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.
____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

Dear Literary Folk,

Lately lines from two poems have been much on my mind. The first, familiar to you all, is the opening of “The Second Coming,” by W.B. Yeats:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. . . .”

The second set of lines comes from the closing of “Jet,” by Tony Hoagland:

“We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.”

These quotes in particular capture the angst and anger and despair of what daily we are losing to a sordid power that aims to rob us of decency, humanity, and hope. It makes me want to devote this Literary Update post to celebrating the creativity that brings us together and the hope and gratitude it can engender.

On a personal note, I have something grand to celebrate. I have just recently returned from two months in Colorado. If you followed my May post, you know that I flew there in April to help out with the arrival of new granddaughter Rosalie, born on May 6, 2025. She was born with a heart defect, one that’s not uncommon for babies with trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome), and with that come some health challenges that have kept her in the neonatal ICU. A few of you have written to Jo-Anne and me wondering about the baby, so here she is. Though she is slowly making progress, there’s a good chance she’ll remain in NICU until she’s strong enough to undergo the surgery needed to correct the defect. Sending a huge thank you to all you NICU nurses, doctors, and staff who care for the most fragile of babies with an astonishing empathy and expertise. We are in your debt!

_____

Literary Birthdays and Anniversaries

Rivertown Poets and Aqus Café have been an integral meeting place for the creative community of Petaluma and Sonoma County. On Monday, June 2, 6:15 pm. Rivertown Poets celebrates its 12th anniversary. There will be three featured readers—Christina Lloyd, Murray Silverstein, and Alice Templeton—presenting from their 2024 publications from Sixteen Rivers Press. The featured readings will be followed by open mic. Sign up early to get a 3-minute slot. Sande Anfang will be back in town for this reading! Location: Aqus Café, 189 H Street, Petaluma. Questions? Contact: rivertownpoet@gmail.com

On Saturday, June 7, 2:00 pm, the Sitting Room Library celebrates its 44^th birthday with its annual garden party featuring lively conversation and local authors.

For over 25 years, the Sitting Room has been my home for writing, reading, and leading poetry and prose poem workshops on a wide range of authors and themes. Here I came to know so many talented writers, and even found a haven for translating the enigmatic poems of Ulalume González de León.

If you haven’t yet discovered this Sonoma County jewel, here are just some of what the Sitting Room has to offer:

• Books aplenty by and about women, LITERATURE, ART, POETRY, ESSAYS, WORLD LIT and oh heck, lots else.
• The underutilized treasure of the ARCHIVES, with files that vary from the slender to the overflowing on women writers from A to Z,
• An oddly fascinating — and beautifully organized — collection of OBITS of women, local and farnwide as well as from the Overlooked series in the NYTimes
• Ever changing exhibits which vividly spotlight strong points of the SR collections
• Space just to do your own too long postponed work + of course, coffee/tea/and wifi

Come join us in the Sitting Room garden on June 7! Copies of the Sitting Room’s latest anthology, WORK, will be available along with past issues, samplers, free books, and all sorts of lovely “merch.” Questions? Call 707 795-9028. At 2025 Curtis Drive, Penngrove. Or visit the website: sittingroomlibrary.org

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June Readings and Workshops

On Monday, June 16 at 6 pm, Napa Bookmine hosts a reading by Sixteen Rivers’ 2025 authors, Moira Magneson, author of In the Eye of the Elephant, and Patrick Cahill, author of If We Are the Forest the Animals Dream. Moira and Patrick will be joined by translators Nancy J. Morales and Terry Ehret, reading from the third and final volume of Plagios/Plagiarisms, by Mexican poet Ulalume González de Leόn.

Many thanks to Kary Hess, whose feature article in the May 28th edition of the North Bay Bohemian tells the story of this translation project as it has evolved, culminating in Plagios Volume Three. https://bohemian.com/a-trilogy-in-verse-plagios-volume-iii-released-by-local-translators/

Besides being a free-lance journalist, Kary is also a poet, visual artist, and the current acting director of the Petaluma Poetry Walk. Scroll down to the end of the post to read a poem from Hess’s recent collection of poems, 1912.

Café Frida Poetry Festival on Sunday, June 29, 1:00–3:00 pm, hosted by Gwynn O’Gara, will feature Jack Crimmins, Lisa Shulman, Dave Holt, Melissa Eleftherion, John Duran, Briahn Kelly-Brennan, Audrey Meshulam reading from Phyllis Meshulam’s new book, and Timothy Williams.

This will also be an occasion to celebrate the launch of Sonoma County Poet Laureate Emerita Phyllis Meshulam’s book Re-Creations. Many of you know that Phyllis is living with a degenerative neurological disease, so her poems will be read by her daughter Audrey Meshulam.

Café Frida is located at 300 South A Street, Santa Rosa.

Looking to generate new work this month? Check the calendar of events and the workshop page for a full list of what’s coming up this month. Here are a few of the many opportunities.

On Tuesday, June 17, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 pm writing prompt coach Christina Evans leads the first of two generative writing groups. See Workshops page for details.

On six Wednesdays beginning June 25, 1:00-3:00 pm, Clara Rosemarda leads a series of online creative writing and meditation workshops called TRANSITIONS: Finding Your New Narrative for Healing. Details on Workshops page. Contact Clara Rosemarda: 707-567-7117 or rosen@sonic.net.

And on Sunday, June 29, 10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. Occidental Center for the Arts hosts author and writing guide Susan Hagen for an all-day workshop: Write Your Life Stories: A Women’s Writing Circle. Beginning, experienced, and exploring writers are all welcome. For details, see Workshops.

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Two Poems for June

Though technically summer doesn’t start till June 21, our hills have put on their summer gold, and the clock’s leap and earth’s tilt offer us generous evenings of lengthening light. This month I’ve picked two poems that embrace summer in similar ways. The first poem, by Kary Hess, celebrates a familiar haunt for Petaluma folk, as well as the moments from our youth that are transformational without our quite knowing it. It reminded me of “Jet,” by Tony Hoagland, which I quoted at the opening of this post. I’ve included Hoagland’s poem, too.

