The Hive Live! presents
William Ward Butler & Emilie Lygren
An Important Update:
Hello wonderful poetry-loving people! Due to a family medical event, Stephen Kuusisto is unable to attend. We are delighted that William Ward Butler will read with Emilie Lygren. We recognize this change is sudden, but know it will be a night of memorable poetry!
William Ward Butler is the poet laureate of Los Gatos, California. He is the author of the chapbook Life History from Ghost City Press. A finalist for The Arkansas International’s C.D. Wright Prize for Poetry and Terrain.org’s Annual Poetry Contest, his recent poems have appeared in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, Five Points, Hunger Mountain, Switchyard, and other journals. He is the co-creator of Frozen Sea, an online poetry journal publishing exceptional work from early-career poets in a mobile-friendly format.
Emilie Lygren is a nonbinary poet and educator whose work is grounded in curiosity and reverence. Her poems have appeared in over twenty literary journals and anthologies, and her first book of poetry, What We Were Born For, was selected as the Poetry Foundation’s monthly book pick in 2022. Currently, Emilie is a professor of creative writing, a poet in the schools, and at work on an anthology of poems on mental health for teens. For more of her work and words, visit: https://emilielygren.com/
The Hive Live! presents
Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, and Susan Browne
Register Here!
Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux’s most recent collection is Life on Earth. She is also author of Only As The Day Is Long: New and Selected, The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award, all from W.W. Norton; and recently released a handbook, Finger Exercises for Poetry. She teaches poetry at Pacific University’s low residency MFA Program. Laux is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Joseph Millar’s poems arise from the currents of felt experience: work, love, filial connection, poems of life and death. His work has won fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. Shine is his sixth collection. He teaches in Pacific University’s low residency MFA and lives in Richmond, CA.
Susan Browne’s poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, The Sun, The Southern Review, Rattle, New Ohio Review, Subtropics, On the Seawall, American Life in Poetry, and 180 More, Extraordinary Poems for Every Day. She has published four books of poetry: Monster Mash, Just Living, Zephyr, and Buddha’s Dogs. Awards include the Four Way Books Intro Prize, Los Angeles Poetry Festival Prize, Steel Toe Books Editor’s Prize, the Catamaran Poetry Prize and the James Dickey Poetry Prize. She received a fellowship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She was an English Professor for 34 years and currently teaches poetry workshops online. She lives in Northern California. www.susanbrownepoems.com
The Hive Live! presents
Kirk Glaser & Jessica Cohn
Register Here!
Poet and prose writer Kirk Glaser’s work has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Threepenny Review, Nimrod, Chicago Quarterly Review, Catamaran, and elsewhere. Awards for his work include an American Academy of Poets prize, C. H. Jones National Poetry Prize, University of California Poet Laureate Award, Gertrude Stein Fiction Award Finalist/The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, New Millennium Writings Contest Finalist, and Richard Eberhart Poetry Award/Southeast Literary Review. His poetry collection, The House That Fire Built, will be published in 2025 by MadHat Press. A Teaching Professor at Santa Clara University, he serves as Director of the Creative Writing Program and Faculty Advisor to the Santa Clara Review. He is co-editor of the anthology, New California Writing 2013, Heyday.
Michigan native Jessica Cohn has made homes in Illinois, New York, and most recently, California, where she’s developed a poetry practice. GRATITUDE DIARY, the award-winning first poetry collection from this long-time nonfiction writer, follows an arc from grief and regret to illumination—from broken islands to the medicine creek. For additional background, please see jessicacohn.net Canyon Press.
The Hive Live! presents Francisco Aragón and Adela Najarro
Tuesday, May 13th, 2025, 7 p.m.
Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. His books include, After Rubén (2020), Glow of Our Sweat (2010), and Puerta de Sol (2005). He’s also the editor of, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007). His poetry has appeared in over twenty anthologies, and he has read his work widely, including at universities, bookstores, art galleries, the Dodge Poetry Festival and the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. A native of San Francisco, CA, he is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where he directs their literary initiative, Letras Latinas, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024. For more information, visit: http://franciscoaragon.net
Adela Najarro‘s fifth poetry collection, Variations in Blue, was selected by the Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Collaborative for publication in March, 2025. The California Arts Council recognized her as an established artist for the Central California Region, appointing her as an Individual Artist Fellow. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area.
