Sonoma County Literary Update

August 1, 2025

Dear literary folk,

Remembering Jo Lauer
Last Saturday, we lost one of our literary community writers in a tragic car accident. It is a devastating loss to us all, and our hearts go out to her family and friends. Here is some information about Jo from her website (see link below).

Jo Lauer, transplanted from the Midwest, was a retired psychotherapist. About herself, Jo wrote, “I come from a long line of mostly technologically-impaired late-bloomers. That’s one reason I chose my first profession as a psychotherapist in my 40s (didn’t need a computer), and why I didn’t begin writing until my early 50s. I think there’s a lot to be said about waiting for age and experience to lend some direction—or perhaps that’s just what we late-bloomers say about ourselves.”

After a 38-year career as a psychotherapist, Jo became a published writer and an active member of the Redwood Writers branch of California Writers Club. She was also a songwriter, and more recently a screenplay writer. Her story, “Roots in My Garden” was adapted in 2022 as an independent film. She was a founding member of Lavender Roses Reader’s Theater, and she sang in the One Heart Choir, the musical ministry branch of the Center for Spiritual Living.

To learn more about Jo and her publications, visit her website: http://jolauer.com.

Poetry at the Fair
I love that, alongside 4-H livestock, prize-winning jams and jellies, and local wines and beers, the Sonoma County Fair also celebrates our local writers. On Saturday, August 9,1:00 p.m., you can hear poets read their original poems entered into the Sonoma County Fair competition. The reading will be held in the E.C. Craft Building at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. For more about this and other Poet Laureate News, check out Dave Seter’s page of the Literary Update: https://socolitupdate.com/poet-laureates-news/.

Brenda Hillman and Norma Cole at NBLA
On Saturday, August 9, 4:00-5:30 p.m. North Bay Letterpress Arts presents an Evening of Poetry with Brenda Hillman and Norma Cole. FREE and open to the public. Light refreshments and fantastic poetry served in equal measure. Handset letterpress broadsides of work by the poets will be printed for the occasion and available with a donation to NBLA (925D Gravenstein Hwy., Sebastopol.). Details: northbayletterpressarts.org/upcoming-events-1

Marin Poetry Center’s Traveling Show
Here’s the August line-up of the Marin Poetry Center’s annual Traveling Show:

August 2nd, 2-3 PM, Fairfax Library
Host: Francesca Bell
Readers: Albert Flynn DeSilver, Janet Jennings, Barbara Swift Brauer, Kate Peper, Ann Robinson, Cathy Shea

August 9th, 2-3 PM, Larkspur Library
Host: Simona Carini
Readers: Judy Crowe, Richard Flout, Marie Henry, Rafaella del Bourgo, Lynn Ireland, Janis Rader

August 16th, 2-3 PM, Stinson Beach Public Library
Host: Sandra Cross
Readers: Donna Emerson, Dotty LeMieux, Kathleen McClung, Sharon Sittloh, Karen Marker, Sandy White

August 23rd, 2-3 PM, Berkeley Public Library – South Branch
Host: David Booth
Readers: Susan Cohen, Jeanne Wagner, D L Lang, Gabrielle Rille, Laurel Feigenbaum, Angelika Quirk

August 24th, 3-4 PM, Mill Valley Public Library
Host: Jayne McPherson
Readers: Laurel Benjamin, Rebekah Wolman, Barry Peterson, Sian Killingsworth, Linda Michel-Cassidy, Tobey Hiller

Sixteen Rivers Presents a Reading and Conversation with 2025 Authors


Please join us for a reading and conversation with poets Patrick Cahill and Moira Magneson, and translators Nancy J. Morales and Terry Ehret, presenting poems in Spanish and English by Ulalume González de León. The free event is on Saturday, August 23, 2025, 3-5 PM, hosted by Sixteen Rivers and Northbrae Community Church. Location: 941 The Alameda, Berkeley, CA 94707.

Petaluma Poetry Walk and Magazine Coming Soon!
(feature by Kary Hess)

The Petaluma Poetry Walk is less than two months away—and in other big news, (drum roll) this year, we have added an annual magazine!

What’s in it?
First of all, our cover art is by Ellen Kombiyil, co-winner with Julie Marie Wade of the Geri Digiorno Multi-Genre Prize. The prize is awarded every two years by Raleigh Review magazine out of Raleigh, North Carolina in honor of our event’s founder Geri Digiorno.

This collectible first edition of the magazine includes a poem from each of the 26 poets reading this year at The Petaluma Poetry Walk, along with poetry-related articles (and photos from last years event!) While we will still have our usual trifold walk guide at the event that tells who is reading where, there will also be a walk guide in the back of the magazine.

When and where can I get it?
The magazine will be available for sale as a fundraiser on our website before and after the event and at the Poetry Walk, where you’ll have the chance to have your favorite poets sign it! I’ll keep you posted as to when it’s available!

How else can I support?
Everything is going to print soon so if you’d like to join our poetry walk sponsors, let me know by August 1, so I can include your name in the walk guide and magazine. Any sponsors added after that will be included on the website only.

Looking forward and see you soon!

Kary

Poetry Walk website: https://petalumapoetrywalk.org/about-2/

Poetry Walk 2025 Schedule: https://petalumapoetrywalk.substack.com/p/the-2025-petaluma-poetry-walk-schedule

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Poem for August
This month’s literary feature is a poem by LynneAnne Forest, which captures the feeling of mornings in coastal Sonoma and reminds me of the summers I taught writing workshops at Wellspring, a retreat center on the Navarro River. I’d wake each foggy morning to the cooing of mourning doves, and lie half-awake, thinking to myself “First, do no harm,” my Hypocratic oath as a teacher.” “[W]hat wants to be/ first grows in darkness,” the poet writes. May it be so for us all.

If you have a poem or short prose piece you’d like me to consider for a future Literary Update post, scroll down to the end of this post where you’ll find the submission guidelines. They’re very simple, and all are welcome.

Sonoma Weekend
by LynneAnne Forest

Valley hills bake a heated welcome,
soft cat echoes ecstatic purrs,
ears of kangaroo hare watch
while blue jays screech questionings.

Near rustling oak and maple,
newly watered, bright pink flowers,
lies reality, possibility;
they too welcome, watch, inquire.

Ember burned memories glow in fire,
winter chill gray of second day.
Silent space waits expectantly
for encountered knowing.

Furred meow leaps to glass
watching small bird becoming.
It chirps and flits from branch to branch
from past to now, to what may be.

Cat stretches now on hearth place rug,
content completion in all her moves.
I sit and rock and move unhurriedly
from past to now, to that in need of me.

Gray then moves from muted tones
to darkness of the night.
An owl is heard in search and hunt,
while fire’s coal goes cold.

What wills, what needs, what wants to be,
first grows in darkness, thrusts through pain
and then becomes, through choiceful acts
in times like these.

 

LynneAnne Forest is 83 years old and a retired psychotherapist. She has written poetry over the years but never pursued submitting them for publication. Just before the pandemic, she decided to honor what she wrote and began to take ZOOM workshops with Nicole Zimmerman, Ellen Bass and Danusha Lameris. Her first publication was her poem, “The Ark,” with Yellow Arrow Journal in their Fall 2020 issue.

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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