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.

_____

The Apple Box Café, Petaluma
by Kary Hess

We carry our coffee outside
to sit at a table, speaking French
when a train goes by.

The sound drowns out our speech for a minute
as the grinding metal cars glide over the trestle
built along the waterfront in 1922.

It used to be grain
and eggs here,
transported out of town
to San Francisco
before the Golden Gate.

Now this trestle hosts cups of pour-over coffee
(before anyone did pour-over coffee).

I am always shocked that I can sit
inches away from an active train
and drink a latte.

But it’s the 1990s
and we are all in our twenties
and we don’t even realize how happy we are.

from: 1912: Poems of Time, Place & Memory by Kary Hess. Published by FMRL 2022

Kary Hess, MFA, is a writer, editor, artist, and literary event producer, shaping stories for media, leading women’s writing workshops, and creating her own work, which explores themes of “place” and how it contours our experience. Currently, she’s the editor of Made Local Magazine, and a regular contributor to alternative newsweeklies The North Bay Bohemian, The Marin Pacific Sun, and North Bay Magazine. Her book 1912: Poems of Time, Place and Memory was published by FMRL Press in April 2022 and she currently produces the Petaluma Poetry Walk, an annual all-day poetry festival in downtown Petaluma, CA. As an artist, she’s produced and designed two feature films, created the SparkTarot® Deck + Guidebook, and collaborated on multiple conceptual art installations in the Bay Area.

_____

Jet
by Tony Hoagland

Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,

and it is good, a way of letting life
out of the box, uncapping the bottle
to let the effervescence gush
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.

And now the crickets plug in their appliances
in unison, and then the fireflies flash
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex
someone is telling in the dark, though

no one really hears. We gaze into the night
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet
we once came from,
to which we will never
be permitted to return.
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.

from Donkey Gospel, published by Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1998.
© Copyright by Tony Hoagland.

_____

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.

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

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.

________

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.

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

Dear Literary Folk,

Greetings from LA where I’ve spent four days at the annual gathering of the writing tribes known as AWP. Sonoma County was well represented there, not only by our authors, but also by our culinary products, like Cowgirl Creamy cheeses, Sonoma wines, Lagunitas beers, all prominently featured at every restaurant I ventured into.

It is always fun to hang out at the book fair (600+ vendors), meeting up with old friends and getting to know new acquaintances from all over the country. I found some panels and readings that intrigued me, too, on topics like translation, writing about aging, silence, and addressing climate/ecology issues. Keynote speaker was Roxane Gay, whom I wasn’t familiar with prior to this conference.

A child of Haitian immigrants, Gay hails from Omaha, Nebraska. She gained widespread acclaim in 2014 for her book Bad Feminist, a collection of essays that reflect on her personal experiences, pop culture, and social issues. Gay writes with wit and empathy, which has earned her a devoted fan base. She has also published works of fiction and memoir, served as an editor for various literary journals, and written an opinion column for The New York Times. But perhaps the reason for Gay’s appeal to the younger writers at this conference is that in July 2016, Gay and poet Yona Harvey were announced as writers for Marvel Comics’ World of Wakanda, a spin-off from the company’s Black Panther title, making them the first black women to be lead writers for Marvel.

She is a literary hero to many, and a powerhouse writer who engaged us all as writers and as citizens in dire times. “The pen is not mightier than the sword,” she said. The pen IS the sword.”

When I wasn’t at the conference and book fair, my daughter, who lives in Burbank, introduced me to some of the downtown sites, like Grand Central Market and a used bookstore called The Last Bookstore, which was a fabulous place to pass a few hours: three floors of books of every genre, each with its own theatrical decor: life-size mammoth, Egyptian sarcophagus, bird cage with a raven and skull. Part of the LA vibe is the theatricality of the place.

Another off-site outing was to a literary-themed pub called Catcher in the Rye where Sixteen Rivers held a book launch for our 2025 publications, as well as an open mic for all our friends and guests, such as Santa Rosa poet Jodi Hottel, pictured here.

One of the highlights of the conference for me was the tribute to poet and teacher Brenda Hillman. In my conference notes, I jotted down this Hillman quote: “To live in metaphor is to be eternally hopeful.”  I’m not sure I know what this means, but I feel its truth. Metaphor is the engine of creative thought, the acknowledgment of multiplicity of realities, which may be what we have in English in place of the subjunctive.  How else to speak of what isn’t, but might be? Hope nestles in that “might be.” And we are surely in need of hope right now. 

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International Day of Protest

Throughout the conference, I repeatedly heard talk of a grassroots international day of protest scheduled for Saturday, April 5, 2025. Here’s what I know:

“Tens of thousands of people in the United States and around the world are preparing to take to the streets on Saturday, April 5, in what organizers are calling the largest single day of protest since Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term. With more than 600 events planned across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and multiple international cities, the message is unified and urgent: Hands off our rights, our resources, and our democracy.” (https://thetimesweekly.com/2025/03/global-protests-on-april-5-cities-unite-against-trump-and-musk/)

Keep your eyes and ears open for word of local gatherings and join them if you are able.

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Phyllis Meshulam’s New Book (Re)Creations

Congratulations to Sonoma County Poet Laureate Emerita Phyllis Meshulam on her new book (Re)Creations. The poems in (Re)Creations reframe and reclaim women and the Earth in response to texts like E.O. Wilson’s, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, and our heritage of cultural traditions and sacred myths.

“This book offers what is most needed – a deep, personal and challenging journey into Humanity and its visions, lives, questions, and wonders. An incredible accomplishment, a visionary span, a warm-hearted dedication to all life.”
–Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate emeritus

To order your copy: send an email to jerrym@sonic.net, $28 ($23 + $5 shipping)\

Kelsay Books, February 2025, 104 pp.
ISBN #978-1-63980-680-5

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Sixteen Rivers Book Launches in April

April is National Poetry month, and it comes with a flurry of book launches and readings. Here is the information about the Sixteen Rivers North Bay and East Bay book launches. Hope you can join us for one or more of these! Others are listed on the calendar page.

