MoSt is pleased to announce the third installment of our Poetry Book Club! The meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 18 from 6:30 to 7:30 at the downtown library and our featured book will be Barbie Chang by Victoria Chang. The library will have extra copies to check out, but the book is widely available if you’d like to get your own. Either way, you want to read it ahead of time and be prepared for some great conversation. More details to follow, but as usual, this event is free and open to the public.
Poetry Book Club
MoSt is pleased to announce the second installment of our Poetry Book Club! The meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 14 from 6:30 to 7:30 at the downtown library and our featured book will be blud by Rachel McKibbens. The library will have extra copies to check out, but the book is widely available if you’d like to get your own. Either way, you want to read it ahead of time and be prepared for some great conversation. More details to follow, but as usual, this event is free and open to the public.
Second Tuesday @ Barkin’ Dog
Join us for the March Barkin’ Dog reading on March 13 at 6:00 at the Barkin’ Dog Grill in downtown Modesto. We have two great featured readers, Jennifer Fellguth and Salvatore Salerno, and our most excellent open mic to look forward to.
Mar 02
2018 Poetry Festival Contest Winners
We are proud to congratulate our winning poets from the 2018 Modesto Poetry Festival’s poetry contest. Names and winning poem titles are listed below by category. Thank you to everyone who attended for making this year’s event another success!
Category: Arrivals and Departures
1st Place Winter Iris by Jennifer Lagier, Marina, CA
2nd Place BART Rides by Nancy Haskett, Modesto, CA
3rd Place Something by Ed Bearden, Modesto, CA
1st Honorable Mention Wing by Ellen Johnson, Sacramento, CA
2nd Honorable Mention After the Grave by Linda Toren, West Point, CA
Category: The Disappearance of Things
1st Place Clinging by Kate Aver Avraham, Santa Cruz, CA
2nd Place An Ending by Dmitra Gideon, Ceres, CA
3rd Place Disappearance of Things by Pat Egenberger, Modesto, CA
1st Honorable Mention Illusion by Gordon Preston, Modesto, CA
2nd Honorable Mention Buddy by Bonnie Gill, Glencoe, CA
Category: Empty Spaces
1st Place The Siege by Ellen Johnson, Sacramento, CA
2nd Place Pruning by Kate Aver Avraham, Santa Cruz, CA
3rd Place Running on Empty by Ellaraine Lockie, Sunnyvale, CA
1st Honorable Mention Field Trip by Linda Toren, West Point, CA
2nd Honorable Mention Awaiting the Tooth Fairy by Nancy Haskett, Modesto, CA
Category: Inheritances
1st Place Inheritance by Ellaraine Lockie, Sunnyvale, CA
2nd Place Last Rose by Kate Aver Avraham, Santa Cruz, CA
3rd Place Elegy to an Alcoholic by Linda Toren, West Point, CA
Honorable Mention Whose Hands by Laura Bayless, Carmel Valley, CA
Poetry on Sunday @ Carnegie
Our Poetry on Sunday quarterly reading series at Carnegie Arts Center in Turlock continues on February 25th at 2 pm in the Gemperle Gallery–click here or on the image at right to view the PDF flyer.
Featured readers for the February reading:
Ann Williams Bailey has been a part of the Central Valley writing community since the early 1970’s, collaborating with other writers, artists, and various creative organizations. She has been an enthusiastic participant in writers’ groups, small presses, ekphrastic shows, writing retreats, and, for ten years, spoken word performances in collaboration with Stockton’s New Dance Company, both locally and in the Bay Area, including the San Francisco Legion of Honor. Given the option, she prefers to paint portraits and write landscapes.
A native Californian, Brian Wright is a retired high school English teacher who divides his time between the Bay Area and the Sierra Nevada. His poems appear in More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets and several local publications including 4 More. He is active in The Healing Power of Writing, a Bay Area Writer’s group comprised of cancer survivors and caregivers.
Marisol Baca is the author of Tremor from Three Mile Harbor Press. She has been published in Narrative Northeast, Riverlit, Shadowed: An Anthology of Women Writers, and others. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University, where she won the Robert Chasen Poetry award. Currently, Marisol is an English professor at Fresno City College.