The 43rd Annual
In Celebration of the Muse
Friday March 21st, 6:30 p.m.
Friday, March 21st, 2025, 6:30 p.m.
Donation will be asked at the door to benefit Monarch Services
Parking available in the lot next to the Resource Center and across the street at the County Government Building
The Hive Live! presents Ellen Bass, Jan Beatty, and Luke Johnson
Tuesday, March 11th, 2025, 7 p.m.
This event is supported by a grant from Poets & Writers.
Join The Hive Poetry Collective as they host The Hive Live! Tuesday, March 11, 7 p.m. at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Featured poets for the evening are Ellen Bass, Jan Beatty, and Luke Johnson. Register to attend by clicking here.
Ellen Bass’s most recent collection, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her other poetry books include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, and The California Arts Council, The Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.
Jan Beatty’s eighth book, Dragstripping, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2024. Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award. Recent books include The Body Wars and Jackknife: New and Selected Poems, which won the Paterson Prize. Beatty worked as a waitress, abortion counselor, and in maximum security prisons. She is Professor Emerita at Carlow University, where she directed creative writing, Madwomen in the Attic workshops, and the MFA program. http://www.janbeatty.com
Luke Johnson is the author of Quiver (Texas Review Press), a finalist for the Jake Adam York Award, The Vassar Miller Prize, and The Levis Award; A Slow Indwelling (Harbor Editions 2024); and Distributary (Texas Review Press 2025). Quiver was recently named one of four finalists for the 2024 California Book Award. Johnson was selected by Patricia Smith as a finalist for the esteemed 2024 Robert Frost Residency through Dartmouth College.
The Hive Live! presents Rick Barot and Cintia Santana
Tuesday, January 14th, 2025, 7 p.m.
Join The Hive Poetry Collective as they host the next offering in their ongoing, bimonthly series The Hive Live! Tuesday, Jan. 14, 7 p.m. at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, CA. Featured poets for the evening are Rick Barot and Cintia Santana. Register to attend by clicking here.
Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His earlier collection, Chord, received the UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Stanford University. He lives in Tacoma, Washington and directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University. His newest book of poems, Moving the Bones, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2024.
Cintia Santana teaches literary translation and poetry workshops in Spanish and English at Stanford University. She lives in Menlo Park, CA., the ancestral and unceded land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. Santana’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016 and 2020,2023 Best of the Net Anthology, Poets.org, Poetry Daily, Split this Rock, and in numerous journals. She is the recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Her debut poetry collection, The Disordered Alphabet (Four Way Books, 2023) was short-listed for the 2023 California Independent Booksellers Alliance “Golden Poppy” Award, received the 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal, the 2023 North American Book Award’s Silver Medal, and won the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Learn more about her work at: www.cintiasantana.com
The Hive Live! presents Gary Young and Elizabeth Robinson
Tuesday, November 12th, 2024, 7 p.m.
Join The Hive Poetry Collective as they host the Hive Live! featuring Gary Young and Elizabeth Robinson on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 7 p.m. at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Register to attend by clicking here.
Elizabeth Robinson is the author, most recently, of Excursive (Roof Books), Thirst & Sufeit (Threadsuns Press), and, collaboratively with Susanne Dyckman, Rendered Paradise (Apogee Press). In the past five years, Robinson has received Editors’ Choice Awards from Scoundrel Time and New Letters, and a Pushcart Prize. Vulnerabiity Index is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press in 2025.
Gary Young is a poet, artist, and translator. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, among them That’s What I Thought, and American Analects, both from Persea Books. His other books include Precious Mirror, translations from the Japanese; Taken to Heart: 70 Poems from the Chinese; Even So: New and Selected Poems; Pleasure; No Other Life, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award; Braver Deeds, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize; The Dream of a Moral Life, which won the James D. Phelan Award; and Hands. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the California Arts Council, among others. His print work is represented in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Getty Center for the Arts. In 2009 he received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He teaches creative writing and directs the Cowell Press at UC Santa Cruz.
The Hive Live! presents Danusha Laméris and Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
Tuesday, October 8th, 2024, 7 p.m.
