Six local poets, including anthology editor David Allen Sullivan, join Hannah Tool to read and discuss poems from Magpie on the Gallows: Poems on the Art of Bosch and Bruegel (Carbonation Press). The anthology, co-edited by Allen Sullivan and his late mother, Margaret Allen Sullivan, is a celebration and exploration of the ubiquitous, unsettling, curious worlds of Hiernymous Bosch and Peter Bruegel the Elder. 

Jessica Breheny, Taylor Gorman, and Ken Weisner start the hour reading pieces that pick apart and zero in on the weird and unwieldy detail in the paintings they responded to, then Nancy Miller Gomez, Adela Najarro - who also reads a poem from the anthology by Natalia Treviño - and David Allen Sullivan join to share poems that weave the personal into the fabric of the pieces they responded to.

(STRANGE IN THE BEST WAY!!)

Lexi kicks off the interview by reading Susan Browne's, "Strange Ode." Then we talk about Lexi's newest book, Let Go With The Lights On, Winner of the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book Prize

Lexi Pelle was the winner of the Academy of American Poets Award and the 2022 Jack McCarthy Book Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Plume, West Branch, Rattle, 32 Poems, and River Styx. She is the author of the poetry collection Let Go With The Lights On (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023).

Poet Amber Coverdale Sumrall joins Julie Murphy to talk about her new collection, That Other Song, and a writing life shaped by memory, landscape, love, loss, and close attention to the natural world. Amber reads poems from the new book and reflects on her mother’s influence, her many journeys to Ireland, the role of silence and writing retreats in her creative practice, and decades spent nurturing Santa Cruz’s literary community through In Celebration of the Muse and Hummingbird Press. The conversation begins with Marilyn Robertson's “You Say."

Amber is the author of Litany of Wings and Refuge and has edited or co-edited thirteen anthologies. For twenty-eight years she co-produced In Celebration of the Muse, and she received a Gail Rich Award in 2010.

Amber will read from That Other Song at Hive Live on September 15, alongside Jen Siraganian, who will also be celebrating a new book.

Roxi Power, co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, Winter in America (Still: Poets, Writers, and Artists Respond to a Fractured World, talks with Dion O’Reilly about poems in the book by Carolyn Forché, Maxine Chernoff, Andrew Schelling, Gary Copeland Lilley, Brenda Hillman, Rodrigo Toscano, and Donna de la Perrière. With their usual verve and humor, Power and O’Reilly highlight the book’s depth and variety of styles.

Featuring color art and the work of 200 writers–Joy Harjo,Cornelius Eady, Anne Waldman, Nathaniel Mackey, Ellen Bass and more–the sequel anthology to Winter in America (Again (Carbonation Press) composes roadmaps inward to our deeper feelings and outward toward new forms of resistance andwitness during an unprecedented time.

Join our launch event at Bookshop Santa Cruz, Aug. 25, 7pm with readers Victoria Bañales, Julia Chiapella, Farnaz Fatemi, Nancy Miller Gomez, Dion O’Reilly, Roxi Power, Ken Weisner.

Follow us at winterinamerica.org for information on ordering the book and events.

Jillian Stacia buzzes in to read Ellen Bass’s “The Thing is” and selections from her new collection Set the Bone (Arcana Poetry Press). Her work pulls threads from the outrage and awe of existing in these dystopian times as a woman, partner, parent, and poet, and celebrates the women before her as “tubes of unused lipstick." Her humor and penchant for singing a borrowed line seep joy throughout this conversation which reminds us that we all contain "multitudes, babe.”

What transforms a grasshopper into part of a rapacious horde? Poet, essayist, playwright and activist Joel O'Connor uses his most recent work, Locust, as a bridge between science and politics, between our nature as humans and the world around us. Like a true scientist, he hypothesizes. Listen to this interview and be transported to an Australia that exists beneath and alongside the contemporary culture, a place of regard and humility in the face of all that threatens the natural world.

Farnaz Fatemi interviews current Santa Cruz Youth Poet Laureate Vicky Tinnell, along with Bella Dowd, Felice Rickwald and Ash Raznick. Hear poems and insights from each of these fabulous teen poets, all members of the current YPL cohort.

More information about the YPL program here.

Information about the poets along with more excerpts from their work can be found here.

What does it mean to inherit a story? How do memory, family, race, and identity shape the poems we write—and how do poems, in turn, reshape the stories we tell ourselves?In this episode of The Hive Poetry Collective, host Julie Murphy welcomes award-winning poet Lisa Low to discuss her remarkable new collection, Replica (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026). The conversation begins with Tiana Clark's exuberant "Broken Ode for the Epigraph," opening a rich discussion about literary lineage, artistic permission, revision, and the transformative power of poetry.Together they explore the craft behind several poems from Replica, including "Replica," "People Who Look Like You," "Palinode," and "On Effort," examining how ordinary objects, sharp observation, humor, and self-interrogation become vehicles for profound emotional and philosophical inquiry.Lisa Low is the author of Replica and the chapbook Crown for the Girl Inside. A recipient of the 2023 Pushcart Prize and the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Maryland, she lives in Chicago.

Ally Ang buzzes into the hive to read poems from their book and also to share the poem "Friends with no Benefits" by Megan Fernandes.

Ally is the author of Let the Moon Wobble (Alice James Books 2025). A National Endowment for the Arts fellow and MacDowell fellow, Ally’s work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, The Seattle Met, and elsewhere. They co-host Other People’s Poems, a poetry open mic and reading series in Seattle.

Flags Sprouting Everywhere. Join Hannah Tool and Farnaz Fatemi as we read poems which unpack iconic American language and make room for more of us in the current cultural landscape. Poems by: Jean Prokott, Ada Limón, Natalie Diaz, Elana Bell, Julia Bouwsma, Aileen Cassinetto and Naomi Shihab Nye.

"A New National Anthem" Ada Limón

"They Don't Love You Like I Love You" Natalie Diaz

"Flags" Elana Bell

"There are No Kings in America" Aileen Cassinetto

"No Explosions" Naomi Shihab Nye