Janelle Adsit is a poet, essayist, and teacher of creative writing. She is an assistant professor of Writing Practices and affiliated faculty in the Environmental Studies and Environment & Community programs at Humboldt State University where she teaches creative writing, environmental writing, and literary publishing. Her books include the poetry collection Unremitting Entrance and a chapbook titled Press Yourself Against a Mirror. https://www.janelleadsit.net/
Read MoreJ.W. Seaborn has been writing poetry and organizing spoken word poetry events in the Humboldt County area for nearly a decade. The Great Divide is his first album of spoken word performances accompanied by musical composition. You can access his recorded work at https://www.neshamaroad.com/. In 2017, he received the Fuerza Award for Best Work in Spoken Word in the Toyon Journal of Literature and Art. His central motivations for writing and performing are the social critique of authority, personal improvement by way of self-reflection and progressing traditional perspectives on love, sexuality and masculinity. As a poet, he feels as though one must experience change to appreciate stability, endure suffering to find resolve, embrace humility to heal from anger. His style finds intensity without ambiguity. He pours over his own fragility and disappointment to look at some raw truth.
Read MoreDaryl Ngee Chinn is a poet, poet teacher, bookmaker, and editor. His book and book-related publications include Soft Parts of the Back (University of Central Florida, 1989); artist books; collaborative books; self-published chapbooks; and school and statewide poetry anthologies in Nevada and California. He published his first book of poems and color photographs in 1973 and has worked or volunteered for poetry teaching and related activities including fundraising, board membership, and mentoring. He was a founding member of the North Redwoods Book Arts Guild and served as Humboldt County Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools.
Read MoreDylan Collins is a spoken word artist, writer, poet, activist and educator. He is the host and creator of Word Humboldt, a weekly community based spoken word open mic in Arcata, CA and was part of the City Soul Café Poetry team in Raleigh, NC. Dylan recently published his first full length book "Love Poems We Write Ourselves" through Writers Block Publishing. He created a poetry slam club and coached incredible youth poets from Garner Magnet High School in North Carolina and ran a creative writing program at Pathways for People in Cary, NC working with teens and adults with disabilities and was the Humboldt County Poetry Out Loud coach in 2019. He facilitated writing workshops and performed his words out loud all across the country. He is in awe of the number of doors spoken word has opened for him in his life and can only hope to give back in return to everyone what it has given him.
Read MoreLarry Crist lives in Trinidad California and has been widely published. He has one collection of poems, Undertow Overtures (2014) ATOM Press, 140 pages, $15. available through Amazon. Another (story/poem) collection, Alibi for the Scapegoat, is due out sometime in 2020.
Read MoreBARBARA BRINSON CURIEL is the author of the poetry collections Speak to Me From Dreams (1989) and Mexican Jenny and Other Poems (2014), which won the Philip Levine Prize. Her chapbooks include Nocturno, Days of the Dead, and Cascadia. She has published poems in several anthologies, including in the 2011 collection Cantar de Espejos: Poes■a Testimonial Chicana por Mujeres published in Mexico, and in the journals Kweli, Huizsache, and The Acentos Review. She was a 2010-2012 fellow with CantoMundo, the national organization for Latinx poets, and she was a member of the coordinating committee from 2013-2016. She is Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English at Humboldt State University.
Read MoreAnne Fricke moved from the midwest to Humboldt County in 2001 and has called this place home ever since. She wrote her first poem at eight-years-old, and not long after decided she wanted to be a novelist. Then life happened. Finally, after becoming a mother, she slowed down enough to begin writing her first novel. Her second novel, The Orchard’s Descendant, was self-published in 2018. Anne has also published two poetry books, Susurrus; whispers behind this life, and her most recent collection, One Mother’s Revolution. She is a performance poet, podcaster, writer, mother, wife, and someday hopes to grace the stage of an open mic comedy night. More about her and her work at annefricke.com.
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Jacqueline Suskin is a poet and educator based in California. She is currently the Artist in Residence at Folklife Farm. Suskin is the author of The Collected, Go Ahead & Like It, The Edge of The Continent Vol. 1-2, and Help in the Dark Season. With her project Poem Store, Suskin has composed over forty thousand improvisational poems for patrons who chose a topic in exchange for a unique verse. She was honored by Michelle Obama as a Turnaround Artist, and her work has been featured in New York Times, T Magazine, Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and other publications. www.jacquelinesuskin.com
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Therese Fitzmaurice recently published her fourth collection of poetry How to Love this Woman (Feb. 2016). Many poems in that collection are featured in her current recording project with musicians, Jesse Jonathon and Amy Day. Her work explores the inner landscape of a life lived contemplating the intersection of spirit & flesh, individual & tribe, offering & receiving. Therese FitzMaurice, along with Vanessa Vrtiak, cofounded A Reason to Listen poetry collective in 2004. They host the wildly popular, 10-year-strong, Humboldt Poetry, the first Thursday of the month at Siren’s Song Tavern in Eureka. They have co-written and performed two full-length choreo-poems (Excavating the HIstory of Love and Resuscitating the Sequence of Sacrifice), toured nationally and performed at notable poetry venues including the Nuyorican Café and the Apollo in NYC. They continue to perform and teach in high school and college classrooms, the Humboldt County jail, churches, baby showers, writing groups & conferences.
Margot Jarvis Genger, poet, celebrates Shift Happens — Breakdowns During Life's Long Hauls, her debut memoir and first full-length work. Retired from teaching Video Productions, Photoshop, and InDesign to middle school students, reading rates high on her list of pleasures. Add walking her dog (Apple), jigsaw puzzles, and reading her poems at local open mics and you pretty much know her schedule. With her husband's (Hal) help, Margot collect rocks, glues them into mosaics, and hangs them around her home in which she has lived for more than forty years. Her poems have been published in HSUs Toyon, HSUs "Poems from the Pocket, North Coast View, and the California Association for the Gifted Quarterly. You can find her chap books: Middle Chapter and Before Water Falls in the Humboldt County Library.
