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, March 28th.  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 13th, our featured readers will launch the event with a 15 minute reading (each) and then we'll then 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:

Angelina Leaños is a student at California Lutheran University with the hopes to become a published author, as well as an English teacher. In high school, she won the Poetry Out Loud competition both at the school and county level and has since returned as a coach to other participants. Leaños has had several poems published and organizes a monthly poetry open mic with the Ventura County Arts Council in partnership with the Oxnard public library.  She is the newest board member at California Poets in the Schools.

Featured Readers: 

Fernando Albert Salinas is on the Board of Directors for California Poets in the Schools, the Ventura County Area Coordinator, and a Master Poet-Teacher. He is an Adjunct Professor of English at Ventura College, the Ventura County Area Coordinator and recitation coach for the California Arts Council’s Poetry Out Loud program, and the Editor-In-Chief for Spit Shine Publishing. As Literary Arts Program Coordinator for the Ventura County Arts Council, he focuses on enhancing the presence and appreciation of poetry, and the spoken word. Look for his upcoming book Toxic Masculinity: The Misadventures of a Barrio Boy forthcoming from FlowerSong Press.

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 received her B.A. in English Education with additional studies in Spanish and Creative Arts from the University of Arizona in Tucson; and her M.A. in Inter-Disciplinary Arts and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She has performed her work in bookstores, libraries, colleges, and theaters around the country, presenting oral theatrical interpretations of her poetry, dramatic monologues, and fiction. She has served as a writer and performing artist in residence through the Montana, North Carolina, and Fulton County (Atlanta) Georgia Arts Councils and through Arts in Arizona Towns, on the Tohono O’odham Reservation outside Tucson, through Writer’s Voice, and now throughout Northern California via California Poets in the Schools (CPITS). She has also served as CPITS’ San Francisco Area Coordinator for over 30 years. She has written and been awarded over 50 grants (including grants from the San Francisco Giants) to lead poetry and performing arts workshops in San Francisco schools in grades K-12.  She utilizes drama, oral interpretation, art, music, and puppetry in her teaching. 

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.