Local Color Book Party at SF Main Library

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Come listen to poetry and memoir by authors of color who are changing the word one word at a time—cultural warriors claiming the freedom to write with authenticity about social justice, history, culture and the enduring wellsprings that sustain us.

Stay after the reading to buy books and get them signed, view a slide show of BIPOC visual art, and share conversation and refreshments with Write Now! SF Bay’s rich, multiculutral community.

James Cagney is poet and the author of Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory, (Nomadic Press, 2018), winner of the PEN Oakland 2019 Josephine Miles Award. His second collection, Martian: The Saint Of Loneliness, (Nomadic Press) was awarded the 2021 James Laughlin Award. James is a Cave Canem fellow who lives in Oakland. He has appeared as a featured poet at venues throughout the San Francisco-Bay Area, Sacramento, Vancouver and Mumbai. https://www.jamescagneypoet.com https://thedirtyrat.blog

Jasmin Iolani Hakes is the author of HULA (HarperVia), a complicated love letter to hometown Hilo, that is a Booklist best debut novel of 2023 and winner of HONOLULU Magazine’s Book of the Year (about Hawaiʻi). A mixed-race local who presents as haole, she writes of family oral history that includes Hawaiian blood as well as ancestors who migrated to the Hawaiian Kingdom to labor in the sugarcane industry from Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the Portuguese Islands of Madeira and the Azores. https://www.jasminiolani.com

Susan Kiyo Ito’s memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, from the Ohio State University Press, was nominated for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award, shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize, and named a best book of 2023 by the Library Journal. She co-edited the anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in Hyphen, Literary Mama, Catapult, Agni, Guernica, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Writers Grotto. https://www.thesusanito.com

Avotcja will readfrom her forthcoming book, My Oaktown Es Pura Candela. She is a Bay Area icon: award-winning poet, performer, and educator with weekly KPFA and KPOO programs featuring jazz, Caribbean music, poetry and conversation. She has been widely published in English & Spanish in the USA, Mexico and Europe, shared the stage with Sonia Sanchez, Janice Mirikitani, Michael Franti, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bobi & Luis Cespedes, Nikki Giovanni, and many others. She performs with regularly with Modúpue and the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra.

Tureeda Mikell, Story Medicine Woman, is a Bay Area based poet, educator, elocutionist, activist for holism. She is the author of The Body: Oracle of Memory, and Synchronicity, The Oracle of Sun Medicine, nominated for a 2020 California Book Award. A “word magician,” UC Berkeley Bay Area Writing Project Fellow, Museum of the African Diaspora 2022 Poet in Residence. she has published over seventy anthologies by at-risk students through CA Poets in the Schools since 1989. https://www.treeoflifefound.com/

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, 2024), a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating loss, and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Longreads, The Offing, Hyperallergic, Catapult, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. A member of the Writers Grotto and the AAPI writers collective Seventeen Syllables, Prasad lives in the Bay Area. https://www.translatorsdaughter.com

Shizue Seigel, director of Write Now! SF Bay, was recognized with a 2021 Jefferson Award for supporting Bay Area writers and artists of color through workshops, events and anthologies. Her poetry collection Courting A Man Who Doesn’t Talk is forthcoming from Pacific Raven Press. Her eight books include Write Now! anthologies Uncommon Ground:BIPOC Journeys to Creative Activism and Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color. https://www.writenowsf.com, https://www.shizueseigel.com

Kim Shuck is a Cherokee/Polish-American poet, author, weaver, and bead-work artist. She was born in San Francisco and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She served as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco (2017-2021) Her twelve books include Deer/ A-wi, Pick a Garnet to Sleep In, Deer Trails, Clouds Running In, Rabbit Stories, and Smuggling Cherokee. Her open mics have nurtured and inspired decades of Bay Area poets. https://kimshuck.com

Kimi Sugioka is a mother, educator, songwriter and poet. She earned an MFA from Naropa University and has published two books of poetry; the newest of which is Wile & Wing on Manic D Press. She has been published in numerous anthologies and is the poet laureate of Alameda, California. As an active board member for literary arts organizations, she curates and hosts readings in Alameda and San Francisco. She believes that creating community through art is a revolutionary act.

Maw Shein Win‘s full-length poetry collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) is forthcoming in Fall 2024. Her poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA’s Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA. Win’s previous collections include Invisible Gifts and two chapbooks, Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco. mawsheinwin.com

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.