This past year has been a mixed bag. Our first woman of color in the White House, a new vaccine, Black Lives Matter and ongoing struggles for racial, gender and social equality with gazillion hours logged in to Zoom!
Our WNBA-SF member poets are experts in the realm of keeping it real and wonderful. As we prepare to transition to a new normal, let’s mix it up with fellow WNBA-SF members.
Let’s inhale some poetry for a breath of fresh air, a dose of Spring renewal, and a menu of inspiration!
Join poets Lucille Lang Day, Sheryl Bize-Boutte, Joan Gelfand, Athena Kashyap, Dr. Jeanne Powell, and Iris Jamal Dunkle to toast the last day of National Poetry month, a finale to a grand national celebration. Let’s recognize women in the world of words. On tap: spoken word poetry, an award winning poetry film, and a mix of words.
Bring a mixed drink or a mocktail. We will have break out rooms so members can mix and mingle with long time and new members!
What: WNBA-SF Spring Poetry Mixer
When: Friday, April 30 4:00-5:30 pm Pacific Time, PDT
Lucille Lang Day is the author of seven full-length poetry collections and four poetry chapbooks. Her most recent collection is Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place (Blue Light Press, November 2020). She has also co-edited two anthologies, Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California, and has published two children’s books and a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. Her many honors include the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland/ Josephine Miles Literary Awards, the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, and eleven Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the founder and publisher of Scarlet Tanager Books. https://lucillelangday.com
Award winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte is an Oakland multidisciplinary writer of prose/poetry, autobiographical and fictional short stories. Her writing has been variously described as “rich in vivid imagery,” “incredible,” and “great contributions to literature.” Her first novel, “Betrayal on the Bayou,” was published in June 2020 and a poetry collection she has written with her daughter Dr. Angela M. Boutte, titled “No Poetry No Peace,” was published in August 2020. She has served as a poetry judge for the Bay Area Poets Coalition, the long-term emcee and co-curator for the
Montclair/Oakland Public Library’s annual celebration of National Poetry Month and is slated to judge the WNBA-SF’s Effie Lee Morris Writing Contest poetry category. She is a popular literary reader, presenter, and storyteller, and in addition to her books, her varied works appear in numerous journals, anthologies and print and on-line magazines and videos. www.sheryljbize-boutte.com
Dr. Jeanne Powell holds degrees from WSU in Michigan and USF in California. She is a published poet and essayist, with four books
in print from Taurean Horn Press and Regent Press: MY OWN SILENCE, TWO SEASONS, WORD DANCING and CAROUSEL. She founded Meridien PressWorks™, which published 20 writers in 20 years. Jeanne’s film and cultural reviews appear online. For ten years Jeanne facilitated Meridien Writers, which met monthly in San Francisco. For a decade she hosted Celebration of the Word, a weekly open mic in the City. Jeanne has taught in CS, OLLI and UB programs on college campuses. She has been a featured performer in coffee houses, cafes, libraries and bookstores. Jeanne’s new collection of poetry will be published in April 2021 by Taurean Horn Press. www.jeanne-powell.com starkinsider.com/author/jeannep
Athena Kashyap grew up in India and went to the U.S. for her higher education. She received her BA in Critical Social Thought and History from Mount Holyoke College, her MA in English from the University of California at Davis, and her MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University. She currently lives in San Francisco where she teaches English at City College of San Francisco. Athena has written two collections of poetry, Sita’s Choice (2019) and Crossing Black Waters (2012), both published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in Texas. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, All Roads Lead You Home, The Missing Slate, Forum, The Fourth River among other journals. Her work has also been anthologized both in the U.S. and India and has been translated into other languages.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle is an award-winning poet, literary biographer, and essayist. She has published four poetry books, including West: Fire: Archive, The Center for Literary Publishing, 2021 and the biography Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is Poetry Director at the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.
