Sonoma County Literary Update

Dear literary folk,

Happy New Year to you all! What a gift it is to be part of this amazing literary community!

Sonoma County Literary Update Is Looking for Volunteers
For 20 years, the Literary Update has brought you news of the literary events in Sonoma County and beyond. It started as one of my poet laureate projects during my 2004-2006 term and has continued primarily thanks to the web know-how and diligent effort of my co-editor Jo-Anne Rosen. Jo-Anne is ready to hand over some of the WordPress-related and/or update researching tasks, and so we are looking for one or more volunteers who, with some training, could take on these tasks. Please consider this, as it would be a great loss to all of us if the Literary Update were to close its metaphoric doors. If you think you might be able to help, contact Jo-Anne at editor@socolitupdate.com

New Year’s Poetry Brunch Revival for 2027
For many years, my husband Don and I hosted a New Year’s poetry pot-luck brunch on the first day of the year. Those who came brought a dish to share and a poem or a song (their own or someone else’s) to launch the new year. Even in the darkest of times, the gathering was an uplifting experience, if for no other reason than our shared voices gave us hope. Covid made gatherings like this impractical and unhealthy, but we have missed the comradery. At first, we thought we could try a Summer Solstice outdoor poetry brunch, and that might have been lovely, but fewer folk were around in the summer, and the vibe just wasn’t the same. Perhaps some of you have picked up the tradition and started hosting new year’s poetry brunches of your own. I certainly hope you have! Don and I are considering recreating this tradition, and we’ll let you know if it comes together for 2027.

Upcoming Events
Monday, January 5, 6:00 p.m. Rivertown Poets Zoom meeting with featured readers Rebecca Faust and Jeanne Wagner. Followed by open mic. We ask that you bring one poem of less than three minutes to share so that we can include everyone who would like to read. If you’d like to join the reading list, please send an email to rivertownpoet@gmail.com. Join Zoom meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/6508887879. Passcode: 2241991

Tuesday, January 13, 5:00-7:00 p.m. Poetry Salon Happy Hour at Barrel Proof Lounge, 501 Mendocino Avenue, Santa Rosa. Raise a glass to the Power of Words! Fabulous Featured readers include: Jean Hegland, Ken Rodgers, Guy Biederman, and Betty Rodgers. Happy Hour starts at 4 p.m. with $6 beers & $2 off wine. Free popcorn! Start the new year off right with community, music and poetry! Email Timothy Williams, jaxonspress@gmail.com for more information.

Wednesday, January 14, 7:30 p.m. Dave Pokorny presents West Side Stories: Every month there is a theme, hopefully that sparks a memory for you. You put your name in a hat and 10 people’s names are drawn at random. When your name is pulled you get 5 minutes to tell your personal true story. At the end of the evening, everyone votes by text for their favorite story of the night. The winner gets $50. January’s theme is “First Things First.” Details and ticket ($21.50) purchase: davepokornypresents.com/west-side-stories

Saturday, January 17, 11:00 a.m. Redwood Writers Club presents Shelley Blanton-Stroud on The Messy Intersection of Fact and Fiction: Navigating the Challenges of Writing a Novel based on History. She will talk about the challenges and opportunities based on writing historical fiction. How much does your fiction “have” to adhere accurately to history? What happens, good and bad, when you diverge? At the Finley Center, Santa Rosa. Details: redwoodwriters.org/shelley-blanton-stroud-the-messy-intersection-of-fact-and-fiction/

Join Dave Seter for a Workshop on Petaluma History
If you think you know Petaluma history, then come prepared to be surprised as we write poems from new perspectives. Join Sonoma County Poet Laureate Dave Seter for this special one of a kind workshop. Executive Director Stacey Atchley will provide an insider’s tour of the museum, inviting us to see into the windows of the past. We will then each select one or more artifacts or stories that may have been forgotten but are waiting to be discovered and shared. We will ask ourselves what we have learned from our past as we write poems or short prose pieces about the artifacts or stories we have chosen. No previous experience writing poetry is necessary. All are welcome. Register through the link provided. Please notify us if you need special accommodation (handicapped access to the museum, et cetera).

The event will take place from 5:30 PM to :730 PM. Here’s how the evening will unfold.

We will gather and begin by sharing a little bit about ourselves, including our interest in the evening’s topic. We will then be given a guided tour of the museum by Executive Director Stacey Atchley. During the tour, participants will take note of one or two stories, or artifacts, that interest them. Following the guided tour, participants will disperse and take notes about and/or photos of the stories or objects that interest them. We will then retreat as a group to a writing space to begin working on our poems or short prose pieces. In the final half hour of the event, each participant will have two to three minutes to share with the group what they wrote about.

All levels of ability are welcome. The workshop is free of charge and spaces are limited, please reserve a free ticket now to ensure a place in the program. Please notify us if you need special accommodation (handicapped access to the museum, et cetera).

