Perhaps our most appropriate guest ever on The Hive: former Santa Cruzan Erica Gillingham discusses her debut poetry chapbook, The Human Body Is a Hive, a rich collection about queer love and queer family-making. Listen to Erica read from the book and share her pursuit of telling lesbian love stories in poems, “making a baby with science,” and other revealing topics. With a guest cameo from her newborn son.

For U.S. orders, check out bookdepository.org

Follow Erica on IG or Twitter @ericareadsqueer

Listen HERE as Shelley Wong reads from and talks about her debut collection, As She Appears, out May 10 from Yes Yes Books. Shelley talks with Farnaz Fatemi about the making of the book, building your own canon of self-love, and how poems help when the world erases or distorts. Find out why Electric Lit called Shelley Wong “the poet-queen the world needs right now.” 

Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, May 2022), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and Vermont Studio Center. She is an affiliate artist at Headlands Center for the Arts and lives in San Francisco.

Listen HERE!

Ken Weisner chats with Julie Murphy about odes, owls and homages. Ken has published three volumes of poetry with Santa Cruz’s own Hummingbird Press, including Anything on Earth in 2010 and Cricket to Star in 2019.  Ken edits Red Wheelbarrow through De Anza College, where he also teaches. Ken coordinates, with Poetry Center San José, the annual Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize—this year’s final judge, Juan Felipe Herrera. In an earlier stage of life, Ken earned a doctorate in comparative literature from UC Santa Cruz and an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. He also teaches poetry writing at Salinas Valley State Prison, currently using remote lesson plans. Please join us to hear poems from Ken’s new manuscript and a lively conversation.