(I realize that the Saturday reading coincides with the national day of protest, but I promise you, we will be making our voices heard through our poems.)

Saturday April 5 at 1 pm
North Bay Book Launch
Readers: Moira Magneson, Patrick Cahill, Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong, Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales
Location: Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera

Sunday April 6 at 3 pm
Poetry Flash East Bay Book Launch
Readers: Moira Magneson, Patrick Cahill, Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong, Terry Ehret, and Nancy J. Morales
Location: Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave Berkeley

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Here’s a Quick Sampler of What’s in the April Calendar

Uncovering Sonoma County’s History Through Poetry
This is a free workshop with Poet Laureate Dave Seter at the Sonoma County History and Genealogical Library in Santa Rosa on Saturday, April 5, 1:00-3:00 p.m. Learn about documentary poetry, Sonoma County historical topics of interest including past and ongoing injustices, and how to utilize the resources available at the library to make your poems about Sonoma County history impactful. Details and registration: events.sonomalibrary.org/event/placeholder-history-poetry-workshop-dave-seter-73125

Sitting Room Celebrates Black Women Writers
Also on Saturday, April 5, 2:00-4:00 p.m. the Sitting Room Library will host a presentation for National Poetry Month: Conjuring the Past, Speaking to the Present, Celebrating Black Women Writers. Presenters will be Kim Hester Williams & Barbara Beatie. Limit 8. RSVP to JoAnn Borri: joannborri@gmail.com.

Rivertown Voices Presents Two Sonoma County Poets
Rivertown Poets presents a live reading at the Aqus Café on Monday, April 7, 6:15 p.m. The features are Larry Robinson and Fran Carbonaro. Open mic follows the features. Sign up at the cafe. Come early for good seats and dinner. The cafe is located at 189 H Street in downtown Petaluma.

Check out the Calendar page for more events, workshops, and readings.

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2025 Writers Conferences Accepting Applications

Napa Valley Writers’ Conference — July 20-25, 2025
Applications are now open for the 44th Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, napawritersconference.org. The admissions deadline for all applications, including requests for financial assistance, is April 21.

Mendocino Coast Writers Conference — July 31-August 2, 2025
General Registration is now open for our in-person conference taking place from July 31-August 2, 2025 in Mendocino. Reserve your spot in April and save on the conference fee! Registration is open until June 30, 2025. Learn more here.

All conference registrants are encouraged to submit to our writing contest which will be open for submissions until June 30, 2025. There is no entry fee. However, the contest is only open to registered participants of the full three-day conference. Winners will have the opportunity to read their work at the conference, receive credit to the conference bookstore, and winning entries are considered for publication in Noyo Review

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Poem for April

I have been featuring poems by Sonoma County writers each month, but this month, I wanted to offer a poem of resistance and hope. This one is by Tomas Transtromer, and was featured in the anthology America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2017, in response to the first Trump administration. The poems in this collection are profoundly relevant to our times. You can purchase a copy through our website, using this link: https://shop.sixteenrivers.org/products/america-we-call-your-name-poems-of-resistance-and-resilience

If you have a poem or short prose piece for our next or upcoming Literary Update posts, please scroll down for the submission guidelines.

_____

Allegro

by Tomas Tranströmer
translated by Ingar Palmlund

I play Haydn after a dark day
and sense an honest warmth in my hands.

The keys are willing. Mild hammers strike.
The tone is green, lively and still.

The tone says that freedom exists
and that someone does not pay the emperor tribute.

I push the hands deep into my haydnpockets,
mimicking one who quietly watches the world.

I raise the haydnflag — this means:
“We do not surrender. But want peace.”

The music is a glasshouse on the slope
where stones fly, stones roll.

And the stones roll right through
but each pane remains whole.

Original poem

Jag spelar Haydn efter en svart dag
och känner en enkel värme i händerna.

Tangenterna vill. Milda hammare slår.
Klangen är grön, livlig och stilla.

Klangen säger att friheten finns
och att någon inte ger kejsaren skatt.

Jag kör ner händerna i mina haydnfickor
och härmar en som ser lugnt på världen.

Jag hissar haydnflaggan — det betyder:
“Vi ger oss inte. Men vill fred.”

Musiken är ett glashus på sluttningen
där stenarna flyger, stenarna rullar.

Och stenarna rullar tvärs igenom
men varje ruta förblir hel.

From Den halvfärdiga himlen, Bonniers 1962
Copyright © Tomas Tranströmer 1962

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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.

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

March 1, 2025

Dear Literary Folk,

Uneasy times, to say the least. At moments like this, writing the monthly post feels like fiddling while Rome is burning. How can the literary goings-on in Sonoma County compare to the monumental civil crisis we are in, when our freedoms, self-definitions, civil respect and decency, not to mention the fate of democracy and our planet are all under threat?

And yet, many I have spoken with in our literary community the past few months have found a way to resist, and in that resistance is some sense of creative empowerment, or at least the potential for reclaiming of voice. We can share with each other what helps us face the world we wake up to each day with, if not hope, at least some clarity of vision. Here are some actions, all small in scale, that I’ve engaged in over the last few weeks.

• My husband and I read out loud to each other Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny, published in 2017, during the first Trump administration, but even more chillingly applicable to what we are witnessing today. Snyder is a professor of 20^th century history, with a focus on totalitarian, authoritative, fascist regimes. Each short lesson presents a characteristic of tyrannical systems and their leaders, and what ordinary folk can do to resist.
• I’ve donated small amounts to support those whose writing on social media helps clarify my understanding and vision (e.g. Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Reich).
• I’ve stopped ordering or doing business with companies that financially supported Trump’s campaign or Project 2025, and refrained from any shopping on February 28, 2024 to join the national boycott.
• I went onto GoogleMaps and reported an error: the Gulf of Mexico was misnamed Gulf of America.
• I streamed Congressman Jared Huffman’s town hall meeting and felt encouraged by his willingness to call a coup a coup, and a constitutional crisis a crisis. It was good to hear so many other members of the community voicing their calls for opposition by our representatives.
• I took Iris Dunkle’s workshop “Empowering Your Voice Through Multimedia Erasure” and set to work on recent Executive Orders that seemed to me in need to erasing. Sonoma County poet Margie Stein recently tried her hand at this, too, and you can read her erasure of Executive Order 14168 at the end of this post.