Register here: eventbrite.com/e/dusty-artifact-or-window-into-the-past

Terry Ehret Guest Headliner for Poetic License
Join Poetic License on Tuesday, January 27, 7:00-8:00 p.m. for their first quarterly Zoom readings 2026 with guest headliner Terry Ehret, who has published four collections of poetry, most recently Night Sky Journey, and three bilingual volumes of the poems of Mexican poet Ulalume González de León. She is a co-founder of Sixteen Rivers Press and poet laureate emerita of Sonoma County. PLS poets include Steve Trenam, Jaime Zukowski, Judith Vaughn, Leo McCloskey, Kusum Jain, Susanne Arrhenius, Joseph Cutler, and Joan Osterman. The theme this month is Doubt. Zoom link: santarosa-edu.zoom.us/j/85623008113

Rumi’s Caravan returns to the Sebastopol Center for the Arts
On Saturday, February 7, 2026, Rumi’s Caravan will be performing at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. For those of you who don’t know Rumi’s Caravan, it is a Northern California-based performance group that revives the oral tradition of ecstatic poetry, featuring unscripted, improvised poetic conversations with music, inspired by mystics like Rumi’s and Hafiz. For more than twenty years, their goal has been to restore the “Soul of the World” through poetry, build community, and raise funds for local non-profits.

Tickets are available here: sebarts.org/classes-lectures/rumis-caravan-2026

Sixteen Rivers Call for Manuscripts
Sixteen Rivers Press Poetry Collective invites Northern California authors to submit book-length poetry manuscripts between November 1, 2025 and February 1, 2026. Sixteen Rivers values diversity. We encourage poets of color, young poets, and LGBTQ poets to submit. 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 2026. Selected manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in spring 2028.

Online Submissions: Send an e-mail to submissions@sixteenrivers.org with your name, address, phone number, and the name of your manuscript. Attach a PDF of your manuscript to the e-mail address (name the PDF with the title of your manuscript). In the body of the e-mail, please include a personal statement (350 to 500 words) about why you want to work in a publishing collective, including any special experience or skills you might contribute, and tell us where you heard about our press and our call for submissions. The manuscript must be e-mailed no later than February 1, 2026. Note: We do not accept hard-copy manuscripts sent by US mail.

Please do not include your name anywhere in your manuscript, as it is important that your manuscript be a blind submission. The manuscript must be single-spaced and between 60 and 90 pages. Manuscripts must be previously unpublished, although individual poems may have been published online or in print. The manuscript should include a title page without the author’s name and address, a table of contents, and an acknowledgments page listing previous publications of the poems.

Youth Poetry Chapbooks
For several years now, Sixteen Rivers has been expanding our publishing range, working with youth poets locally and nation-wide in poetry workshops, often coordinated with their teachers in high school and middle school. From these projects have come five youth poetry chapbooks: Anthems, In Our Own Light, Dear Earth, Waking Up, and most recently To the Human Race. If you’re interested in purchasing any of these amazing collections of youth voices, you can find them at the Sixteen Rivers Website: sixteenrivers.org. If our online bookstore indicates the chapbook is sold out, contact me at terryehret@sixteenrivers.org. I may still have some available in stock.

If you are a teacher interested in working with Sixteen Rivers, please contact Murray Silverstein at murraysilverstein@sixteenrivers.org.

To the Human Race: Hope River 3, Poems from Young Teens
Selected by Sixteen Rivers Press and Davis Poet Laureate Emerita Julia B. Levine

Waking Up: Teen Poets Respond to America, We Call Your Name
Selected by Simon Ellefson, Sylvi Kayser, and Dina Lusztig Noyes

Are You Listed in Our Directory of Writers?
One of the reasons I started the Sonoma County Literary Update was to help writers in our community find each other. Towards this purpose, the Literary Update includes a directory of Sonoma County Writers. Check it out at socolitupdate.com/directory-of-writers/.

I’ve had my listing posted for years, but when I checked it recently, I realized some of the information is out of date (like a landline phone number I haven’t used in quite a while. If you are already listed, it may be time to update your profile with a new photo or contact information, list of publications—whatever you’d like people to know about your writing.

If you are interested in being listed, e-mail the material you would like included: e.g., photo (jpg), a one-paragraph bio with web and/or blog links, and contact information. (Do not ask us to assemble material from your website. The bio is your responsibility.) E-mail to sonomacountyliteraryupdate@gmail.com.

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections
Two years ago, 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). Be patient, as I sometimes have a backlog of poems I’ve selected to publish.

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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Poem for the New Year
I didn’t receive a poem from the Sonoma County Literary Community for the new year, so I’m including here one of my favorites from seventy-eight years ago: “Year’s End,” by Richard Wilbur.

Year’s End

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

Copyright Credit: Richard Wilbur, “Year’s End” from Ceremony and Other Poems by Richard Wilbur. Copyright © 1948, 1949,1950 by Richard Wilbur. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: Ceremony and Other Poems (HarperCollins Publishers, 1950)

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Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor