Social Justice Poetry

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra via Unsplash

Wednesday, September 14, 5 P.M. PDT 

A Virtual Poetry Reading and Discussion
with Joan Gelfand, Judy Juanita, and Andrena Zawinski

During these challenging times, poetry can inspire us to do good and help to restore hope.

The news can be demoralizing: War, revoking Roe vs. Wade, racism, homophobia, and gun violence. As the world turns in directions that leave us feeling disempowered, angry, and pessimistic, we can’t help but seek solace, comfort, and connection.

The WNBA Poetry Committee has put together a panel of dynamic writers who think about social justice, writing about our struggles with a dose of beauty and hope.

Please join us for an inspiring, uplifting, and exciting discussion and poetry reading by three dynamic authors lauded for their social justice poetry. Hear Andrena Zawinski, Judy Juanita, and Joan Gelfand read poems and discuss how poetry can heal and renew your spirit. 

Joan Gelfand

Author of three poetry collections and a chapbook of short fiction, Joan Gelfand’s reviews, stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in national and international literary journals and magazines.

Winner of twenty writing awards, Joan teaches for The Writing Salon. You Can Be a Winning Writer, a book for writers is an Amazon #1 best seller. Extreme, Joan’s debut novel (Blue Light Press) is set in a Silicon Valley gaming startup and received praise from Katie Hafner of the NYT and Ransom Stephens.

A member of the National Book Critics Circle and a Juror for the Northern California Book Awards, Joan lives in San Francisco with her husband Adam Hertz and two beatnik kitties – Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Judy Juanita 

Born in Berkeley and raised in Oakland, Judy Juanita (Judy Hart) joined the nation’s first Black Student Union at San Francisco State University and subsequently the Black Panther Party (BPP). She edited the BPP newspaper and worked in the Breakfast for Children program while finishing her B.A. at SF State. Five days after graduating, she became the youngest professor of the nation’s first black studies program.

Decades later, she would appreciate that she had participated in four key social movements:

• Black Arts Movement (BAM) where she performed her poetry with LeRoi Jones (who became Amiri Baraka) in the Black Arts and Culture Troupe
• The BPP where she edited its weekly newspaper and worked in the groundbreaking Free Breakfast for Children program
• The Black Student movement and historic 4 ½ month SFSU strike where she edited Black Fire, the strike journal, and established 
• The nation’s first Black Studies Department where she taught Black Psychology and Black Journalism.

An award-winning author, poet, public speaker and podcaster, Juanita’s themes explore the peculiar paths trodden by black people in California. Her work is archived at Duke University’s John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African-American Literature. A former Poet-in-the-Schools in New Jersey, Judy Juanita currently teaches at Laney College in Oakland.

Andrena Zawinski

Andrena Zawinski, an activist poet with accolades for lyricism, form, spirituality, and social concern, is a veteran teacher of writing with experience teaching as a Poetry Ambassador for the International Poetry Forum and Teacher-Writer for Youth and Teachers Writing Project Institutes.

As an activist, she is a journalist for Allegheny Feminist Newspaper and cofounder of Women Against Sexist Violence in Pornography & Media and Radical Feminist Organizing Committee.

Her latest poetry book, Born Under the Influence, gathered praise from fellow writers, such as Jack Hirschman calling her “a major American poet,” and Susan Cohen stating how she “speaks up beautifully for women and for life.”

With a deeply-rooted emotional power, Zawinski’s poems embrace the worldwide conditions of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside a reverence for the natural world. Her other works include:

• Landings
• Something About (a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature)
• Traveling in Reflected Light (a Kenneth Patchen Poetry Prize)
• Plumes and Other Flights of Fancy in Flash Fiction
• Editor of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry
• Co-editor of Writing on the Desk: Poetry and Prose by Teachers Who Write

Zawinski, a longtime Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com, was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, where she earned degrees, worked, and lived as a single parent. Now, the city island of Alameda, where she runs a popular Women’s Poetry Salon, is the place she calls home with her spouse Julia Carrasquero and their dog Melvyn.

Sorry, the virtual event is now closed!