Registering for the open mic is required!  Signing up to read is first come, first served. You can add yourself to the reader's queue upon registration (below). 

Please join California Poets in the Schools for a community open mic at 7pm, Sunday, June 27th.  The event is part of a quarterly series of open mic events meant to foster community amongst our network, and to highlight our fantastic poets.  Each event will spotlight one or two poets from the CalPoets' network as featured readers, and an emcee (also from the network). On the 27th, our featured readers will launch the event with a 15 minute reading (each) and then we'll transition into an open mic.  

• teens 14+ & adults welcome
• register online & join link will be sent before the event
• event will occur on Zoom
• event will not be livestreamed
• there will be time for 20 open mic readers, give or take
• each reader will have 3(ish) minutes to read or perform
• reader slots are first come, first served... If you are interested in reading, please note in the registration form.
• thanks for bringing poems that are fit for all ages 14+

Emcee:

Susan Terence has won several awards for her writing, including a DeWar’s Young Writer’s Recognition Award for the State of California, the Audre Lord award for Fiction, Highsmith award for playwriting, San Francisco District 11 awards, and Ann Fields and Browning awards for dramatic narrative poetry. Her poetry has been published in Southern Poetry Review, Nebraska Review, Negative Capability, Lake Effect, Americas Review, St. Petersburg Review, San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Halftones to Jubilee, and several other magazines and anthologies. She has completed a novel dealing with the dissolution of a traditional Latino community that creates new family structures and alliances while struggling with the larger issues of deportation, gentrification, and homophobia.

She’s been named Creative Writing Teacher of the year by the SF Unified School District. Her students have won innumerable literary arts prizes from both the San Francisco Unified School District and the River of Words International Environmental Poetry contest. Her high school students’ poetry visual arts projects have been displayed at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. She has also been a Poet in Residence at the De Young and Legion of Honor Museums in San Francisco, and led poetry, performance, and art workshops at the Exploratorium, and poetry at the California Academy of Sciences. 

Featured Readers: 

Ernesto M. Garay is an award-winning poet. He holds two master’s degrees: one in Comparative Literature and a second one in Ethnic Studies.   As an Ethnic Studies Instructor, Ernesto teaches ethnic studies at the Lake County Campus of Woodland Community College. He is also experienced in teaching Ethnic Studies poetry to high-risk K-12 students and adults as a form of healing, self-expression, and Culturally Responsive Action using free verse poetry and storytelling.

Most recently, his book of poetry: Reverberating Voices has been accepted for publication by Flower Song Press.  Traversing the borders of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico, and California, it speaks about the experience of immigration, racism, healing the spirit, displacement, and love during the Central American Civil Wars of the 1970s and 1980s.

He is passionate about social justice and advocating for the Latino immigrant community.  Immensely creative and accomplished, he inspires us and moves among us with unfailing humility, generosity, and grace.

Claire Blotter has taught performance poetry at San Francisco State University, College of Marin, Dominican University & John F. Kennedy University. She represented San Francisco and placed second with her team at National Poetry Slams in Boston and Chicago. She has published 3 chapbooks, and her poems are widely published in journals and anthologies. 

She wrote and directed five community theater productions with dance, electronic music, video and ritual, including BLACK BIRD, SING! funded by the Marin Community Foundation. She directed the Bolinas Guerrilla Theater Troupe bringing awareness to the destruction of redwood forests & migratory songbirds–  & to other environmental/political issues.

Claire was a Finalist for the 2018 Fischer Poetry Prize & judged the competition for the Colorado Talking Gourds Institute this last year. She will be teaching a ZOOM Bay Area-New York Performance Poetry/Art workshop this summer, updated info at claireblotter.com.