As I wrote last December, I encourage you all to write into the uncertainty, and if you are so inclined, please consider sending your work, prose or poetry, to me for possible inclusion an upcoming Literary Update. You’ll find submission guidelines at the end of this post.

_____

Toss Repeat Wins 2024 James Tate Prize

Congratulations to John Johnson on publication of his chapbook Toss Repeat. The publisher is SurVision Books in Ireland. Toss Repeat is one of the winners of the 2024 James Tate Prize. Use this link for more information about SurVision Books and/or to order John’s chapbook:
https://www.survisionmagazine.com/jamestateprizewinners.htm

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Spring Workshops with Dave Seter

Our Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter, will be leading two workshops in March hosted by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this Spring.

Sunday March 2: Abstraction through Form
Sunday March 30: Documentary Poetry

These workshops form a series of Poetry Challenges because they are meant to help poets expand the boundaries of what they might normally choose as subjects or poetic styles. That said, these workshops are meant for all levels from the beginning poet to the more experienced poet.

Seter is donating his time, so any fees go directly to support programs at SebArts. Follow this link for more details and to sign up: sebarts.org/literary-arts

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Other March Readings and Events

Our March calendar is filled with readings and workshops, many celebrating March as Women’s History Month. Please check the calendar page for these and others.

Russian River Books & Letters presents Haiku-Handoff on Saturday, March 8, 7:00 p.m. The typewriters will be out and the haikuists will be guiding us through this ancient poetry form. At 14045 Armstrong Woods Road, Guerneville. booksletters.com/events/haiku-handoff

Breathless Wines presents Bubbles & Books on Saturday, March 8, 7:00 p.m, celebrating International Women’s History Month with local authors: Rebecca Rosenberg, Jeane Sloane, Judith Starkston, Pamela Reitman, Maria Vezzetti Matson. Breathless Wines, 499 Moore Lane, Healdsburg. Cost: $15 per person (includes welcome pour of sparkling wine). RSVP: breathlesswines.com/Events

Popular public television host and best-selling guidebook author Rick Steves presents his new memoir On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer on Saturday, March 15, 7:00 p.m. Stow away with Rick Steves on the adventure of a lifetime through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. $36 ticket includes book. At Dominican University of California, Angelico Hall.

Russian River Books and Letters presents Sonoma County Poet Laureate Dave Seter reading from his new chapbook Somewhere West of the Mississippi on Saturday, March 22, 7:00 p.m. At 14045 Armstrong Woods Road, Guerneville.

Sonoma County Poet Laureate Emerita and accomplished biographer Iris Jamahl Dunkle presents her latest biography Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb on Sunday, March 30, 4:00-5:30 p.m. This free event is hosted by Occidental Center for the Arts Literary Series, celebrating Women’s History Month. 3850 Doris Murphy Way, Occidental.

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New Books from Sixteen Rivers

 

 

Sixteen Rivers Press is launching four new publications in April: The Department of Peace, by Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong, If we are the forest the animals dream, by Patrick Cahill, In the Eye of the Elephant, by Moira Magneson, and Plagios/Plagiarisms, Volume Three, by Ulalume Gonzalez de Leon, translated by Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales.

These books will all be available on the Sixteen Rivers website very soon, but you can order Plagios 3 right now from our distributor Itasca. Here’s the link. https://itascabooks.com/products/plagios-plagiarisms-volume-3

There are some upcoming book launches and events, to which you are all cordially invited. To start things off, Sixteen Rivers will be at the AWP Book Fair in Los Angeles. If you’re planning to attend, stop by and say hi. Our authors will be signing books all three days. And join us for our off-site reading on Friday at Catcher in the Rye Pub.

March 26-29 AWP Author Signings
Los Angeles Convention Center

Sixteen Rivers Book Fair Table T717
Thursday, March 27 , 1-2 PM —Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales
Friday, March 28, 2-3 PM—Moira Magneson and Patrick Cahill
Saturday, March 29, 10-11 AM—Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong

Friday, March 28, 5–7 p.m.
AWP Off-Site Reading
Location: Catcher in the Rye (a literary-themed pub),
10550 Riverside Drive, Toluca Lake, CA.

Saturday April 5 at 1 pm
North Bay Book Launch
Location: Book Passage Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA 94925

Sunday April 6 at 3 pm
Poetry Flash East Bay Book Launch
Location: Art House Gallery
2905 Shattuck Ave Berkeley, CA 94705-1808

_____

Poem for March

Since Trump took office in January, he has issued more than 70 Executive Orders designed to implement the proposals in Project 2025. One of these is Executive Order 14168: Defending Women from Gender Idealogy Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.

Santa Rosa poet Margie Stein recently took on the task of correcting the language of this order to clarify its real intent.

Here is the result of her editorial work. (Click on image for full pdf.)

And here’s a link to a website where you can read the complete language of the Executive Order: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/30/2025-02090/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal

Marjorie is proud to be part of the LGBTQIA+ community and lives with her beloved wife in Santa Rosa. Her first book, An Atlas of Lost Causes, was published by Kelsey Street Press. Marjorie’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in American Poetry Journal, Blood Orange Review, The Denver Quarterly, Interim, Mary, New American Writing, VOLT and other publications.

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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.

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

Dear Literary Folk,

Happy Cross-Season Day, Groundhog Day, Saint Brigit’s Day, Imbolc, or Lá Fhéile Bríde, the Celtic Goddess Brigid’s Day—however you celebrate our shortest month, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Last week, I heard the first frogs of the season singing their love-chorus along the banks of Thompson Creek—a sure sign of spring on the way. It’s the Year of the Snake, as the Chinese celebrate it, and though 2025 already feels like a very bumpy ride, the Wood Snake in Chinese tradition represents wisdom, intelligence, adaptability, intuition, and transformation—all qualities we’ll need in the months and years ahead.

