Sonoma County Literary Update

May 1, 2025

Dear Literary Folk,

I’m writing this post from the public library in Golden, Colorado. I’m here because my oldest daughter is poised to give birth to a baby girl, Rosalie, and circumstances make this particular event a challenging one. So, I’m here to keep grandson Connor company and to be on hand at home and at the hospital when the baby’s date arrives. She’s due on May 6.

Among my grandmother superpowers is a willingness to lose at any card game I play with my grandson. These days that’s Uno, Quiddler, and a brain-puzzler called Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza.

There’s also my knowledge of spelling and phonics (a remnant of my Catholic grammar school education), which helps me come up with odd rhymes like “When two vowels go walking, the first does the talking,” or “I before E, except after C, or when sounded like A, as in neighbor and weigh.” Though he’s only in kindergarten, grandson Connor likes tapping into a reading and language arts program called Lexia.

Because I’m often out running errands, like dropping letters off at the post office or picking up groceries, and because I’m not in a hurry the way I often am at home in Petaluma, I’ve enjoyed striking up conversations with clerks, fellow shoppers in line, and walkers at the park. I have gotten to know the owners of the nearby BrynMor Coffee Shop, which means “beautiful mountain.” The two women, Lacey and Amy, met mountain climbing, and Lacey’s family is from Anglesey in Wales, While I waited for my chai latte with oat milk, I shared my story of the rainy afternoon back in 2013 at Bryn Celli Ddu in the countryside of Anglesey with a lovely flock of black-faced sheep, and the group of writers who were there studying DylanThomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Welsh myths. When the rains started pouring down, the writers took shelter in the burial tombs that occupied the field, and which the sheep enjoyed standing atop. The rain didn’t bother them a bit.

Authors in Grocery Stores Program

Yesterday morning, I made the acquaintance of a local writer, Rina Brown, who was selling and signing her fantasy novels in the King Sooper Grocery in Lakewood. When I asked her how she came to be selling her books in a grocery store, she told me about a little-known program called Authors in Grocery Stores, set up by Ray Depew in Texas. The program is in 25 states across the county, wherever there is a Kroger grocery interested in participating. There are so few writers who know about this program, Rina told me, that she pretty much has the entire Metro Denver area to herself. She said her books sell pretty well, and that she’s in a different King Sooper store each day.

Rina and I spent a pleasant half-hour talking about writing, publishing, our mutual love of fantasy, Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea Trilogy, and whether grocery stores might be a good place for poetry book sales. As it turns out, “Rina Brown” is half of a mother-daughter team, Rina and Sharon Brown, who collaborate on the editing and promotion of the books and merchandise. When I got back to my daughter’s house, I looked up the website and discovered that Authors in Grocery Stores is in California, so I decided to sign up and see what happens.

The website says, “Make connections! A community begins with that first hello.” Though I’ve always felt embraced by community in the literary family of Sonoma County, I remember running into students I had worked with in the Poets in the Schools program when I was in the grocery store, and meeting their parents there, striking up conversations about metaphor vs. simile (a distinction I’ve never found particularly meaningful) and haiku over the bins of tomatoes and bell peppers. It seemed the right way to make poetry less lofty, less intimidating.

In his book On Tyranny, which I recommended in my March post, Timothy Snyder encourages us to “make eye contact and small talk.” Such small beginnings help us to make new acquaintances, form spontaneous communities, know who our neighbors are. Thus, we can resist the isolation that tyranny uses to silence and disempower us.

Sixteen Rivers Sonoma Book Launch at Readers’ Books

Those of you who may have missed the book launches in April for the 2025 Sixteen Rivers books will have another opportunity on Wednesday, May 28, 6:00-7:00 p.m. Readers will be Moira Magneson, Patrick Cahill, Terry Ehret, and Nancy J. Morales. Our host will be Readers’ Books, right off the main town square, 130 East Napa Street, Sonoma. Details: readersbooks.com/event/sixteen-rivers-press-poets-back-again-readers-book

More May Events

Be sure to check the calendar page of the Update for all the amazing May events coming up!

Dave Seter presents the final episode of the Spring “Poetry Challenge” workshops on Sunday, May 4, 1:00-3:00 p.m. The workshop is called Interweaving Found Text and is hosted by Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Sliding scale: $20-25. Details for that workshop may be found at: sebarts.org/classeslectures/p/poetry-challenge-interweaving-found-text

Occidental Center for the Arts presents 7MinMAX Storytelling Evening, on Friday, May 9, 7:00-8:30 p.m. This will be an evening of 7 live stories told in 7 minutes or less. Hilarious or sublime, poignant and personal tales told through the ancient oral tradition of storytelling. Interested storytellers will have a chance to throw their name in the hat to present their story. For more info: occidentalcenterforthearts.org or 707-874-9392.

Saturday, May 10, 7:00 p.m. Book Passage, in partnership with Institute for Leadership Studies (ILS), welcomes internationally acclaimed author Isabel Allende in celebration of her new novel My Name Is Emilia del Valle. In this spellbinding historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The House of the Spirits, a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father—and herself. Hosted by Dominican University of California at Angelico Hall. $40 Ticket includes book. Details and tickets: bookpassage.com/event/isabel-allende-my-name-emilia-del-vall

Saturday, May 17, 12:00-6:00 p.m. Lit Crawl Sebastopol, Sonoma County’s largest free literary event. The second annual literary pub crawl through downtown Sebastopol, brings together over 200+ authors and close to 1,000 fans during its six hours of literary mayhem. Save the date! Presenters, locations and schedule are on the Sebastopol Center for the Arts site: sebarts.org/litcrawl

Wednesday, May 21, 6:00-7:00 p.m. Rosa Lane, poet and architect, will read from her 4th poetry collection, Called Back (Tupelo Press, 2024) at Readers’ Books, 130 E. Napa St., Sonoma. Lane’s Called Back, the last two words Emily Dickinson wrote, brings light to the LGBTQ significance of Dickinson in queer conversation with one of America’s greatest poets. This event is free and open to the public.

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Poem for May

This month’s poem is by Ginger Brinlee. It’s been my experience during the 35 years I have lived in Sonoma County that the literary community is remarkably supportive and welcoming. Ginger is relatively new to publishing her work, so we celebrate this accomplishment with her. I was drawn to the invitation to listen, something my time with my daughter and grandson and the new acquaintances I’ve made here has taught me.

And if you are interested in submitting a poem or piece of short prose (fiction or nonfiction), please scroll to the end of the post for submission guidelines.

LISTEN
by Ginger Brinlee

If you listen, I will write upon your heart
Mirth and merriment in rhyme,
Anguish, pain, lament in verse and prose.

If you listen, I will pour into your soul
Children laughing in the rain,
Puddles splashing, mud-drops flying,
Dewdrops, raindrops, tears, rainbows.

Listen as I strum my stories new,
Muse and music, two as one;
Poet, dancer, lover, artist, bard
All are yours if you will only hear.

If you listen, I will pass before your mind
Lovers hidden in the night,
Sweethearts torn apart, yet lovers still.
Listen, if you dare, draw near.

Listen, listen if you will.

Ginger Brinlee started reading at the age of three and has loved words from the cradle. She has an alert sense of humor and loves the feel of words as they are spoken. She has two daughters and four grandchildren to whom she has read stories from Celtic hand-me-downs to Mother Goose and Grimm; she has sung and read the “old” stories from her great grandmother and those she has created. She has lived in Forestville for 36 years, and she listens there for the sound of words on the wind.

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Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025

Starting in January of 2024, I began featuring a different Sonoma County writer each month at the end of the Literary Update Post. Here’s how to participate.

The theme can be anything you feel is appropriate to the season. I’ve adjusted the subject line, so you won’t feel limited to sending lineated verse. In fact, prose poems, flash fiction, creative nonfiction are all welcome, as long as the piece you send is no more than a page in length.

Send your submission to me at tehret99@comcast.net, with “SCLU Poem/Prose 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 piece 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.

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Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor