Celebrate the publication of our latest anthology, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea at San Francisco’s wonderful Bird & Beckett and meet an indie press looking for new voices.
Featuring Neeli Cherkovski, Joan Gelfand, Matthew Hupert, Deborah Kennedy, Richard Loranger, Mira Martin-Parker, and SB Stokes.
Hosted by Jane Ormerod and Richard Loranger.
Free admission
Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea is an exhilarating collection of contemporary poetry and fiction from established and emerging writers across the United States and beyond. The anthology also contains an interview with musician/artist Walter Steding.
Submissions for our next anthology are open October 15 2019 to January 15 2020
Neeli Cherkovski was born in Los Angeles. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Animal (1996), Leaning Against Time (2005), From the Canyon Outward (2009), and The Crow and I (2015). He is the co-editor of Anthology of L.A. Poets (with Charles Bukowski) and Cross-Strokes: Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco (with Bill Mohr). In addition, Neeli has written biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Charles Bukowski, as well as the critical memoir Whitman’s Wild Children. His papers are held at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Neeli received the 2017 Jack Mueller Poetry Prize awarded at the Jack Mueller Festival in Fruita, Colorado. He has lived in San Francisco since 1974.
Joan Gelfand is the author of You Can Be a Winning Writer: The 4 C’s of Successful Authors (Mango Press), three volumes of poetry, and an award-winning chapbook of short fiction. Joan’s novel set in a Silicon Valley startup is forthcoming from Mastodon / C&R Press. Recipient of numerous awards and honors, Joan’s work appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Prairie Schooner, Toronto Review, Marsh Hawk Review, Kalliope, Rattle, Levure littéraire, and many other journals.
Matthew Hupert is a writer and multi-media artist. He is the founder of the NeuroNautic Institute and its associated poetry workshop and of NeuroNautic Press which just released his latest collection, Secular Pantheism. He is the author of Ism is a Retrovirus (Three Rooms Press) and several chapbooks, and his writing has appeared in numerous publications including Midstream Magazine, Maintenant, and Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets. When not writing, Matthew can be found cooking for his family. He lives in New York City.
Deborah Kennedy is an author and artist whose recent book, Nature Speaks: Art and Poetry for the Earth, combines illustrations and poetry focusing on the ecological themes of our time. The book’s honors include the 2016 Eric Hoffer Poetry Book Award and a 2017 Silver Nautilus Poetry Book Award. Her writing has appeared in First Literary Review-East and Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis. Deborah lives in San Jose and teaches college classes and poetry workshops. She often hikes in an urban riparian corridor where she spots osprey, hawks, and herons. In the evening she watches for moonbows, earthshine, and other modern miracles.
Mira Martin-Parker earned an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Mythium, and Zyzzyva.
S B Stokes writes, draws, designs, and produces in the hills behind a lake in Oakland, California. His publications include a full-length poetry collection called A History of Broken Love Things (Punk Hostage Press, 2014), a chapbook entitled DARK ENTRIES (Gorilla Press / The Pedestrian Press, 2014), and a self-published chapbook called Let’s Call This Nothing (2018). S B is one of the founding producers of Beast Crawl, an annual literary festival in Oakland which features over thirty readings and is 100% free.