Three Local Writers Remembered
Three wonderful writers have left us in the past month: Margaret Kaufman, Joe Zaccardi, and Casey FitzSimons. I want to take time to honor each of these writers and what they have contributed to their literary communities.

Margaret Kaufman was a dear friend and fellow founding member of Sixteen Rivers Press. A poet, short story writer, teacher, and editor, Margaret was also very active with Temple Emmanu-El and with her family, and she taught workshops on writing at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco. One of her poems, Aunt Sallie’s Lament, was published as a piece of book art, designed by Claire Van Vliet, using colored pages to mimic quilt pattern pieces, and words as stiches to weave a poignant narrative of a prairie woman. Another long poem, Sarah’s Sacrifice, published by Gefn Press, was set into cantata form by Ben Steinberg. Other books include Inheritance and Snake at the Wrist (both from Sixteen Rivers Press). In the last decade of her life, she struggled with dementia. She passed away on January 3, 2025. Fellow friend Valerie Berry said of Margaret, “She had that “Southern lady” style where graciousness was second nature, but watch out for the wit that could leave you wondering what butterfly just bashed some sense into you.”

Joe Zaccardi came to poetry “nel mezzo del cammin,” after a career that included being a medic in the Vietnam War. Joe was a poet of grace and sensitivity, evident in his collections The Weight of Bodily Touches from Kelsay Books and Songbirds of the Nine Rivers from Sixteen Rivers Press. One of Joe’s goals was to make of poetry an instrument of healing; indeed he was one of the kindest and most decent human beings I’ve ever known. Joe served as a board member and editor of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2010–2012. As poet laureate of Marin County (2012–2013), one of his projects was an anthology called Changing Harm into Harmony, on the subject of bullies and bystanders. A member of the LGBTQ community, Zaccardi believed that to write a single poem is a minor miracle. Mutual friend Murray Silverstein remembers this about the manuscript Joe submitted to Sixteen Rivers, destined to become Songbirds of the Nine Rivers: “I recall thinking, once I knew it was Joe’s, this is one man’s act of reparation, through poetry, for Viet Nam (where, of course, he served). And that made me love the book even more. The phrase “the redress of poetry” kept coming into my mind today (the title of one of Heaney’s books from years back) and I kept wondering why. Then, of course, it dawned: it’s what Joe achieved with Songbirds. . . . and really with the whole sequence of his books: each spoke to the world at such a different angle.” Joe passed away on January 15, 2025.

The poetry community mourns the loss of poet Casey FitzSimons, who passed on December 24, 2024.Casey was a frequent featured reader at San Francisco Bay Area poetry venues. She self-published 15 poetry books. She taught art in San Francisco for many years, was Director of Fine Arts at the Academy of Art College, served on the editorial staff of the Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and offered workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area on poetry craft and criticism. For those who wish to remember Casey, a tribute and poetry open mic celebrating her life will be held on April 12, 2025, in Half Moon Bay. Click on this link for more details about Casey’s life and work: pw.org/directory/writers/casey_fitzsimons.

Rivertown Poets Welcomes Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate and Youth Laureates
On Monday, February 3, at 6:15 p.m. Rivertown Poets, triple-header reading and open mic: featured poets will be Dave Seter, current Sonoma County Poet Laureate for 2024-2026, Youth Poet Laureate Lisa Zheng, and Youth Poet Ambassador Sabine Wolpert. Come early for dinner, good seats, and to sign up for open mic. The café fills fast. Aqus Cafe is located at 189 H Street. Open mic follows the readings. Please limit your share to one poem of less than three minutes.

Spring Workshops with Dave Seter
Our Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter, will be leading three workshops hosted by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this Spring. Sign up for one or all three.

Sunday March 2: Abstraction through Form
Sunday March 30: Documentary Poetry
Sunday May 4: Interweaving Text

These workshops form a series of Poetry Challenges because they are meant to help poets expand the boundaries of what they might normally choose as subjects or poetic styles. That said, these workshops are meant for all levels from the beginning poet to the more experienced poet.

Seter is donating his time, so any fees go directly to support programs at SebArts.

Follow this link for more details and to sign up: sebarts.org/literary-arts

Rumi’s Caravan Coming to Sebastopol
On Saturday, February 8, 7:00 p.m. A Benefit for SebARTS: Rumi’s Caravan 2025, An Evening of Poetry and Music in the Ecstatic Tradition at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 High Street, Sebastapol. Tickets from $25.00. More information and registration: sebarts.org/classeslectures/p/a-benefit-for-sebarts-rumis-caravan-2025

Have You Got a Book in You?
On Thursday, February 20, 6:00-8:00 p.m. The first of four weekly sessions of “There’s a Book in Me!” with author and Creative Writing Professor Noelle Oxenhandler. $100 for the entire course. At the Sonoma Community Center, 276 E Napa Street, Sonoma.

____

Poem for February

Yes and No Tsunami
by William Greenwood

I drove out on the wharf
the middle of a Friday as agreed,
no matter that the February clouds
weighed in like concrete blocks.

The worn planks rumbled
under my slow wheels
until, once inside, I grabbed
a table by the picture window,
watched the water roll and
searched the bay for gumption.

Who knows what we had to eat
―lunch lasted into dinner.
No tsunamis hit the coast
that afternoon, but my Richter
seismographic kept on
going off the charts.

 

William Greenwood has published translations from the Guatemalan of poet Arqueles Morales and three chapbooks of his own poetry: Into the Center of America (Green Horse Press), Landscape/Cityscape (WordTemple Press), and most recently Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Hope (Green Horse Press).

____

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.

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor

Dear Literary Folk,

Happy New Year to you all!

From 2000 to 2020, my husband Don and I hosted a New Year’s Poetry and Potluck Brunch at our home in Petaluma. Some friends from the literary community came every year. Some attended when they could. Whatever the griefs and troubles, both personal and political, we may have been carrying, this was always a warm, lively, inspiring way to launch each new year,

Then Covid forced us into social distancing, and though we might have kept the event going as a virtual zoom gathering, that just didn’t feel the same. So, for five years, we’ve welcomed the new year in quieter ways, usually up at our Sierra cabin, deep in snow. That’s been nice, too.