The author of three poetry collections, a chapbook of short fiction and You Can Be a Winning Writer, a book for writers, Joan Gelfand’s work appears in national and international journals including Rattle, PANK! The Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, Kalliope, California Quarterly, the Toronto Review, Marsh Hawk Review and Levure Litteraire. Her chapbook of short fiction won the Cervena Barva Fiction Award. President Emeritus of the Women’s National Book Association, a member of the National Book Critics Circle and California Writers Club, Joan coaches writers. Joan’s novel, Extreme, set in a Silicon Valley startup, was published by Blue Light Press in July, 2020.
Kate Farrell is our host and facilitator. Kate is a storyteller, author, librarian, founded the Word Weaving Storytelling Project and published numerous educational materials on storytelling. She has contributed to and edited award-winning anthologies of personal narrative. Farrell’s new book, a timely how-to guide on the art of storytelling for adults, Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories, was released in June 2020. Farrell has presented workshops for adults on the art of storytelling at the San Francisco Public Library, Mechanics Institute, and the San Francisco Writers Conference. She is now offering virtual workshops for libraries and writing groups, as well as performing virtually as a storyteller. 
Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte is a Pushcart Prize nominated author who has been described as a “Talented multidisciplinary writer whose works artfully succeed in getting across deeper meanings about life and the politics of race and economics without breaking out of the narrative.” Based in Oakland, California, the diverse bay-side city often serves as the backdrop for her always touching and frequently hilarious works. Reviewers praised her first book, A Dollar Five-Stories from A Baby Boomer’s Ongoing Journey calling it “rich in vivid imagery”, and “incredible.” Her second book, All That and More’s Wedding, is a collection of fictional mystery/crime short stories. Running for the 2:10, a follow-on to A Dollar Five delved deeper into her coming of age in Oakland and the embedded issues of race and skin color. She is a contributor to award-winning author Kate Farrell’s book Story Power. Betrayal on the Bayou, published June 2020, is her first novel. Website: 
Humaira Ghilzai is a writer, speaker and Afghanistan Cultural Consultant. Humaira opens the world to Afghan culture and cuisine through her wildly popular blog, 
Mary Mackey is an award-winning novelist and poet with fourteen novels including The Village of Bones, which won a 2018 CIIS Women’s Spirituality Book Award from the Department of Diversity and Inclusion; The Year The Horses Came; and A Grand Passion, that was translated into 12 foreign languages and made the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle’s best seller lists. Mackey is the author of eight collections of poetry including Sugar Zone, which won the 2012 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, which won the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for the Best Book Published by a Small Press. Mary became a writer by running high fevers, tramping through tropical jungles, dodging machine gun fire, being swarmed by army ants, making catastrophic decisions about men, and reading. Website: 
Aya de León teaches creative writing at UC Berkeley. Kensington Books publishes her award-winning Justice Hustlers feminist heist series, including SIDE CHICK NATION the first novel published about Hurricane Maria. In December, Kensington will publish her first spy novel, A SPY IN THE STRUGGLE about FBI infiltration of an African American eco-racial justice organization. Aya blogs for Daily Dose: Feminist Voices for the Green New Deal and working on a Black/Latina spy girl series, GOING DARK. Visit her at 
Fourth-generation native San Franciscan Kathleen Archambeau is an award-winning writer and LGBTQ activist. She is author of four nonfiction works, Climbing the Corporate Ladder in High Heels (2006), “Seized,” an essay in The Other Woman (2007), edited by Victoria Zackheim, Pride & Joy (2017), and We Make It Better (2019), with gay dad, Eric Rosswood. Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black wrote the Foreword to Pride & Joy and endorsed We Make It Better. Archambeau’s work has been favorably reviewed in global and national literary publications and she has been a featured speaker at national and global Pride literary events. Her book was included as part of the Oakland Museum of California store’s Queer California Exhibit and she is a founding member of the James Hormel LGBT wing of the SF Public Library. 