Come join us at the Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock for 2020’s first installment of our quarterly reading series! Click the image at right to download the PDF flyer, and see below for bios of our featured readers.

Barbara Swift Brauer is a freelance writer living in San Geronimo, California. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies as well as in art exhibitions and installations. She is the author of two collections from Sixteen Rivers Press: Rain, Like a Thief (2019) and At Ease in the Borrowed World (2013). With portrait artist Jackie Kirk, Barbara is coauthor of the nonfiction book, Witness: The Artist’s Vision in “The Face of AIDS” (Pomegranate Artbooks, 1996).

Bethanie Humphreys is a writer, editor, and mixed-media visual artist. She is a Sacramento Poetry Center board member, SPC Art Gallery curator, Associate Editor for Tule Review, and was Editor-in-Chief for the 2015 American River Review. Her chapbook, Dendrochronology, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019, and her poetry, short fiction, and art have appeared in various publications in the U.S. and U.K. including:  Artemis, Nonbinary Review, The Found Poetry Review, American River Review, and Sacramento Voices. She is a California Certified Naturalist and teaches creative writing workshops as a certified Amherst Writers and Artists method instructor.

Maya Khosla is the poet laureate of Sonoma County (2018–20). Her new poetry book is All the Fires of Wind and Light (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2019). Her work in the natural world has led her into the wild, to the page, and to the screen. She has documented forests, fire scientists, and firefighters talking about ways to be wise about wildfire. Maya’s work has taken her across coastal India, Kenya, and the United States. Her poems have also been collected in Keel Bone (Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, Bear Star Press) and in Heart of the Tearing (Red Dust Press). Her essays have appeared in Flyway, Yes Magazine, Humans and Nature, and elsewhere. She has written for the films Village of Dust, City of Water, and Shifting Undercurrents, and is working on a film about being “Firewise” in a time of climate change.