During these years, I have often heard from those who attended our Poetry Brunch just how much they have missed the gathering and its nurturing energy. We considered holding it at the Summer Solstice so we could all be outside (safer than gathering indoors), but summer is a time when many are traveling, myself included. And there was something about starting the year together that was very sweet. So my husband and I are considering resurrecting the event next year in 2026.

I realize that many of us are still wary of Covid, RSV, and other miserable bugs, so I imagine a 2026 gathering may be smaller than in past years. That’s fine, too. We have a year to think about how to make this all work, and to see whether an indoor gathering is still feasible.

After Seeing A Complete Unknown

Like many baby boomers, my husband and I went on New Year’s Eve to see the biopic about Bob Dylan’s debut on the New York folk music scene and his tumultuous departure from that scene when he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival. I enjoyed the film, the music, and the acting. I wasn’t much bothered by the fact that Dylan remained as enigmatic at the end of the film as he was at the beginning. The title let me know the film wasn’t going to be revelatory. But it told a good story about someone who wanted to be “known” (as in famous) without being “known” (as in defined or owned), and I was intrigued by Dylan’s relationship with Woody Guthrie which the film conveyed (real or invented). I also appreciated the way the director let the music speak for itself, and to provide much of the story-telling, both what was going on with national social upheavals and what was unfolding in Dylan’s personal relationships.

I remember that when Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, many friends, colleagues, and students wondered if it was deserved. Dylan must have wondered, too, as he didn’t make his whereabouts known for a few weeks, and responded to the news with his accustomed arrogance. He also chose not to attend the ceremonies where he’d formally receive the recognition.  Yes, I believe song lyrics are a form of literature, though more accurately a part of the oral tradition. And, yes, I believe lyricists can be recognized by Nobel (or other) Prizes. The fact that 13 films have been made by or about him, both documentary and biopic, is proof enough that his influence has been wide and deep, and still as perversely mysterious as it ever was.

Seeing the movie sent me back to a poem written by my friend and colleague Diane Lutovich, who grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota in the same Jewish Community as Bobby Zimmerman (aka Dylan), a poem which has always for me filled in some of the blanks about Dylan’s youth. It’s called “Dancing at Bobby Zimmerman’s Bar Mitzvah.” Here’s the opening stanza:

What were they thinking
those children in 1954; he,
the blue-eyed son wrapped in
a wrinkled tallis, his yarmulke levitating
on that huge head of curls; the blue-eyed
girl tripping in new high heels,
back and shoulders bare
as an invitation.

For the rest of Diane Lutovich’s nostalgic, poignant (and revelatory) poem, scroll down to the end of the post.

New Release of “Meeting Light/Encontrando La Luz”

Sebastopol poet Raphael Block has recently released a 3-minute film of his poem “Meeting Light/Encontrando La Luz” in two versions; one with English subtitles, and one with Spanish subtitles. The poem is featured on the Welcome Page of Raphael’s website, and comes from the book, At This Table, which is also available as a free audio download. Please spread the word to Spanish speakers and communities who might enjoy know the film.

Barbara Baer’s New Novel: Masha & Alejandro Crossing Borders

We inadvertently neglected to post a publication announcement in our December newsletter, so this is a shout-out for another extraordinary novel from prolific and talented Sonoma County author Barbara Baer, whose other novels include: Grisha the Scrivener, The Ballet Lover, The Last Devadasi and The Ice Palace Waltz.

Two young immigrants, Masha from Ukraine and Alejandro from El Salvador, move to rural, forested Trinity County, California. Masha works as a nurse in a regional hospital and Alex in an auto body shop. What they don’t expect are visits from a local militia group unfriendly to outsiders. Masha’s unvaccinated Covid patients blame her for their illness, while Alex faces hostility and violence from MAGA supporters. Alex and his son Tomas battle the Trinity wildfires side by side with unlikely allies, making peace with neighbors seem possible. The novel focuses on immigrants trying to find a home, the timeless American story in a time unlike any other.

Publisher: Spuyten Duvvil
ISBN: 978-1-963908-30-5, 292 pages, $25.00
Available at: https://www.spuytenduyvil.net/Masha-and-Alejandro.html
or on Amazon

Start Your Year with a Meditation and Writing Workshop

Santa Rosa poet and memoirist Clara Rosemarda is offering two writing workshops starting this month. The first of six Tuesday workshops is called “Not Contained Between My Hat and Boots: Creative Writing as Spiritual Practice.” It starts January 14 from 11 am to 1 pm. The second workshop series runs for six Thursdays, starting January 16 from 1-3 pm. It’s called TRANSITIONS: Finding Your New Narrative, 

Both workshops are on Zoom. For information or to register (707) 567-7117 or rosen@sonic.net. Details on Workshops page.

Spring Workshops with Dave Seter

Our Sonoma County Poet Laureate, Dave Seter, will be leading three workshops hosted by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts this Spring. Sign up for one or all three.

Sunday March 2: Abstraction through Form
Sunday March 30: Documentary Poetry
Sunday May 4: Interweaving Text

These workshops form a series of Poetry Challenges because they are meant to help poets expand the boundaries of what they might normally choose as subjects or poetic styles. That said, these workshops are meant for all levels from the beginning poet to the more experienced poet.

Seter is donating his time, so any fees go directly to support programs at SebArts.

Follow this link for more details and to sign up: https://www.sebarts.org/literary-arts

Poetry Flash Needs Our Help

For almost 40 years, Poetry Flash has been a vital resource for California’s literary community. When I was a newbie in the writing world, a graduate student at SFSU just learning the ropes, Poetry Flash came out as a print newsletter, and every month, we snatched up the publication wherever it was available. Joyce Jenkins put together various and sundry announcements, articles, reviews, calls for submissions, and a calendar of readings and open mics in the Bay Area. I found my footing with the help of Poetry Flash. I imagine many of you did, too. Since then, Joyce, Richard Silberg, and many other contributors have expanded Poetry Flash’s reach and influence.

