Literary Salon: Members’ Open Mic for National Poetry Month with Marin Poet Laureate Rebecca Foust: Prose and Poetry Writers Welcome!
Monday, April 1st, 2019 || 7pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com
Poetry, prose—who cares, so long as the writing is good? LCW Founder Linda Watanabe McFerrin finds poetry in the best prose, and LCW member and bestselling novelist Jasmin Darznik says that “genre is the fiction.” Contemporary literature seems to agree. Let’s celebrate both at an open mic in honor of National Poetry month.
Please come with two pieces of work, each 500 words or fewer. Prosers—find the poetry hot spots in your work, polish up a flash piece, excerpt your favorite passage from something you are working on now. Poets, bring poems. Haiku, prose poetry, formal poetry, narrative poems—we want to hear it all! We’ll try to make time for everyone to read at least one piece, and a second if possible, and for this reason time limits will be strictly enforced. A sign-up sheet will be available at the beginning of the event.
The evening will be hosted by LCW member and Marin Poet Laureate Rebecca Foust, who will be scouting this event for possible features for her Poetry Sunday column for Women’s Voices for Change.
Special Guest: Nationally acclaimed poet and translator Cole Swensen earned her BA and MA from SF State University and PhD from UC Santa Cruz. A former director of the creative program at the University of Denver, she has taught in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently a professor at Brown. Swensen is the author of thirteen collections of poetry and has translated ten books of poetry into English from French.
Rebecca Foust’s most recent book is Paradise Drive (2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry), reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Georgia, Harvard, and Hudson Reviews. Recent recognitions include the Cavafy Prize, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Lascaux Prize for Flash Fiction, the American Literary Review Fiction Prize, the Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize, and fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Sewanee, and The Frost Place.