Saturday, October 21 at 2:00 PM:  The 2006 Poetry Bus Tour Readings and Workshops

At First Congregational Church Fellowship Hall, 900 High Street, Santa Cruz [map].  $5 admission for both readings, $20 for a workshop.

Short Bios of Bus Tour Readers

Joshua Beckman, tour organizer and featured poet on the Wave Books 2006 Poetry Bus Tour was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of five books, including Shake, Your Time Has Come, and Something I Expected to be Different.  He has appeared on NPR's "The Next Big Thing" and his 2002 tour with fellow poet and collaborator Matthew Rohrer garnered praise and national attention from The Village Voice and Time Out New York.  The recipient of numerous awards, including a NYFA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, he is an editor for Wave Books and lives in Seattle and New York.

Gillian Conoley's collections include Profane Halo, Lovers in the Used World, Beckon, Tall Stranger (nominee for the National Book Critics' Circle Award), Some Gangster Pain, and the chapbooks Woman Speaking Inside Film Noir and Fatherless Afternoon.  Winner of several Pushcart Prizes, the Jerome J. Shestack Award in Poetry, and included in Best American Poetry, she is Poet-in-Residence and Professor at Sonoma State University, where she is the founder and editor of Volt.

Graham Foust was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He is the author of As In Every Deafness (Flood Editions, 2003) and Leave the Room to Itself (Asahta Press, 2003). With degrees from Beloit College, George Mason University, and the University at Buffalo, he teaches at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. He and his wife live in Iowa City.

Christian Hawkey is the recipient of a 2006 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for his most recent collection, The Book of Funnels (Verse Press, 2004). He has also received a Creative Capital Award, as well as awards from the Poetry Fund and from the Academy of American Poets. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Conjunctions, Volt, American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Tin House, Crowd, and Conduit, and he lives in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn.

Cole Heinowitz is the author of Daily Chimera (Incommunicado Press, 1995), Stunning Muscle Hospital (Detour Press, 2002), and The Rubicon (forthcoming, A Rest Press). Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Poker, HOW2, and Hi-Way Robbery.

Noelle Kocot is the author of 4 and The Raving Fortune, and the recipient of several awards, including an NEA fellowship. Widow of composer Damon Tomblin, she lives in Brooklyn, where she was born and raised.

Anthony McCann was born and raised in the upper Hudson Valley region of New York. He is the author of Moongarden (Wave Books, 2006) and Father of Noise (Fence Books, 2003). He has taught English as a Second Language in the former Czechoslovakia, South Korea and Nicaragua as well as in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives with his wife, Ellen Sharp.

D. A. Powell is the author of Cocktails, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, as well as a finalist for a Publishing Triangle Award for Gay Male Poetry. He is also the author of Tea and Lunch, both from Wesleyan University Press. His poems have appeared in the Iowa Review, Colorado Review, and Solo. He is the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Poetry at Harvard University.

Stephen Kuusisto, who has been blind since birth, is the author of the acclaimed memoir Planet of the Blind, a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year" and Only Bread, Only Light, a collection of poems from Copper Canyon Press. Recognized by the New York Times as "a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor," Steve has made numerous appearances on programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dateline NBC, National Public Radio and the BBC. A graduate of the "Writer's Workshop" at the University of Iowa, and a Fulbright Scholar, Steve now teaches in the Disabilities Studies program at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio where he also serves as a Fellow of the Moritz College of Law's Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies. He is a member of the "core faculty" at the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

Maggie Nelson is the author of the poetry collections Shiner (2001) and The Latest Winter (2003), both from Hanging Loose Press, and a mixed-genre book about the life and 1969 murder of her aunt Jane entitled Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull Press, 2005). A new book of poems Something Bright, Then Holes is forthcoming in 2006. Before joining the faculty at CalArts, she taught creative writing and literature for many years in and around New York City, where she has also worked as a curator at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church and a freelance editor. She is currently working on a nonfiction book entitled Open Murder about the reopening of her aunt's case and various fissures in the criminal justice system, as well as another mixed-genre collection, Bluets, centered on the color blue.

Matthew Rohrer is the author of A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and Nice Hat. Thanks. (with Joshua Beckman) (Verse Press, 2002) and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty (also with Joshua Beckman, 2003). He has appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" and "The Next Big Thing." His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Standard Schaefer's new book of poems, Water & Power, has recently appeared from Agincourt in New York. His first book, NOVA, was a winner of the National Poetry Series prize and was published by Sun & Moon in 1999. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.

Juliana Spahr was born in Chillicothe, Ohio in 1966. Her books include This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (U of California Press, 2005), Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You (Wesleyan U P, 2001), Everybody's Autonomy: Connective Reading and Collective Identity (U of Alabama P, 2001), and Response (Sun & Moon P, 1996). She co-edits the journal Chain with Jena Osman and she frequently self-publishes her work.

Chad Sweeney's poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in New American Writing, Slope, Verse, Black Warrior Review, Five Fingers Review, Pool, Tarpaulin Sky, Puerto del Sol, Poetry Flash, and The Highest Number. His manuscript "Salt Plain and Other Stories" was a finalist in the National Poetry Series, the Del Sol Press Prize and runner-up in the Michael Rubin Chapbook Award. His book-length poem "An Architecture" was a finalist in the Colorado Prize. With David Holler, Sweeney edits the new poetry journal, Parthenon West Review, dedicated to bringing into conversation a wide range of American poetics and translation. A 6th year teacher in the San Francisco WritersCorps, he leads poetry workshops, events and publications with Mission High youth, primarily with newly arrived immigrants from Central America and Asia. Chad earned an MFA from San Francisco State University and lives with his wife, poet Jennifer Kochanek Sweeney, on Potrero Hill in San Francisco.

Jennifer K. Sweeney won the 2006 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award and her book, Salt Memory, will be out this winter. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in various publications, including Hayden's Ferry Review, Passages North, New York Quarterly, Evansville Review, RUNES, and subtropics. She was a finalist in the 2004 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Competition and the 2005 Brittingham/Felix Pollak Prize and was recently awarded a Cultural Equities Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Stephanie Young lives in Oakland and works at Mills College. She is a board member at Small Press Traffic, San Francisco's 30-year-old literary arts center. She also hosted a popular series of poetry readings at her house in Oakland for several years, and is the editor of BAY POETICS, an anthology of local writing due out from Faux Press (at fauxpress.com) in early 2006. Her writing has been published in Shampoo, Mirage #4/Period(ical), edited by Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy, Five Fingers Review, Cypress Magazine, LIT and Combo.

Matthew Zapruder is the author of American Linden (Tupelo Press 2002), and of The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon, 2006). His poems have appeared or are upcoming in The Boston Review, Fence, Alaska Quarterly Review, Open City, Painted Bride Quarterly, Bomb, Jubilat, Harvard Review, The New Republic and The New Yorker. He teaches poetry in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the New School, works as an Editor with Wave Books, and is co-curator of the KGB Monday Night Poetry Reading Series. He lives in New York City.
 

This event is supported, in part, by a grant from the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. This event is co-sponsored by Bookshop Santa Cruz, Staff of Life and Gabriella's Cafe.

Poetry Santa Cruz receives funding from the the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County.  Some of our readers receive funding from Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.  Poetry Santa Cruz is also sponsored by Casablanca Inn, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Capitola Book Café, The Attic, National Writers Union Chapter 7, KUSP, the William James Association, the Museum of Art & History, and Cabrillo College.  Membership premiums have been donated by Copper Canyon Press, Graywolf Press, the University of Pittsburgh Press, Coffee House Press, Farrar Straus and Giroux, Robert Sward and Patricia Grube.