Second Sunday Readings

Start the week off with poetry! 

Join me for the first 2nd Sunday Reading of the year as I host Shiksha Dheda, Julia Guez, and Matthew E. Henry. It's going to be wonderful.

Shiksha Dheda is a South African of Indian descent. She uses writing to express her OCD and depression roller-coaster ventures, but mostly to avoid working on her master’s degree. Sometimes, she dabbles in photography, painting, and baking lopsided layered cakes. Her writing has been featured (on/forthcoming) in Wigleaf, Passages North, Brittle Paper, Door is a jar, and Epoch Press amongst others. She is the Pushcart-nominated author of Washed Away (Alien Buddha Press, 2021). She rambles annoyingly at Twitter: @ShikshaWrites. You can find (or ignore her) at https://shikshadheda.wixsite.com/writing

Julia Guez is a writer and translator based in the city of New York. The Certain Body is her second collection of poetry, written while she was recovering from COVID in the spring of 2020. For her poetry, fiction and translations, Guez has been awarded the Discovery/Boston Review Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship and The John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize in Translation as well as a translation fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For the last decade, Guez has worked with Teach For America, New York; she’s currently the senior managing director of design and implementation there. She teaches creative writing at NYU and Rutgers. You can find more of her work online at www.juliaguez.net and if you are so inclined, can buy all of her books directly from Four Way Books, Bookshop.Org or your local bookstore.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of the Colored page (Sundress Publications, 2022), Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020) and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020). He is EIC of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes. MEH’s poetry appears in The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Shenandoah, and Solstice. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. He writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground at www.MEHPoeting.com.

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.

Jenn Givhan is a Mexican-American and indigenous poet, novelist, and transformational coach from the Southwestern desert and the recipient of poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices. Jenn is the author of five full-length poetry collections, most recently Belly to the Brutal (Wesleyan University Press), and the novels Trinity Sight, Jubilee, and River Woman, River Demon (Blackstone Press). Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, POETRY, and many others. Follow her at jennifergivhan.com.

Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Boulevard, Conduit, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches creative writing for various organizations including Beyond Baroque, Litro Magazine, The Writer’s Center in DC, and elsewhere.

Yeva Johnson, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and musician whose work appears in Bellingham Review, Essential Truths:  The Bay Area in Color Anthology, Sinister Wisdom, Yemassee, and elsewhere, explores interlocking caste systems and possibilities for human co-existence in our biosphere.  Yeva is a past Show Us Your Spines Artist-in-Residence (RADAR Productions/SF Public Library), winner of the 2020 Mostly Water Art & Poetry Splash Contest, and poet in QTPOC4SHO, a San Francisco Bay Area artists’ collective.  Yeva’s first chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, will be published by Nomadic Press in 2023.

Sera Gamble’s poetry has appeared in publications such as Typehouse, Sky Island Journal, Tinderbox, Nine Mile Magazine, Harpur Palate and Birdcoat Quarterly. She also writes film and television; most recently, she co-created the TV series YOU and THE MAGICIANS. Sera lives in Los Angeles with her husband and dog, who also enjoy poetry.

Shannon Wolf: She is a British writer and teacher living in Denver, Colorado. She received a joint MA-MFA in Poetry at McNeese State University and also has degrees from Lancaster University and the University of Chichester. She is the Co-Curator of the Poets in Pajamas Reading Series. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction (which can also be found under the name Shannon Bushby) have appeared in Bending Genres, The Forge, No Contact Mag, and HAD, among others. You can find her on social media @helloshanwolf.

Our next poet is Addie Tsai, a queer, nonbinary artist and writer of color. They teach Creative Writing at the College of William & Mary. Addie teaches in Goddard College's MFA Program in Interdisciplinary Arts and Regis University's Mile High MFA Program in Creative Writing. They earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman's University. She is the author of the queer Asian young adult novel Dear Twinand Unwieldy Creatures, an adult queer biracial Asian retelling of Frankenstein. They are the Fiction Co-Editor and Editor of Features & Reviews at Anomaly, Staff Writer at Spectrum South, and Founding Editor & Editor in Chief at just femme & dandy.

Our next poet is Malvika Jolly. She is a writer and translator. Her poetry, essays, and criticism are featured or forthcoming in Chicagomagazine, Frontier Poetry, Liminal Transit Review, The Margins, MIZNA, Poetry Online, Poetry Northwest, South Side Weekly, and Violet, Indigo, Blue, Etc. She curates the New Third World, a monthly poetry reading series inspired by the Non-Aligned Movement.

2nd Sunday Readings is inviting you to a very special reading from when there are nine

when there are nine is a chapbook of poems in tribute to the life and work of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Award-winning poet Patricia Smith penned the forward and contributors of when there are nine include Faylita Hicks, Brian Turner, Chelsea Dingman, and 2nd Sunday curator Siân Killingsworth, among others. With RBG as the focal point, the chapbook underscores the human condition and creates connections across borders and boundaries.