Join The Hive Poetry Collective as they host the Hive Live! featuring Danusha Laméris and Joshua Jennifer Espinoza on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 7 p.m. at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Register to attend by clicking here.
Former Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate and co-founder of The Hive Poetry Collective, Danusha Laméris is Santa Cruz’s own. A UCSC grad and longtime contributor to the local literary scene, her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Danusha is a Pushcart Prize recipient and her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, POETRY Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and Orion. She was selected for the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award in 2020, and her second book, Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the Paterson Award, and the winner of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. As Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, Laméris co-founded The Hive Poetry Collective; a radio show, podcast, and event hub. She is on the faculty of Pacific University’s Low-Residency MFA program and teaches The Path of Poetry workshops online. Her third book is Blade by Blade, (Copper Canyon Press, 2024).
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet. She is the author of I Don’t Want to be Misunderstood (Alice James Books 2024), I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019) and THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (The Accomplices 2016). Jennifer lives in California with her wife, poet/essayist Eileen Elizabeth, and their cat and dog.
The Hive Live! presents the poets of Hummingbird Poetry Press
Tuesday, September 10th, 2024, 7 p.m.
Join The Hive Poetry Collective as they host a special Hive Live! featuring nine poets from Hummingbird Poetry Press, each of whom will read briefly from their current work. The poets are Charles Atkinson, Wilma Marcus Chandler, Rosie King, George Lober, Maggie Paul, Kim Scheiblauer, David Allen Sullivan, Amber Coverdale Sumrall, and Ken Weisner. Register to attend by clicking here.
Hummingbird Poetry Press was founded in Santa Cruz in 2002 by Joseph McNeilly and Len Anderson as a collective press whose members were committed to two essential contributions: 1) bringing their varied skills to bear on the tasks essential to publishing full-length collections and 2) encouraging each other to create outstanding books of poetry. McNeilly and Anderson wanted to publish “first books” and launched the press with nine members—each of whom had a first-book manuscript ready. By 2025, Hummingbird Poetry Press will have published 36 full-length collections by 20 Monterey Bay poets.
The Hive Live! Presents Nancy Miller Gomez and C.S. Giscombe
Tuesday, July 9th, 2024, 7 p.m.
C. S. Giscombe teaches at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, where he is the Robert Hass Chair in English. His prose and poetry books include Negro Mountain, Prairie Style, Ohio Railroads (“a long poem in the form of an essay”), Similarly (selected poetry and new work), Border Towns, etc. In progress are Railroad Sense and Medicine Book. He is a long-distance cyclist.
Nancy Miller Gomez’s first full-length collection, Inconsolable Objects, was recently released by YesYes Books. She is also the author of the chapbook, Punishment (Rattle chapbook series) and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Adroit Journal, New Ohio Review, The Rumpus, Rattle, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She received a special mention in the 2023 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Nancy co-founded with Ellen Bass an organization that provides writing workshops to incarcerated women and men. She lives with her family in Santa Cruz, California. More at: nancymillergomez.com.
The Hive Live! Presents Alexandra Lytton Regalado and Jennifer Tseng
Tuesday, May 14th , 2024, 7 p.m.
Alexandra Lytton Regalado is a Salvadoran-American author, editor, and translator. She is the author of Relinquenda, winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2022); the chapbook Piedra (La Chifurnia, 2022); and the poetry collection, Matria, the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). Alexandra holds fellowships at CantoMundo and Letras Latinas; she is winner of the Coniston Prize; and her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, poets.org, World Literature Today, Narrative, and The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog, among others. Her translations of contemporary Latin American poetry appear in Poetry International, FENCE, and Tupelo Quarterly and she is translator of Family or Oblivion by Elena Salamanca. She is co-founding editor of Kalina, a press that showcases bilingual, Central American-themed books and is assistant editor at SWWIM Every Day an online daily poetry journal for women-identifying poets. www.alexandralyttonregalado.com
Jennifer Tseng’s new book, Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive, poems made with her late father’s English letters, won the Juniper Prize for Poetry and was published by University of Massachusetts Press this spring. She teaches literature and creative writing at University of California, Santa Cruz.
The Hive Live! Presents Dorianne Laux and CA Poet Laureate Lee Herrick
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024, 7.pm.
