Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear Literary Folk,

September’s highlight is the Petaluma Poetry Walk, of course, and we are featuring this annual movable feast of poetry and music. But there are other readings, special events, and workshops I will be focusing on briefly, and I hope you have room in your calendar to catch a few of these.

Rivertown Poets Features Sixteen Rivers 2025 Authors
Join the 2025 Sixteen Rivers poets for a Labor Day Zoom reading and open mic.

Monday, September 1, 6:15 p.m.
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/i/6508887879
Passcode: 2241991

Iris Jamahl Dunkle Nominated for Northern California Book Award
Saturday, September 6, 2:00 p.m. 44th Annual Northern California Book Awards for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s literature and translation. Free. At Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin Street, Civic Center, San Francisco. The 2025 Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement will be presented to Rebecca Solnit. More info and list of nominees: poetryflash.org/programs/?p=ncba_2025

Several Sonoma County and North Bay writers have been nominated this year including former Sonoma County Poet Laureate Iris Jamahl Dunkle for her groundbreaking biography of Sanora Babb, Riding Like the Wind. This is such a highlight of the literary year. Kudos to all the nominees and thanks to Poetry Flash for their sponsorship of this important awards series.

“Watershed Moment” Exhibit at the Laguna Foundation
On Saturday, September 6, 3:00–5:00 p.m. Join North Bay Letterpress Arts and the Laguna Foundation for the opening of Watershed Moment, a stunning new exhibit featuring original works by the printers at North Bay Letterpress Arts—some in collaboration with poets—this show celebrates the unique beauty of the Laguna de Santa Rosa through the connection of language, image, and place. Free, light refreshments. Details: opening-reception-for-watershed-moment-by-north-bay-letterpress-arts

Petaluma Poetry Walk 2025
Sunday, September 21, 11:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. The Petaluma Poetry Walk, curated by Kary Hess,  is a FREE, day-long celebration of live readings that bring together poetry and community, featuring 26 poets sharing their work across eight local venues. The event begins at the Hotel Petaluma Ballroom, then continues at seven other nearby downtown event locations, including Keller Street CoWork, the Phoenix Theater, The Big Easy, Copperfield’s Books, Usher Gallery, the Petaluma Historical Library & Museum, and Aqus Café. Among this year’s poets are Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux; Berkeley Poetry Festival’s 2024 LifeTime Achievement Award Winner, Tureeda Mikell; current Sonoma County Poet Laureate Dave Seter; former Sonoma County Poet Laureate Terry Ehret; and Anaya Ertz and Lisa Zheng, the current Marin and Sonoma Youth Poets Laureate. Plus look out for Petaluma Poetry Walk Magazine, which will make its debut at this year’s event. Details at: petalumapoetrywalk.org

Round Table Discussion of Marianne Moore at The Sitting Room
Saturday, September 27, 2:00-4:00 p.m. Dave Seter will lead a Sitting Room Round Table Discussion on the topic of: The Poetry of Marianne Moore: Just Fiddle or Genuine? Join us for a discussion on Moore, including her poems “Poetry” and “An Octopus” (copies will be provided). Bring your own favorite poems by Moore, or poems of hers you find challenging. Come offer your views on what is just “fiddle” in the greater world of poetry, and what is “genuine.” Round table held at The Sitting Room in Cotati. Registration required. Details at: sittingroomlibrary.org/events

Sixteen Rivers Press Fall Fundraiser and 26th-Anniversary Celebration
While you have your calendars handy, mark yours for Sunday, October 19. That’s the date for Sixteen Rivers Press’s annual fall fundraiser. This year our guest poets are D.A. Powell and Kim Addonizio. You can find out more at the EventBrite link:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sixteen-rivers-fall-fundraiser-and-26th-anniversary-celebration-registration

You can also use this link to register (the event is free) and/or make a donation to help us continue to recognize the diverse voices of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Newest Members of Sixteen Rivers Press
Sixteen Rivers is pleased to welcome to our shared-work poetry publishing collective two poets from Sonoma County and Marin: Greg Mahrer and Janet Jennings. Their books will come out in April 2027.

Gregory Mahrer’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The New England Review, The Indiana Review, Green Mountains Review, Volt, Colorado Review and elsewhere. In 2014 his poem, Refrain, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received a special mention.  His new collection, A Provisional Map of the Lost Continent, won the POL prize from Fordham University Press and is due to be published in the Spring of 2016.

He lives and works in rural Northern California and Baja California Sur, Mexico.

Janet Jennings grew up in a Midwestern chocolate-making family. In her teens she worked summers at the factory, amidst the smell of roasting cocoa beans, where she packed twenty-five pound boxes of chocolate drops and learned to drive a forklift. This experience proved surprisingly useful when she started Sunspire Natural Foods, which she ran for twenty years until other interests called.

Her poems and flash fiction have appeared in 32 Poems, Baltimore Review, Nimrod, the Sixteen Rivers anthology America, We Call Your Name, and elsewhere. She is the author of Traces in Water, and lives with her husband and twin daughters in San Anselmo, California.

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Poem for September
This month’s poem, “No Appetite,” by Sebastopol poet Raphael Block, responds to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

If you have a poem of 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.

No Appetite

By Raphael Block

I sit in pain
for the people of Gaza.
It has been so for days—
no appetite while they starve.

A whirring of wings
and there it is! An Anna’s
flitting back and forth
in front of my face, high-pitched, chirping,
You pray for a miracle,
well, here I am!

Can I grasp a hummingbird—
its beauty, its grace,
its flashes of green and red?

Can I fathom this genocide—
its horror, its darkness,
played in slow motion before our eyes?

Or, those I elect
who aid and abet
this holocaust nightmare?
I, a Jew, born in Israel

pray, protest,
howl, and pray,
while the Earth weeps
for her children.

Raphael Block has lived on three continents and resides happily in Northern California. A long-time meditator, he breathes in wonder at Earth’s and our own rhythmic ebb and flow. He is the author of five poetry books, most recently, The Dreams We Share, and produces a monthly Earth-Love Newsletter. To learn more about Raphael, please visit his website, raphaelblock.com, where you can listen to three audiobooks and watch a National Geographic-selected, five-minute documentary.

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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