Like many nonprofits, especially in the literary world, Poetry Flash needs our help. Please consider sending a (tax deductible) donation that will support Poetry Flash’s living newspaper, the Watershed environmental poetry festival, the Northern California Books Awards, and much, much more. You can make a donation at this link: https://poetryflash.org/give/.

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts

Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work poetry collective with a three-year commitment, invites Northern California authors to submit full-length poetry manuscripts by our deadline of February 1, 2025. 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 2025. Selected manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in spring 2027.

For full submission guidelines, use this link: https://sixteenrivers.org/submit

Volume Three of Plagios/Plagiarisms Is Coming Soon!

After more than twelve years, the monumental translation project to bring the complete published poems of Ulalume González de Leόn into print in three bilingual volumes is nearly complete! Official book release date of Plagios/Plagiarims, Volume Three is April 2, 2025.

The translations are by Terry Ehret and Nancy J. Morales (with essential help from John Johnson and Jabez Churchill, among others); the cover art is by Jeffrey Morales; the foreword is by William O’Daly. Volumes Two and Three are available on the Sixteen Rivers website. Volume Three is on its way from the printer as I write this and will be available for pre-order in February.

https://sixteenrivers.org/author-profiles/ulalume-gonzalez-de-león.

Here’s a preview of the cover and blurbs.

This third and final volume of Ulalume González de León’s Plagios is a triumph, a culmination of some of the most compelling elements of her poetic works: her exploration of found and familiar language, her curiosity and playfulness, her embrace of the everyday alongside the poetic. These revelatory poems create convergences that both delight and trouble as they incorporate song, riddles and games, nonsense, rumination, contemplation, and celebration. The poems in Plagios are threaded with the realities of time, darkness, loss, and even death, evidence of their comfort with duality and tension. This wonderful bilingual edition lays bare the precision and care of the translators’ work in bringing across the wordplay, depth, sensibility, and humor of her voice.

—Amanda Moore, author of Requeening,
selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong

Weaving the remembered and the imagined into presences that disappear and live within us, that fill with darkness and light, breadth and depth of perception, this third and final volume of Ulalume González de León’s Plagios/Plagiarisms welcomes you. These remarkably original poems invite your participation as someone in whom the dynamics of this world, the physics of love, the veracity of rooms and mirrors, flowers and words, and the materiality of death . . . cultivate questions we live with night and day.

—William O’Daly, author of The New Gods
and translator of Pablo Neruda’s Book of Twilight

There are certain poets whose intelligence, sensitivity to the world, and instinct for the symbol, are singular and instantly recognizable. Ulalume González de León is tapped directly into the source. Her poetry, in lucid and lovely translation by Ehret and Morales, is concerned with what matters to all of us: presence and absence; how different times permeate our lives through memory; and our fate, which is to be continually left here in this world to remember until we ourselves leave. As this book progresses it achieves an almost unbearable level of intensity and honesty and directness of perception. This poet is a rare master. I return to her when I need to be reminded what poetry is, and can be.

—Matthew Zapruder, author of I Love Hearing Your Dreams

______

Poems for January

A Chill Wind
by Margaret Rooney

I wish I could resurrect yesterday
when hope was roused by bright reason
and the certainty of circumstance

before the dismantled truth
bled across the horizon
on today’s cold morning

I walk along a collapsing cliff
high above the grave
and trembling sea

a sharp beaked cormorant
lifts into a cushion of air
like an omen I cannot parse

untilled hills to the east
riddle with shadows
in cloud-dimmed light

there seems
to be no center
no above or below

only a bizarre spin of time
capsizing dreams
I thought were true

 

Margaret Rooney has been writing poetry for a while. She has a chapbook out called A Wild Rain and has been published in several of the Redwood Writers Poetry Anthologies and other journals. Two of her poems were nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2021.

______

Dancing at Bobby Zimmerman’s Bar Mitzvah
by Diane Lutovich (1937–2004)

What were they thinking
those children in 1954; he,
the blue-eyed son wrapped in
a wrinkled tallis, his yarmulke levitating
on that huge head of curls; the blue-eyed
girl tripping in new high heels,
back and shoulders bare
as an invitation.

Evening shone tender, blue
from inside, lighting up the town
as if the sun had refused to fully set.

The Androy Hotel, perched between
ore dumps and open pit mines, on Hibbing’s
one main street, its Crystal Lounge
awash with his aunts, uncles—Irenes,
Sylvias, Labels, Mikeys—all congratulating,
guzzling champagne, wrapping their dreams
around the bar mitzvah boy,
all to the beat
of sambas and rumbas
imported from Duluth;
chandeliers reflecting
light in a hundred directions
rousing people who’d been hibernating
for years. His mother beamed
over her blue-eyed boy who’d go far—
medical or law school she predicted.
He looked dazed or
ashamed, kept his feet shuffling, fingers tapping,
eager to leave for somewhere else.
I, too, couldn’t wait for those big-city lights,
attentive boys who knew how to dance, kiss.

No one would have guessed
how far we’d run after
the champagne was gone,
the guests coerced to their cars, homes,
and we had licenses of our own. But it was as far

from Hibbing—its open pit mines, its mounds
of red topsoil, winters of icy caves, and
summer nights sweet and fragrant as forget-me-nots—
as we could.

From What I Stole (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2003).

 

Diane Sher Lutovich, a writer and teacher of writing, was a native of Hibbing, Minnesota. She passed away on June 2, 2004, after having fought a long and tenacious battle with cancer. Her poetry has received several awards and has appeared in a number of reviews and anthologies. She is the author of Nobody’s Child: How Older Women Say Good-bye to Their Mothers, published by Baywood Press, and In the Right Season, published posthumously by Sixteen Rivers Press.

______

Terry Ehret
Co-editor, Sonoma County Literary Update

 

Dear Literary Folk,

These words of Rainer Maria Rilke have been on my mind:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer” (from Letters to a Young Poet.)