In celebration of National Poetry Month, The Hive Poetry Collective will bring California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick and award-winning poet Dorianne Laux to The Hive Live! Tuesday, April 2, 7 p.m. at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, CA. This is a special Hive Live! event with two incredible poets.
Lee Herrick is the 10th California Poet Laureate (the first Asian-American to serve in the role) and the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire. Co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books 2020), his poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice with a foreword by Common, HERE: Poems for the Planet, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant, he lives with his family in Fresno, California and served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux’s Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems is available from W.W. Norton as are her award winning books, Facts about the Moon and The Book of Men. A textbook, Finger Exercises for Poets, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton as well as in January, a new book of poems, Life on Earth. She is founding faculty at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA and a chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. https://www.doriannelaux.net/
This event is supported in part by Poets & Writers.
The Hive Live! Presents Sarah Ghazal Ali and sam sax
Tuesday, March 12th, 2024, 7 p.m.
Sarah Ghazal Ali, a UC Santa Cruz alum, is the author of Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), selected as the Editors’ Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. A Djanikian Scholar, Stadler Fellow, and winner of the 2022 Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, her poems and essays appear in POETRY, American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor for West Branch and lives in the Bay Area, California. Learn more at sarahgali.com.
sam sax is the author of the poetry collections PIG (Scribner, 2023); bury it (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), winner of the James Laughlin Award; madness (Penguin, 2017), winner of the National Poetry Series and selected by Terrance Hayes; and four chapbooks. They earned a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, and Stanford University.
The Hive Live! presents Rebecca Foust and Susan Cohen
Tuesday, January 9th, 2024, 7 p.m.
Rebecca Foust’s new book, ONLY, was released from Four Way Books in September 2022 and earned a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Foust is the author of four books including Paradise Drive and three chapbooks, including The Unexploded Ordnance Bin. Recognitions include the Pablo Neruda, CP Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes, a Marin Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. New poems are or will be appearing in The Common, Hudson Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, and Poetry.
Susan Cohen’s third and recent full-length collection, Democracy of Fire, was named finalist for the Washington, Wilder, and Richard Snyder Prizes, and praised by Ellen Bass as a “wise and wonderful” vision of “our interconnectedness.” A former science journalist and contributing writer for the Washington Post Magazine, her honors include the Rita Dove Award, Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Prize, the 2021 Red Wheelbarrow Prize, the Terrain 11th Annual Poetry Prize, and a special mention in Pushcart Prize XLIII. Her poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Catamaran, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, and Verse Daily. She has an MFA from Pacific University and lives in Berkeley.
The Hive Live! Presents Ellen Bass & Edgar Kunz
Tuesday, October 24th, 2023, 7.pm.
Ellen Bass’s most recent collection, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her other poetry books include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, and The California Arts Council, The Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.
Edgar Kunz is the author of two books of poetry: Fixer (Ecco, 2023) and Tap Out (Ecco, 2019), a New York Times New & Noteworthy pick. Recent poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and Oxford American. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College.
The Hive Live! presents Nikia Chaney, Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour, and Roxi Power
Tuesday, September 12th, 2023, 7p.m.
Nikia Chaney is a multi-genre author and artist. Her book of poetry To Stir & (Word Works, 2023) was the winner of the Hillary Tham Award. She has also published the poetry book, us mouth (University of Hell Press, 2018), a memoir, Ladybug (Inlandia, 2022), and a short volume of science fiction, Three Walking (Bamboo Dart, 2021). She teaches in Santa Cruz.
Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour is a poet, artist and emcee from the Midwest now living in Santa Cruz. A Filipino and French Creole fiasco, he has struggled as a young parent and worked countless jobs. In partnership with Rica Smith De La Luz, as Sacred Poets, he dramatically inspires a creative message of peace and empowerment. As a coordinator and co-host of local events including Mic Drop!, a monthly open mic at 418 Project, he works to contribute to a strong community of artists and supporters locally and globally. He currently has grant projects, collaborations and scheduled performances in progress in Santa Cruz County and the Bay Area.
Roxi Power is a poet, performer, and labor activist. She founded and edits the trans-genre anthology series, Viz. Inter-Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she teaches. She received an AWP Intro Award, and her poems have been widely published. Her debut book of poems, The Songs That Objects Would Sing from Finishing Line Press, is a poetic meditation on transience through the lens of objects people leave behind.
