Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

I’m traveling right now in Minnesota with family, visiting family on both sides of the family tree. As always, our literary calendar offers so many ways to enjoy our literary community. Check out the calendar page for June (and July, too!) to read more about these and many other upcoming events.

10th Bay Area Book Festival: Saturday, June 1 & Sunday, June 2, 2024
Presented by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria 
The Bay Area Book Festival is so much fun, and such a great way to hear local writers and sample books by independent local publishers. There are some pretty amazing headliners, as well as 10 Writers’ Workshops, an Outdoor Fair, and 4 stages full of top programming in downtown Berkeley. Daytime events are free, though some require registration. Evening events are ticketed.

Sonoma County authors Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Forrest Gander, and Greg Sarris will be among the speakers. If I weren’t in Minnesota, I’d be there!

For a complete schedule and Book Festival map, check out this link: https://www.baybookfest.org/june/

The first day of the Festival is Writers’ Day – June 1, 11-5 pm.
We know our community is filled with writers and authors, aspiring and published. The Festival wants to honor all of you with a day-long series of workshops and sessions that drill down into topics that will spur your creativity, engage your writerly minds, and even support you with practical, insiders’ advice and guidance in your journey to publication.

This full day of sessions will feature nonfiction, poetry, and fiction events, a session on publishing, and two workshops for kids and teens! The Workshops will be held at the Berkeley Public Library, 3rd floor, Community Meeting Room. Workshops are free but spaces are limited and require advance RSVP.

Here’s one of the evening headliner events:
June 1, 5:30 pm: Joan Baez & Greg Sarris
Ground-breaking Mexican-American musician, artist, and activist Joan Baez joins accomplished writer, professor, and tribal leader Chairman Greg Sarris in a conversation about writing, creating, and legacy. Sarris is co-executive producer of Joan Baez: I Am A Noise, a deeply personal, profound, and haunting documentary that follows Baez on her 2018 Fare Thee Well goodbye tour and explores memory and abuse through home videos, journal entries, photographs, and therapy tapes. This pairing sold out in a few days last year, so we invited this dynamic duo again!

Greg Sarris will also be reading at the Rohnert Park-Cotati Library
Wednesday, June 12, 6:00-7:00 p.m. Rohnert Park-Cotati Regional Library presents local author Greg Sarris reading stories from his newest book, The Forgetters. At 6250 Lynne Condé Way, Rohnert Park. More details: events.sonomalibrary.org/greg-sarris

Reverberations 2024
Some of you may remember the ekphrastic art and poetry exhibition at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts called Reverberations. The first exhibit paired works of art from private collections and artists in the county with poets who responded to the art with their own original poems. The second exhibit paired poems written in the midst of the pandemic with artists who were inspired by the images in the poems to create new original pieces of visual art.

For Reverberations 2024, Sebastopol Center for the Arts (SebArts) is bringing together 56 rarely-seen works from curated Sonoma County collections along with 56 original ekphrastic poems written by some of the Bay Area’s most notable poets. These works offer an intimate adventure into realms of visual and literary art, shown side-by-side, supporting and enhancing meaning and expression.

The SebArts gallery is open Tuesday-Sunday: 10 am-4 pm with extended hours on Fridays: 10 am-7 pm. Reverberations 2024 will be on display June 21 through August 10. The opening of the exhibit for members is June 21; the opening for the general public is June 22.

SebArts is also hosting a number of events keyed to the exhibition.