Read MoreWil Gibson lives in Humboldt County, California where the trees are big. He has had 5 collections published by kind people ("Home and Other Places" - Moon Pie Press, "A Couple's Guide to Panic Attacks" - Sergeant Press, "Harvest the Dirt" - Great Weather for Media, "Quitting smoking, falling in and out of love, and other thoughts about death" - Swimming With Elephants Publications, and "Unease at Rest" - Swimming With Elephants Publications), has published over 20 chapbooks, has been included in a number of anthologies and lit mags both online and in print, such as Marsh Hawk Review, Button Poetry, Midwestern Gothic, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Cascadia Rising, Collective Unrest, Yellow Chair Review and many more. He has twice been nominated for both a Pushcart and Best of the Net, and currently spearheads the Redwood Poetry Project. You can find links to books and more info at wilgibson.com.
Read MoreStephanie Lee is a recent Humboldt transplant from Los Angeles, CA. They are currently working on an undergraduate degree in Biology at Humboldt State University. Stephanie is an avid rock climber, daydreamer, and vegan food connoisseur. They are a member of the Word Humboldt poetry collective, and started writing poetry after stumbling in on an open mic while in the process of moving to Arcata in the summer of 2019. Their chapbook Warm Spaces in Cold Places is a collection of poems and illustrations from this transitional period of their life. Stephanie can be found via their Instagram page @stephwritespomes.
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Dan Zev Levinson is the author of Song of Six Rivers, an epic poem accompanied by archival photos and published by Humboldt State University Press. Dan brings poetry into classrooms and other sites through California Poets in the Schools. He has taught at Humboldt State University and College of the Redwoods, is a Redwood Writing Project teacher-consultant, and a founder of the Lost Coast Writers Retreat.
Read MoreJerry Martien arrived in the Humboldt Bay region at the end of the 1960’s, working as nightwatchman, truck driver, and bookstore clerk while writing articles and manifestos on behalf of a newly emerging community. He began hanging out and attending readings at Arcata’s Jambalaya Club and over the course of several decades fell unavoidably into carpentry, politics, and poetry.
Read MorePat McCutcheon earned her Masters in English at California State University at Los Angeles, but only her fifth grade teacher ever encouraged her to write until she took a life-changing Poetry Workshop at College of the Redwoods years later. Fretting over the first assignment, she finally felt the subtle pressure of what might be a poem pushing her pen. She was hooked. With her Masters, she taught at CR, sometimes even poetry. Now she has many published poems, a first chapbook called Recovering Perfectionist, and her second, Slipped Past Words, was a winner in a Finishing Line Press contest.
Read MoreHolly Rae is a spellcasting mama, poet and student, spinning words in the tiny town of Arcata, tucked on the misty coast of Northern California. She is an advocate for women’s rights and mental helath, currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Critical Race, Gender and Sexuality at Humboldt State University. Holly hopes her words invite conversations around abuse, creating space for healing and building badass communities through empathic connections and storytelling. “It’s never too late to men, it’s never too late to grow.”
Read MoreNeil’s stories and poems have appeared in print and online, including “Handgun Wedding,” which The North Coast Journal voted its best flash fiction in 2009. Fithian Press published his collection of 52 stories, Flashes of Lightning, in 2016. Neil earned M.A. degrees in Teaching Writing and in Counseling Psychology from Humboldt State University, and a B.A. in English from St. Bonaventure University. He worked a combined 41 years as a substance abuse counselor, college instructor and sports writer. Neil hails from New York City, and lives with his wife and their three-legged pit bull on Northern California’s redwood coast.
Read MoreWill Schmit is a Midwestern poet transplanted to Northern California. He has been reading and writing poetry for over fifty years in between bouts of learning to play the saxophone. His latest book Head Lines Poems & Provocations is available at Bookleggers and www.schmitbooks.com
Read MoreVanessa Vrtiak started searching for her voice in the 4th grade. She had a sunflower print journal and she would spend hours in tall trees, deep in the world of her own thoughts. In High School, she found the courage to perform her first poem at a Poetry Cafe in the library. She won her first slam, and auditioned to be on the Humboldt Youth Slam Team. Poetry brought her to countless stacked stages, one of them was the Apollo Theater. Vanessa has competed in the Individual World Slam, and National Poetry Slam. She has self published five collections of poetry, her most recent: The Compass in Her Own Blood. Vanessa is also the host of the Humboldt Poetry Show, and co-founder of A Reason to Listen Poetry Collective, which has been bringing poetry to the north coast for 15 years. She has directed, starred, and produced in countless community plays, which have raised thousands of dollars for local non profits. Vanessa is committed to poetry as a tool for activism. Her heart resides with developing systemic changes within the criminal justice system, seeing the humanity in people, and her profound love for her family.
Read MoreMykia Washington is a 23-year-old newly published poet and artist who recently moved from Washington D.C. to Humboldt County. She enjoys writing poetry, performing spoken word, and creating abstract oil and acrylic paintings. In 2018, Mykia published her first poetry chapbook called “Apologies and Mirror Trees,” and her book is currently available for purchase on Amazon.com. While pursuing new creative projects in Humboldt, Mykia is very passionate about jump-starting a new movement called “Talk About Flowers.” Mykia believes that “artists have the power to unify the collective voice of the community through artistic expression and community engagement.” In spirit of this belief, Mykia enjoys planning community arts events that raise awareness about local social issues such as the opioid and poly-substance epidemic.To learn more about Mykia's work and upcoming projects visit Talkaboutflowers.org and join the movement.
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