When asked how many women on the Supreme Court will be enough, Ruth Bader Ginsburg once replied, "When there are nine." The cultural and feminist icon's indelible impact on innumerable people comes alive in these poems. The poets testify. With grace, dissent, and power, these poets do her justice. This is a necessary and inspiring literary act. It is also a reminder of the work still to be done. --- Lee Herrick

Website:  https://whentherearenine.com/ (which has poet bios and order link, etc.)

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WHEN-THERE-ARE-NINE-110892148327128

Stephen Thomas Roberts is a poet living in the Mid-Hudson Valley of New York, with occasional side trips into Manhattan where he practices law. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including The Tishman Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Blue Unicorn, Third Wednesday, The Cape Rock, The Driftwood Press, The Worcester Review, The Ocean State Review, and Cagibi, among others. He has been a finalist in the William Wisdom-William Faulkner Writing Competition and for the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize. He considers Anne Waldman, Diane di Prima, and Sharon Olds to be influences.

Our next poet is David Baker. He is author of thirteen books of poetry, recently Whale Fall, published in July by W. W. Norton, and Swift: New and Selected Poems, as well as six books of prose about poetry. Among his awards are prizes and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, Mellon Foundation, and Poetry Society of America. Baker’s poetry and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry, and others.  He served for many years as Poetry Editor of The Kenyon Review, where he continues to curate the annual eco-poetry issue, “Nature’s Nature.” Baker lives in Granville, Ohio.

Our next poet is Rebecca Foust. Her new book, ONLY, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in September 2022. Foust is the author of three chapbooks including The Unexploded Ordnance Bin, winner of the 2018 Swan Scythe Chapbook Award and four books including Paradise Drive, winner of the Press 53 Award for Poetry. Recognitions include the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry judged by Kaveh Akbar, the CP Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes, a 2017-19 Marin Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from The Frost Place, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. Recent poems are in The Cincinnati Review, The Hudson Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, POETRY, and elsewhere. 

Ashley Kunsa is a poet and writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her prose has been published in the Los Angeles Review, Forge Literary Magazine, Sycamore Review, and The Writer Magazine, and her poetry is forthcoming from Massachusetts Review, Bennington Review, Radar Poetry, and Cream City Review, among other journals. Currently she is assistant professor of creative writing at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT, where she lives with her husband and two children. Find her online at www.ashleykunsa.com.

Mab Jones has read her work all across the UK, in the US, France, Ireland, and Japan. She is the author of three poetry collections and three pamphlets, and the winner of various accolades, including a John Tripp Spoken Poetry award, the Word Factory Neil Gaiman Short Story competition, a Royal Society of Literature award, the Aurora Poetry Prize, the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival Prize, and the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize.  She has presented on BBC Radio 4, written for the New York Times, teaches at Cardiff University, and is resident writer in Cardiff Wetlands. http://www.mabjones.com/ 

Erin Redfern’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Hopkins Review, New Ohio Review, New World Writing, and The Massachusetts Review. She earned her PhD at Northwestern University, where she was a Fellow at the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence. Her chapbook is Spellbreaking and Other Life Skills (Blue Lyra Press). She has served as poetry judge for the San Francisco Unified School District’s Arts Festival and a reader for Poetry Center San Jose’s Caesura and DMQ Review. She teaches poetry classes and workshops online. www.erinredfern.net.

Nancy Miller Gomez’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2021, Best New Poets 2021, The Adroit Journal, New Ohio Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, River Styx, The Rumpus, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Punishment, was published in 2018 as part of the Rattle chapbook series. She co-founded, with Ellen Bass, an organization that provides poetry workshops to incarcerated women and men. She grew up in Kansas and currently lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Leonora Simonovis (she/her/ella) is the author of Study of the Raft, winner of the 2021 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Kweli Journal, Diode Poetry Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Rumpus, among others. She has been the recipient of fellowships from Women Who Submit (WWS), VONA, and the Poetry Foundation. A Venezuelan American poet, Leonora lives in San Diego, CA, and teaches Latin American literature and creative writing in Spanish at the University of San Diego. 

George Lober is the author of two books of poetry Shift of Light and A Bridge to There. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and e-zines, including the Monterey Poetry Review, Homestead Review, Eclectic Literary Forum (ELF); Quarry West; The Sandhill Review; Porter Gulch Review, Red Wheelbarrow, The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poetry and The Listening Eye. He is a former winner of the Ruth Cable Memorial Prize for Poetry and currently lives in Monterey, California. 

Barbara Quick won the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize for her debut chapbook, The Light on Sifnos (2021: Blue Light Press). A widely published writer, she is best known as author of the 2007 novel Vivaldi’s Virgins, translated into a dozen languages and currently in development as a mini-series. Five of Barbara’s poems were recorded by Garrison Keillor and featured on The Writer’s Almanac last year. She has been the featured guest several times on Grace Cavalieri’s program from the Library of Congress, “The Poet and the Poem.” Barbara’s newest novel is What Disappears (May 17, 2022: Regal House).

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, is forthcoming with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in May; 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.