Second Sunday Readings

Sonia Greenfield (she/they) is the author of two recent collections of poetry, All Possible Histories (Riot in Your Throat, December 2022) and Helen of Troy is High AF (Harbor Editions, January 2023). She is the author of Letdown (White Pine Press, 2020), American Parable (Autumn House, 2018) and Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market (Codhill Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, Southern Review, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College, edits the Rise Up Review, and advocates for both neurodiversity and the decentering of cis/het white hegemony. 

Megan Freshley is a queer poet living in Portland, OR, and author of the chapbook Hypnic Jerk (The Hunger Press 2021). She is a graduate of Antioch College, the Esalen Institute, and the MFA program at Portland State University. Her poems appear in Portland Review, Witch Craft Magazine, 1001, Old Pal, and others.

Jared Harél is the author of Let Our Bodies Change the Subject, which won the 2022 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) and Go Because I Love You (Diode Editions, 2018.) He’s been awarded the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review, as well as the William Matthews Poetry Prize from Asheville Poetry Review. Harél’s poems have recently appeared in such journals as 32 Poems, Beloit Poetry Journal, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Southern Review and The Sun. He teaches writing, plays drums, and lives in Westchester, NY with his family. 

Barb Reynolds is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of two poetry chapbooks: Boxing Without Gloves and Drawing Words, both on Finishing Line Press; and the irreverent pandemic trilogy Isolation Journal, Volumes 1-3, on Bookbaby.com. Barb spent 22 years as an emergency response child abuse investigator, and she founded the Second Sunday Poetry Series in 2017. For the first three years of the series, poets read together at a pub — and in 2021 Barb handed the series off to Siân to continue on Zoom. Barb’s poetry has been published widely, and her work can be found on her website: barbreynolds.com

Janet Jennings’ poetry and flash fiction have appeared in 32 Poems, Baltimore Review, Nimrod, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, and Verse Daily, among others. She is the author of the chapbook Traces in Water. For twenty years she owned and ran Sunspire, a natural foods company. Janet lives in San Anselmo, California, with her husband and twin daughters. You can find more of her work here: janetjenningspoet.com/

Siân Killingsworth’s poems have been published in The Rise Up Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Typehouse Literary Journal, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), & other journals and anthologies including When There Are Nine, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg tribute anthology. She holds an MFA in poetry from The New School and is the host/curator of the Second Sunday Readings series. Find her online at secondsundayreadings.com and on Facebook.

Ken Haas lives in San Francisco where he works in healthcare and sponsors a poetry writing program at the UCSF Children's Hospital. Ken’s poems have appeared in over 50 journals and numerous anthologies. His first full poetry collection, Borrowed Light, praised by Joe Millar and Ellen Bass, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, won a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Rubery Book Award. Ken has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award, and has participated several times in the Community of Writers, on whose Board of Directors he currently serves. Please visit him online at kenhaas.org.

Elizabeth M. Castillo is a British-Mauritian poet, writer, and a two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Elizabeth explores the different countries and cultures she grew up with, as well as themes of race & ethnicity, motherhood, womanhood, language, love, loss and grief, and a touch of magical realism. Her writing has been featured in publications and anthologies in the UK, US, Australia, Mexico and the Middle East. Her bilingual, debut collection Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, y Otras Locuras is for sale on Amazon, and her debut chapbook "Not Quite an Ocean" will be published by Nine Pens Press in 2022/2023. You can connect with her on Twitter and IG as @EMCWritesPoetry, or on her website www.elizabethmcastillo.net. 

Donna Spruijt-Metz is a poet, a psychology professor, and a recent MacDowell Fellow. Her first career was as a classical flutist. She lived in the Netherlands for 22 years and translates Dutch poetry to English. Her poetry and translations appear in Copper Nickel, RHINO, Poetry Northwest, the Tahoma Literary Review, the Inflectionist Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbooks are Slippery Surfaces (Finishing Line Press) and And Haunt the World (a collaboration with Flower Conroy, Ghost City Press). Camille Dungy (Orion Magazine) chose her full-length General Release from the Beginning of the World (January 2023, Free Verse Editions) as one of the 14 Recommended Poetry Collections for Winter 2022. She gets restless.

Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, and Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate for 2023 & 2024, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective. She was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly.  Some of her poems and lyric essays appear in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Tab Journal, Pedestal Review, Nowruz Journal, Grist Journal and Tupelo Quarterly.  More at farnazfatemi.com

Rebecca Evans is a memoirist, poet, and essayist with two MFAs: one in creative nonfiction and the other in poetry from Sierra Nevada University. She teaches creative nonfiction at Boise State University. In addition to writing, she mentors high school girls in the juvenile system and teaches poetry for those in recovery. She also co-hosts the radio program, Writer to Writer.  Rebecca is a disabled and decorated war veteran, a Jew, a gardener, a mother, a worrier, and more. She carries a passion for sharing difficult stories about vulnerability, woven with mysticism. She lives in Idaho with her sons, her Newfies, and her calico cat. Find her at rebeccaevanswriter.com

Matthew Thorburn’s most recent book is String, published by Louisiana State University Press. He’s also the author of seven previous collections of poetry, including The Grace of Distance, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Dear Almost, which received the Lascaux Prize. His work has been recognized with a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, as well as fellowships from the Bronx and New Jersey arts councils. Originally from Michigan and for many years a New Yorker, he lives with his family near Princeton, New Jersey. His poems, dogs and chickens appear regularly on Instagram (@thorburnpoet). 

Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of THEOPHANIES, selected as the Editors’ Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award, and forthcoming with Alice James Books in January 2024. A 2022 Djanikian Scholar, her poems appear in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Pleiades, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Sarah is the editor of Palette Poetry and lives in Lewisburg, PA where she is a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University.

Allison Thung is a poet and project manager from Singapore. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Chestnut Review, ANMLY, Heavy Feather Review, Maudlin House, Lumiere Review, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @poetrybyallison or at www.allisonthung.com.

Shei Sanchez is writer, photographer, and teacher from Jersey City, New Jersey. A Best of the Net nominee, Shei’s work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including, most recently One Art Journal, Still: The Journal, One by Jacar Press, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, The Braided Way, and Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak. When she is not working at a health foundation in West Virginia, she is herding goats, writing in the woods, teaching yoga, and trying to be a good human. Shei lives across the Hocking River with her partner and their family of farm animals in Appalachian Ohio.

Guest Host Raegen Pietrucha writes, edits, and consults creatively and professionally. Her chapbook, An Animal I Can't Name, won the 2015 Two of Cups Press competition. Her debut poetry collection, Head of a Gorgon, was published by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in 2022 and she has a memoir in progress. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she was an assistant editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has been published in Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Connect with her at raegenmp.wordpress.com and on Twitter @freeradicalrp.

Zoë Fay-Stindt (she/Z/they) is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, featured or forthcoming in places such as Southern Humanities, Ninth Letter, and Poet Lore, and gathered into a chapbook, Bird Body, winner of Cordella Press’ inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. She lives in Ames, Iowa, where she is an MFA candidate at Iowa State University and community farm volunteer. You can learn more at www.zoefaystindt.com.

Krista Lukas is a writer whose essays, stories, and interviews have been published in The Sun, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the author of a poetry collection, Fans of My Unconscious, poems from which have been selected for The Best American Poetry 2006 and The Writer’s Almanac. Raised in a small-business family—with Old Country ancestors who were farmers, mail carriers, dishwashers, risk-takers, and immigrants—she took detours into circuit board assembly and teaching. Yet she never lost her love, sparked by her favorite teacher in third grade, of reading and writing.

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry and a back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie was also named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut poetry full-length, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, was published in 2021 by Cephalopress. Her fiction debut, Something Dead in Everything, is now out with ELJ Editions. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile or @NotALitMag, where she throws random writing contests and open mics.