Out of Our Minds on KKUP

Davis Foreword Intro & Chapter 1 by Poetita

Imaginary Animal Test Recording by Poetita

Rachelle escamilla is a Chicana poet from Hollister, California. her nationally award winning first book is slated to become an off broadway play. Rachelle is the founder of a number of poetry programs all over the world, she is a scholar recognized by the Library of Congress and a community-based activist whose research and work includes the fair treatment of migrant workers, anti-fracking and most recently the Decriminalization of Psilocybin. She lives in Monterey, Ca and does media and marketing for the Philip Glass Days and Nights Festival.

James Cordero, Co-director of Water Drops for Border Angels San Diego.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate. He earned a BA at Sacramento State University and is the first undocumented student to earn an MFA at the University of Michigan. In this pre-recorded reading, Marcelo is reading from and discussing his groundbreaking, debut novel, Children of the Land. In conversation with Castillo is Nathan Xavier Osorio who is also a poet and essayist. This interview was recorded on February 11, 2020 at Book Shop Santa Cruz.

"In All the Fierce Complexities of Hunger, Tim J. Myers shows a poetic range that is astonishing. It seems impossible, but his book is a masterful collection of poems both traditional and experimental, both lyric and narrative, both funny and serious, both comforting and disturbing, both long and short, both contemporary and historical. Is there anything he can’t do? It would appear not, as I was wowed from the first poem--with its linguistic nod to Gerard Manley Hopkins--to the last, with its gorgeous echoes of W. S. Merwin. This is one of those rare books that will, in some way, speak to every reader."

--Dean Rader, author of Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry and editor of Bullets into Bells: Poets & Citizens Respond to Gun Violence

Matt Sedillo is a Chicano poet, writer, creative director and public intellectual. He has been called “the poet laureate of the struggle” by Dr. Paul Ortiz and “the best political poet in America” by investigative journalist Greg Palast. Sedillo has been featured at over 90 colleges and universities including the University of Cambridge and a recent appearance at San Jose City College. He has been invited by countless cultural institutions, including Casa De Las Americas and has been featured on various media outlets including The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times and C-Span. He is the current literary director of the Center for the Arts in Pomona, California. His first book is called “Mowing Leaves of Grass” published by FLowerSong Books.

IN HINDI MEANING HOPE

ASHA is an Artist, Educator, and Revolutionary.

Originally from LA, ASHA is currently an 8th grade teacher in San Jose. She is an international poet, striving to use art to create radical change.

ASHA has been featured on the cover of Content Magazine, is a feature at many of the prominent poetry events in the Bay Area, as well as active speaker, emcee, and performer at numerous rallies and marches for civil and human rights. ASHA was the focus of a recent short documentary by KQED ARTS.

She was given the Hank Hutchins award by the Santa Clara County Alliance of Black Educators for supporting and advocating for black youth. She is actively training educators across California on equitable practices and building student agency. She is certified as a facilitator through Teaching Tolerance. Her dream is to establish her own K-12 school rooted in restorative justice and social justice based standards.

ASHA consistently uses her platform to voice out against injustice and to speak up for those who have been marginalized and silenced for centuries.

Oakland-based writer MK Chavez is a champion for public health and social justice. She is the author of several chapbooks, including MOTHERMORPHOSIS (Nomadic Press, 2016). DEAR ANIMAL, is her first full-length collection of poetry. Chavez is co-founder and co-curator of the reading series Lyrics & Dirges, curator of the Fruitvale Friday readings at Nomadic Press, co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and recipient of a 2016 Alameda County Arts Leadership Award. She believes in literary confrontation and its capacity to challenge all forms of oppression.

"She approaches words as reference points, rather than endpoints. By reimagining language, she exerts control over her sense of self.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

ARISA WHITE is a Cave Canem fellow, Sarah Lawrence College alumna, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess, Post Pardon, Black Pearl, Perfect on Accident, and “Fish Walking” & Other Bedtime Stories for My Wife won the inaugural Per Diem Poetry Prize. Published by Virtual Artists Collective, her debut full-length collection, Hurrah’s Nest, was a finalist for the 2013 Wheatley Book Awards, 82nd California Book Awards, and nominated for a 44th NAACP Image Awards. Her second collection, A Penny Saved, inspired by the true-life story of Polly Mitchell, was published by Willow Books, an imprint of Aquarius Press in 2012. Her newest full-length collection, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, was published by Augury Books and nominated for the 29th Lambda Literary Awards. Most recently, Arisa co-authored, with Laura Atkins, Biddy Mason Speaks Up, a middle-grade biography in verse on the midwife and philanthropist Bridget “Biddy” Mason, which is the second book in the Fighting for Justice series.

Arisa was awarded a 2013-14 Cultural Funding grant from the City of Oakland to create the libretto and score for Post Pardon: The Opera, and received, in that same year, an Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation to fund the dear Gerald project, which takes a personal and collective look at absent fathers. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that center narratives of women, queer, and trans people of color.

Selected by the San Francisco Bay Guardian for the 2010 Hot Pink List, Arisa was a 2011-13 member of the PlayGround writers’ pool. Recipient of the inaugural Rose O’Neill Literary House summer residency at Washington College in Maryland, she has also received residencies, fellowships, or scholarships from The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Juniper Summer Writing Institute, Headlands Center for the Arts, Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Hedgebrook, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Prague Summer Program, Fine Arts Work Center, and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2005, 2014, 2016, and 2018, her poetry has been published widely and is featured on the recording WORD with the Jessica Jones Quartet.

A native New Yorker, living in central Maine, Arisa serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press and is an advisory board member for Gertrude. As a visiting scholar at San Francisco State University’s The Poetry Center in 2016, she developed a digital special collections on Black Women Poets in The Poetry Center Archives. Arisa is as an assistant professor in creative writing at Colby College.

For booking inquiries, contact Allison Connor at Jack Jones Literary Arts.