two new authors a year, sometimes it takes a few tries. We are a unique organization, run by the poets themselves. In joining us, you have the chance to learn about all aspects of book production.

For full submission guidelines, use this link: https://sixteenrivers.org/submit-work.

Poem for December

My California
by Lee Herrick

Here, an olive votive keeps the sunset lit,
the Korean twenty-somethings talk about hyphens,

graduate school and good pot. A group of four at a window
table in Carpinteria discuss the quality of wines in Napa Valley versus Lodi.

Here, in my California, the streets remember the Chicano
poet whose songs still bank off Fresno’s beer soaked gutters

and almond trees in partial blossom. Here, in my California
we fish out long noodles from the pho with such accuracy

you’d know we’d done this before. In Fresno, the bullets
tire of themselves and begin to pray five times a day.

In Fresno, we hope for less of the police state and more of a state of grace.
In my California, you can watch the sun go down

like in your California, on the ledge of the pregnant
twenty-second century, the one with a bounty of peaches and grapes,

red onions and the good salsa, wine and chapchae.
Here, in my California, paperbacks are free,

farmer’s markets are twenty-four hours a day and
always packed, the trees and water have no nails in them,

the priests eat well, the homeless eat well.
Here, in my California, everywhere is Chinatown,

everywhere is K-Town, everywhere is Armeniatown,
everywhere a Little Italy. Less confederacy.

No internment in the Valley.
Better history texts for the juniors.

In my California, free sounds and free touch.
   Free questions, free answers.
Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.


Lee Herrick, “My California” from Gardening Secrets of the Dead. Copyright © 2012 by Lee Herrick, published by WordTech Communications LLC.
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Terry Ehret
Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update