Some of us may be feeling stunned and dismayed by the world we awoke to last November 6, trying to find our footing on unfamiliar ground. Rilke’s quote addresses the necessity of living with uncertainty, “try[ing] to love the questions.” I’ve been thinking about what it means to live and love the questions. When I go out walking along the creekside trail near my house, I meet familiar faces, fellow walkers, many with their dogs. We greet each other, both dogs and walkers, perhaps a little cautious of political conversation, till we recognize that we are all walking this path, metaphoric and literal, together. That sense of connection is a language we can understand, a door that isn’t locked to us, and gives us the grounding we need to accept this time of uncertainty. “We’ve been here before,” we say, but in truth, we haven’t.

I first encountered Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet when I was in college and taking my first poetry writing workshops. In a recent romp through very old journals, dating back to 1975, I came upon another quote that was an important touchstone for me back when I was 19 and finding my way by fear or feel towards some kind of life with purpose and meaning. These words may be very familiar to many of you, too. They are from Carlos Castañeda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Castañeda relates a question Don Juan posed: “Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question… Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.” Among the questions we’re learning to love and live, let’s add this one about the path we are walking, alone or together, into this unfamiliar world.

I encourage you all to write into the uncertainty, whether the language you find for this is in “a very foreign tongue” or brushes up against familiar forms that help us carry forward with hope. And if you are so inclined, please consider sending your work, prose or poetry, to me for possible inclusion an upcoming Literary Update. I’m especially looking for poems or prose that may help us start the new year. You’ll find submission guidelines at the end of this post.

Literary Events for December

Of course, there are many upcoming events you’ll want to get onto your calendars. Here are two I want to give a shout-out to.

On Monday, December 2, 6:15 p.m. Rivertown Poets goes live at Aqus Café, featuring Rivertown Poets founder and host Sandra Anfang, visiting from her new home in Las Vegas, and co-hosts Monica Volker and Shawna Swetech. Open mic follows the features. Open mic slots are three minutes each, including any introduction or backstory. If you’d like to be added to the list or, have any questions send an email to rivertownpoet@gmail.com. The list fills very quickly; it’s better to sign up and then cancel later, if necessary.

And on Saturday, December 14, 2:00 p.m. Book Passage presents Left Coast Writers®. Featured book: Wandering in American Deserts: Discovery, Visions, Redemption. Speakers TBA. Work by: Madeleine Adkins, J. R. Barnett, Daphne Beyers, Hugh Biggar, Michael J. Fitzgerald, Peg Wendling Gerdes, Cyndi Goddard, Thomas Harrell, Naomi Lopez, Mary Jean Pramik, Anne Sigmon, Tatum Tomlinson, Maw Shein Win, Judy Zimola and more …. Details: bookpassage.com/event/left-coast-writers%C2%AE-wandering-american-deserts-discovery-visions-redemption-corte-madera-store

Call for Submissions for SCW’s Women Artists Datebook

One of my favorite publishers is the Syracuse Cultural Workers in New York state. I’ve promoted their work here before because it is rare to find a group so committed to the creative folk who move our collective vision forward, and so inclusive in their promotion of artists.

This year’s 2025 Women Artists Datebook is available on their website at https://syracuseculturalworkers.com/products/2025-women-artists-datebook-1. You could order a copy for yourself, or to give as gifts. Or browse the website for other items that might suit your taste and needs.

If you like what you see, consider submitting your art or poetry for the 2026 datebook. The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2025, but early submissions are welcome. Submission guidelines can be found here: https://syracuseculturalworkers.com/pages/call-for-art.

You can submit these at datebook@SyracuseCulturalWorkers.com. They are also accepting submissions of artwork for their 2026 Peace Calendar, posters, holiday cards, etc.

Annual Call for Submissions for Book-Length Poetry Manuscripts 

Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work poetry collective with a three-year commitment, invites Northern California authors to submit full-length poetry manuscripts between November 1, 2024 and February 1, 2025. 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 2024. Selected manuscripts will be scheduled for publication in spring 2027.

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 the press and our call for submissions. The manuscript must be e-mailed no later than February 1, 2025. 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.

Sixteen Rivers values diversity. We encourage poets of color, young poets, and LGBTQ poets to submit.

______

Two Poems for December

Last December, as 2023 was coming to an end, Dan Coshnear sent this poem, which I saved for the right occasion. It speaks to me this December, and so I share it with you.

Which Password?

A poem like this could bore you.
It’s about fish farm management,
the history of concrete,
the mating rituals of lepidoptera,
and the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit.
It’s about lipids and saturation.
It’s about somewhere in some city
something called an Archdiocese.
It’s about toting your heavy heart
and two cases of cat food in cans
up six flights of stairs.
Your thumbs aren’t fast enough
to get past this poem. It’s about
your thoughts while you’re waiting
to renew your password. Send it. 
Send it already! It’s about the time
you looked up to see
the face of the stripper.
So naked everything seemed.
It’s about the groan of your engine
and searching the dark, dusty shed
one more time
for the jumper cables. 

 

Daniel Coshnear is the author of a previous collection of stories, Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine Editions), which was awarded the Willa Cather Prize in Fiction. He teaches in a variety of university extension programs, including University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Coshnear works at a group home for homeless men and women with mental illness. He lives in Guerneville, California with his wife Susan and their children Circe and Daedalus.

____

And here’s a poem for the year’s end by Jodi Hottel.

Threshold

I distill the year just passed
‘til amber liquid gleams—
but it’s a bitter draught,
not the honey it would seem.

I weave a fabric from alone,
a garment stitched from days,
wrap myself in lonely
‘til its seams begin to fray.

Under mulch and ash I burrow,
cloak myself with leaves,
wait for warmth to follow—
yearning for relief.

I cross into the new year,
So full of hope
                         full of fear.

 

Jodi Hottel’s recent chapbook is Out of the Ashes from Pandemonium Press. Previous chapbooks are Voyeur from WordTech Press (2017) and Heart Mountain, winner of the 2012 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize. Jodi’s been published in Nimrod International, Spillway, Ekphrasis, and anthologies including the University of Iowa Press and the Marin Poetry Center. Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Sonoma County. jodihottel.com

____

Send Us Your Poetry/Short Prose Selections for 2025

Starting last January, 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.

____

Terry Ehret
Sonoma County Literary Update Co-Editor