Hive Poetry Collective Mission
To bring a diverse community together in appreciation of all kinds of poetry by all kinds of people.
The Hive is:
Members
Farnaz Fatemi (Founder)
Dion O’Reilly (Founder)
Julia Chiapella
Julie Murphy
Volunteers
Lisa Allen Ortiz (Founder)
Billy Butler
Victoria Bañales
Emeritus Members
Danusha Laméris (Founder)
Erin Redfern
Members
Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian-American writer in Santa Cruz. Her debut book, Sister Tongue, won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, judged by Tracy K. Smith. Farnaz’s poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming in Grist Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, Crab Orchard Review, Tahoma Literary Review, phren-z.org, Tupelo Quarterly, and several anthologies (including The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me). Farnaz taught Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1997-2018 and has been awarded residencies from Djerassi, PLAYA, Marble House Project, Vermont Studio Center and I-Park Foundation.
Dion O’Reilly’s first book, Ghost Dogs ( Terrapin Books, 2020) has won or been shortlisted for a number of prizes including the Catamaran Poetry Prize and The Eric Hoffer Award. Her second book Sadness of The Apex Predator was chosen for The Portage Poetry Series out of University of Wisconsin. Her work appears in Missouri Review, Narrative, The Slowdown, Rattle, The Sun and elsewhere. She leads ongoing, private Zoom workshops with small groups of poets from all over the United States and Canada and is a screener for Catamaran Literary Reader.
Julia Chiapella’s poetry has appeared in Avatar Review, Edison Literary Review, I-70 Review, The MacGuffin, Midwest Quarterly, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, phren-Z, Pirene’s Fountain, The Wax Paper, and West Branch among others. She co-founded Santa Cruz Writes and is the retired director of the Young Writers Program, which she established in 2012. She received the Gail Rich Award in 2017 for creative contributions to Santa Cruz County and has taught as both a classroom teacher and a writing specialist.
Julie Murphy’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, The Buddhist Poetry Review, CALYX, Common Ground Review, The Louisville Review, Massachusetts Review, The New Ohio Review Online, The Red Wheelbarrow, and SWWIM, among other journals and anthologies. A licensed psychotherapist, Julie developed Embodied Writing™. She is a founding member of the Right to Write Press. She teaches poetry at Salinas Valley State Prison, these days with remote lessons. Julie lives in Santa Cruz County, CA and is a member of the Community of Writers.
Volunteers
Lisa Allen Ortiz is the author of two poetry collections: Stem, winner of the 2021 Idaho Prize and Guide to the Exhibit winner of the 2016 Perugia Press Prize. Her short stories and poems have appeared in Prime Number Magazine, Colorado Review and The Literary Review among other places. She is co-translator with Sara Rivera of The Blinding Star, selected poems of the Peruvian poet Blanca Varela, a book which won the 2021 Norther California Book Award for Poetry in Translation. She is co-chair and founder of American Listening Project.
Billy Butler is is a writer and educator from Northern California. He is the author of the chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press, selected for the 2020 Poets House Showcase. His poems have appeared in Assaracus, Bodega Magazine, Hobart, Tinderbox Poetry, Quiet Lightning, and other journals. He has received support from the Catamaran Writing Conference, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and the Community of Writers.
Victoria Bañales teaches English at Cabrillo College, is founder and editor of Xinachtli Journal—Journal X, and a member of the Writers of Color Collective-Santa Cruz County. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and journals, including Translocalities/Translocalidades: Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Américas, Beyond the Frame: Women of Color and Visual Representations, The Acentos Review, Cloud Women’s Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and more. She is the recipient of a Porter Gulch Review Best Poetry Award and Cabrillo EOPS Instructor of the Year Award. She lives in Watsonville, CA.
Emeritus Members
Danusha Laméris is the 2019-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz and a graduate of UCSC where she studied Studio Art. Her book The Moons of August was the winner of the 2013 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, and her new book, Bonfire Opera, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2020. Her work has appeared in: Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times Magazine, New Letters, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, The SUN, and Tin House.
Erin Redfern shared the Poetry Society of America’s Robert H. Winner Award with Metta Sama, and in 2020 she was runner-up for the James Hearst Poetry Prize. She has served as the poetry judge for the San Francisco Unified School District Arts Festival and as a reader for DMQ Review and Poetry Center San Jose’s print publication, Caesura. Erin earned her PhD in English at Northwestern University, where she also worked as a Fellow at the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence. After returning to the Bay Area she taught in the English Department at St. Francis High School and at The Harker School. She has over twenty years of classroom experience and currently teaches writing as a tutor, workshop leader, and editor.
The Hive Poetry Collective 