Sunday, June 23, 2-4 pm: Artist and Poet Panel
Wednesday, June 26, 5-7 pm: Poets read their interpretations of art pieces
Tuesday, July 9, 2-4 pm: Poets read their interpretations of art pieces
Sunday, July 21, 1-3 pm: Poets read their interpretations of art pieces
Thursday, June 27, 10:30 am-12:00 pm. Artist lecture on the “Struggles and Desires of Reverberations” with Linda Loveland Reid

Details/registration: sebarts.org/classeslectures/p/poetry-readings-reverberations-iii-jun-26-2024https://www.sebarts.org/reverberations

Celebrating Two Sonoma County Literary Traditions
Monday, June 3, 6:15 p.m. Rivertown Poets 11th Anniversary Reading, live at Aqus Cafe. Featured poets are Catharine Clark-Sayles and Anita May. An open mic reading will follow the break. Please time your reading to no more than 3 minutes total and no more than two poems, so that everyone has a chance to share. Sign up at Aqus, 189 H Street, Petaluma. Questions? Email: rivertownpoet@gmail.com.

Saturday, June 8, 2:00-5:00 p.m. The Sitting Room Library Birthday Party; 2025 Curtis Drive, Penngrove. Enjoy carrot cake, cheese and fruit with music by Sarah Baker. Copies of this year’s publication, Travel Notes By and About Women Travel Writers, will be available + giveaway books.. For more information, call 707-795-9028.

Sonoma County Youth Poet Laureate and Poetry Ambassador
Sunday, June 9, 4:30 -6:30 p.m. ’24-’25 Youth Poet Laureate Inauguration & Teen Poetry Open Mic Sebastopol Center for the Arts hosts an evening of poetry readings with our latest Youth Poet Laureate, Lisa Zheng and Ambassador, Sabine Wolpert followed by Teen Poetry Open Mic. Location: Sebastopol Center for the Arts 282 South High Street Sebastopol. For details and to register, use this link: https://www.sebarts.org/classes-lectures/24-25-youth-laureate-inauguration-teen-poetry-open-mic

Ed Coletti’s Series at Café Frida Gallery Continues
Sunday, June 23, 1:00 p.m. Ed Coletti’s Spring 2024 Festival reading at Café Frida Gallery, 300 South A Street, Santa Rosa, on the outdoor stage. Readers: Katherine Hastings, Luis Vasquez (“Lalin”), Gregory Randall, David Beckman with friends (Intermission), Claire Drucker, Steve Shain (solo piece), Abby Bogolmony, Stacey Truel. For more information, contact Ed at edjcoletti@gmail.com.

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Poem for June
This month, I continue the SCLU’s new feature of selecting a poem or short prose piece by a Sonoma County writer. I so appreciate those of you who have sent me your submissions, and invite all of you to participate. You can check the previous posts in the archives for submission guidelines.

Tung Sing
by Jean Wong

It was a book,
red and thick,
written on newsprint
filled with strange black
strokes and radicals.
For a modest price
it could be bought in
any Chinatown store.

Through the year
it sat unnoticed
on my mom’s dressing table
by the bobby pins
and cold cream.

But if a consultation
was required
the whole family
descended upon its
pages.

My mother’s voice
thin, tight.
My father, focused, grim.
My brother and I
attentive, still.

We called the Tung Sing
a calendar. Yet beyond
dividing time into
weeks and months,
it also prophesied
good and bad luck days.

When would my broken leg heal?
Should dad open his new store
in the spring or summer?
Would my mother have
the second son
she yearned for
or another mere girl.

The book delivered
steady answers,
guiding my family
through misfortune
and hard times.
Yet its authorship
remains unknown.

Was it written by a
sage in a cave?
Or by some craven scholar
to please an emperor’s whim?
Could generations of people
be subject to a hoax?

We might as well
cut into a pigeon
and inspect its entrails.

I don’t believe in deities,
cross my fingers, or
knock on wood.
Church is not where I go
for solace.

Now when I pick a calendar
I get the one with
cute puppies.

Still, place the
Tung Sing in my hand
and my head bends
in soft
deference.


Jean Wong, author of Sleeping with the Gods and Hurtling Jade, is an award-winning poet, fiction, and memoir writer. Her work has been produced by the Petaluma Reader’s Theater, and Sixth Street Playhouse. Jean writes from the bottom of a well, amazed to look up and see the sky.

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Terry Ehret
Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update