8th Annual Modesto Poetry Festival

We are thrilled to announce the details of our 8th Annual Modesto Poetry Festival, coming up on February 1st, 2020!

Each year in February we organize and hold an all-day poetry festival featuring workshops, readings, and a featured poet. This year, we are proud to welcome Lee Herrick and Camille Norton as our guest poets and workshop leaders.

Join us on Saturday, February 1st, 2020 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Modesto for a day of poetry, learning, and inspiration! Click on the image at right to download the PDF flyer, and you can click here to download the registration form (which also has details about this year’s festival poetry contest).

Themes for this year’s contest are 1. The Graceful Stumble; 2. Handling Earth with Care; 3. Notre Dame; 4. Following a Thread. Submissions to the poetry contest must be postmarked by the CONTEST DEADLINE: JANUARY 11, 2020. Please see the form for more information.

Lee Herrick has authored three poetry books, Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This
Many Miles from Desire. His poems have also appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. He is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (forthcoming in Spring, 2020 from Orison Books). Born in Daejeon, Korea, Lee served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, and teaches at Sierra Nevada College and Fresno City College.

Camille Norton’s first collection of poems, published by HarperPerennial, was a National Poetry Series winner in 2004. Other honors include the Grolier Prize in Poetry, accolades from the National Endowment
of the Humanities, and residencies at the MacDowell Art Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Professor of English at University of the Pacific in Stockton, Camille co-edited Resurgent: New Writing by Women, featuring experimental writing by women in literature, film, and the visual arts. Her latest poetry book is A Folio in the Dark (Sixteen Rivers).