National Poetry Month kicks off with this special reception and reading from a newly-published collection of poems that contemplate the varied terrains and environments of the Golden State. Several contributing poets will be reading their works, and copies of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California will be available for purchase.

Contributing poets reading at the event include:

Lucille Lang Day, coeditor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, including Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems. She is a co-editor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California and the author of two children’s books and a memoir. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared widely. http://lucillelangday.com

Brenda Hillman is the award-winning author of ten collections of poetry: White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar, Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic, Practical Water, Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, andExtra Hidden Life, Among the Days. She is a professor at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. http://www.brendahillman.net

After high school, Dave Holt began setting poems to music. This led to a move from Toronto, Canada, to California, where he followed the muse of storytelling and poetry into San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing program (MA ’95). He is Anishinaabe/Ojibway (Chippewa) Indian from his mother’s side. His award-winning poetry collection is Voyages to Ancestral Islands.

Cynthia Leslie-Bole of Orinda is a writing coach, editor, and certified Amherst Writers and Artists Method writing group leader who has been published in Pure Slush, Rootstalk and Moonshine Ink’s Creative Brew. Cynthia’s new collection of poems, The Luminous In-Between, invites readers to experience the radiance of one woman’s evolution through marriage, motherhood, spiritual individuation, and kinship with nature.

Rachel Dacus is the author of Gods of Water and Air, a mixed-genre collection, the novel The Renaissance Club, and the poetry collections Earth Lessons, Femme au Chapeau, and Arabesque. Her writing has appeared in Atlanta Review, Boulevard, Drunken Boat, and Prairie Schooner, as well as in many other journals and anthologies, including Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. http://racheldacus.net

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky is a Jungian analyst and poet. Her chapbook, The Little House on Stilts Remembers, won the Blue Light Poetry Prize.  Her poetry collections include The Faust Woman Poems, Adagio and Lamentation, Crimes of the Dreamer, and Red Clay Is Talking. Her memoir, The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way, tells stories about her pushy muse. She is the poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives.

See Lafayette Library and Learning Center website listing: https://www.lllcf.org/program-calendar/