Leaning Toward Light: An Evening of Poetry with Tess Taylor, Danusha Laméris & Ellen Bass
Tuesday, August 31st, 2023, 7p.m.
More information and registration at this link
Tess Taylor, an avid gardener, is the author of five acclaimed collections of poetry including Work & Days, which was named one of the 10 best books of poetry of 2016 by the New York Times. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Times Literary Supplement, CNN, and the New York Times. Taylor has been Distinguished Fulbright US Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre in Queen’s University in Northern Ireland, and the Anne Spencer Poet-in-Residence at Randolph College. She has also served as on-air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered for over a decade. Taylor lives in El Cerrito, California, where she tends to fruit trees and backyard chickens.
Danusha Laméris’ first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. A recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, she currently co-leads Poetry of Resilience webinars with James Crews, as well as the HearthFire Writing Community, and is on the faculty of Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA program.
Ellen Bass is co-author of the best-selling The Courage to Heal, which has sold more than one million copies and has been translated into nine languages. She has also published several volumes of poetry, including The Human Line and Indigo, and her poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and The New Republic. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she lives in Santa Cruz, and teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University.
Cosponsored by the Hive Poetry Collective, Bookshop Santa Cruz will host poets Tess Taylor, Danusha Laméris, and Ellen Bass for a reading of their beautiful anthology Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens & the Hands that Tend Them, an inviting selection of poems from a wide range of voices that speak to the collective urge to grow, tend, and heal—an evocative celebration of our connection to the green world.
The Hive Live! presents Jamaica Baldwin & Francesca Bell
Tuesday, July 18th, 2023, 7p.m.
Jamaica Baldwin’s debut collection, Bone Language, will be published on June 15th, 2023 by YesYes Books. Her poetry has appeared in Guernica, World Literature Today, The Adroit Journal, Indiana Review, Poetry Northwest, and The Missouri Review, among others. Her awards include a 2023 Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a RHINO Poetry editor’s prize, and a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award. Her writing has been supported by Hedgebrook, Aspen Words, Storyknife, Furious Flower, and the Jack Straw Writers program. Jamaica is currently the associate editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln where she is pursuing her PhD in English with a focus on poetry and Women’s and Gender Studies. She is originally from Santa Cruz, CA.
Francesca Bell is a poet and translator. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019), which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Julie Suk Award, and What Small Sound (Red Hen Press, 2023). She translated Max Sessner’s collection, Whoever Drowned Here (Red Hen Press, 2023), from its original German. Her work appears widely in magazines such as ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and Rattle. Bell grew up in Washington and Idaho and did not complete middle school, high school, or college. She is the former poetry editor of River Styx, the translation editor of Los Angeles Review, and the Marin County Poet Laureate. She lives with her family in Novato.
The Hive Live! featuring Rebecca Foust and Zeina Hashem Beck
Tuesday, May 9th, 2023, 7 p.m.
Join The Hive Poetry Collective as they host The Hive Live! Tuesday, May. 9, 7 p.m. at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Featured poets for the evening are Zeina Hashem Beck and Rebecca Foust. Masks are required to attend. Register to attend by clicking here.
Rebecca Foust’s new book, ONLY, was released from Four Way Books in September 2022 and earned a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Foust is the author of four books including Paradise Drive and three chapbooks, including The Unexploded Ordnance Bin. Recognitions include the Pablo Neruda, CP Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes, a Marin Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. New poems are or will be appearing in The Common, Hudson Review, Narrative, Ploughshares, and POETRY. Contact Rebecca on her website, @FoustRebecca on Facebook, or @rebecca.foust.52 on Instagram.
Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her newest poetry collection, O, was published by Penguin Books in July 2022 and named a Best Book 2022 by Lit Hub and The New York Public Library. Her previous full-length collections are Louder than Hearts, winner of the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize, and To Live in Autumn, winner of the 2013 Backwaters Prize. She’s also the author of two chapbooks: 3arabi Song, winner of the 2016 Rattle Chapbook prize, and There Was and How Much There Was, a 2016 Laureate’s Choice selected by Carol Ann Duffy. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry, Ploughshares, World Literature Today, The Nation, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Zeina invented The Duet, a bilingual poetic form where English and Arabic exist separately and in relationship to each other. She’s the co-creator and co-host, with poet Farah Chamma, of Maqsouda, a podcast in Arabic about Arabic poetry, produced by Sowt. After a lifetime in Lebanon and a decade in Dubai, Zeina has recently moved with her family to California. www.zeinahashembeck.com
The Hive Live! presents Danusha Laméris & Laure-Anne Bosselar
Tuesday, March 7th, 2023, 7p.m.
Featured poets for the evening are Danusha Laméris and Laure-Anne Bosselar.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, (Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry), A New Hunger ( ALA Notable Book) and These Many Rooms. A Pushcart Prize recipient, she edited five anthologies. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College and UCSB. The winner of the 2020 James Dickey Poetry Prize, she served as Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate (2019-2021). She offers classes and workshops at the SunJune Literary Collaborative.
Danusha Laméris’ first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. A recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, she currently co-leads Poetry of Resilience webinars with James Crews, as well as the HearthFire Writing Community, and is on the faculty of Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA program.
The Hive Live! presents Jennifer Tseng and Daniel Summerhill
Tuesday, January 10th, 2023, 7p.m.
Featured poets for the evening are Jennier Tseng and Daniel Summerhill. Masks are required to attend.
Jennifer Tseng is an award-winning poet and prose writer whose work has been translated into Chinese, Danish, and Italian. Her most recent book is The Passion of Woo and Isolde which was a Firecracker Award finalist and winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Award. She’s also the author of three award-winning books of poetry, The Man With My Face (AAWW 2005); the bilingual Red Flower, White Flower (Marick Press 2013) featuring Chinese translations by Mengying Han and Aaron Crippen; and Not so dear Jenny (Bateau Press 2017), poems made with her father’s English letters. She teaches literature and creative writing at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet and scholar originally from Oakland, CA. His work has appeared in Columbia Journal, Obsidian, Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. He is the author of Divine, Divine, Divine (Nomadic Press 2021), a semi-finalist for the Wheeler and Saturnalia Poetry Prizes and Mausoleum of Flowers (CavanKerry Press 2022). His work has earned him two Pushcart nominations and numerous best of the net nominations. Summerhill has earned fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts and The Watering Hole. He is Assistant Professor of Poetry/Social Action & Composition at CSU Monterey Bay and is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Monterey County.
The Hive Live! presents David Baker and Shelley Wong
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022, 7 p.m.
Featured poets for the evening are David Baker and Shelley Wong. Masks and proof of vaccination are required to attend.
Acclaimed poet David Baker expands both his environment and his form in his eleventh collection. Whale Fall is about time, measured in the wingbeats of a hummingbird or the epochs of geological change, and about place, whether a backyard in Ohio or the slopes of a melting glacier. Amidst climate change and catastrophe, as amidst a blooming viburnum or a viral disease, these poems send their songs across empty spaces of a line, a page, or a continent, to see who is out there, moving in the depths of being.
Shelley Wong will be reading from her debut collection of poetry, As She Appears, which has been long listed for the National Book Award. She is a Kundiman Fellow and the author of the chapbook Rare Birds (Diode Editions, 2017)). Her poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Massachusetts Review, and Sycamore Review, among others. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, I-Park Foundation, and Palm Beach Poetry Festival.
The Hive Live! presents Farnaz Fatemi with guests
Tuesday, September 6th, 2022, 7 p.m.
Farnaz Fatemi with guests Frances Hatfield, Danusha Laméris, Lisa Allen Ortiz, and Ingrid LaRiviere.
A reading to celebrate Farnaz Fatemi’s debut poetry collection, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر
Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective and was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her book of poems, Sister Tongue, (Kent State University Press, 2022) won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize selected by Tracy K. Smith. Her poems and lyric essays have recently appeared in Poem-a-Day (Poets.org), Pedestal Magazine, Jung Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, Crab Orchard Review, Grist Journal, and Tupelo Quarterly and several anthologies, including Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora and Halal If You Hear Me. More at farnazfatemi.com.
Register for this free event here: https://forms.gle/P4Hc2HqKoZunecB68
The Hive Live! presents Dion O’Reilly and Amanda Moore
Tuesday, July 5th, 2022, 7 p.m.
Join us to kick off The Hive Live!—our new bimonthly poetry reading series—beginning Tuesday, July 5th, 7 p.m. at Bookshop Santa Cruz. We will celebrate featuring Amanda Moore and our own founding member, Dion O’Reilly. Dion and Amanda’s debuts were launched just prior to and in the middle of the pandemic. The work of these stellar poets deserves to be heard now that lives are less compromised by Covid. Masks and proof of vax required. Register HERE
Amanda Moore’s debut collection of poetry, Requeening, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s blog. She is the recipient of writing awards, residencies, and fellowships from The Brown Handler Residency, In Cahoots, The Writers Grotto, The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Poetry Co-editor at Women’s Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA Review and INCH, Amanda is a high school English teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with her husband and daughter.
Dion O’Reilly’s debut book, Ghost Dogs, (Terrapin 2020) was shortlisted for several prizes including The Catamaran Prize and The Eric Hoffer Award. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Narrative, and The Slowdown, among others. Her second book Sadness of the Apex Predator was chosen for the Portage Poetry Series out of University of Wisconsin’s Cornerstone Press. She facilitates workshops with poets from all over the US and hosts a poetry podcast at The Hive Poetry Collective. Learn more at dionoreilly.wordpress.com
Register HERE!!!!
Workshop with Traci Brimhall
March 20th, 2021 10:00 – 12:00 —BREAK–1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Register at queens@hivepoetry.org
Please join The Hive Poetry Collective and Traci Brimhall for this on line workshop: “Between Clarity and Wilderness: How to Tune Your Tension.”
Everyone has a writing super power, but often we need to temper our strengths. Those of us with strong narrative often need some more music. Those who are incredible at imagination often benefit from the restrictions of form. And those of us who love the surreal discover that a line or two of literal concrete images serves to highlight our strange strength rather than detract from it. We will discuss a couple of poem that model good tension, as well as carefully workshop each participant’s work to discover superpowers and unexplored opportunities for tension.
$150/person
A link will be sent upon registration
Registration Deadline March 5, 2021 (2 weeks ahead) Registration deadline has been extended!
Cancellation before March 5: Refund, minus $50 admin fee Registration deadline has been extended!
Cancellation deadline March 5: No refunds after this date
The number of people in the workshop will be limited to 14. First come, first serve. Hope to see you there!
Traci Brimhall is the author of four poetry collections: Come the Slumberless from the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon); Saudade (Copper Canyon); Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Believer, The New Republic, Orion,and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the National Endowment for the Arts. She’s the Director of Creative Writing at Kansas State University and lives in Manhattan, KS. Visit Traci’s website.
Free Lecture by Traci Brimhall
March 19th, 2021 7:00-8:30 p.m.
RSVP for this event HERE
Please join The Hive Poetry Collective and Traci Brimhall for this on line lecture: “Love Is in the Repetition: Tension in the Love Poem”
Love is more than the ecstatic–it is in the daily actions and affections. Love is one of our major experiences as human, yet so often poems focus on the falling in love rather than how those we love (and lose) endure across so many moments in a single day. In this lecture we will examine poetry that uses repetition for love poems and get a prompt for trying to write our own.
Limit 40 attendees: first come first serve. Virtual doors open at 6:30 pm
Traci Brimhall is the author of four poetry collections: Come the Slumberless from the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon); Saudade (Copper Canyon); Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Believer, The New Republic, Orion, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the National Endowment for the Arts. She’s the Director of Creative Writing at Kansas State University and lives in Manhattan, KS. Visit Traci’s website
An Evening of Poetry with Ellen Bass and Traci Brimhall
Join us for an evening of poetry read by Ellen Bass and Traci Brimhall on Friday, May 15 at 5:00 p.m. The Zoom room will be open by 4:30, so come early in case you have technical difficulties. If you need assistance, send an email to jory@cruzio.com. To subscribe directly to the Santa Cruz Writes email list, which will provide you with weekly announcements for upcoming readings, use https://mailchi.mp/cruzio/zoomforward where you will be sent a link to Join the Meeting on Friday.
The Hive Poetry Collective 