Spoken Word Sundays now on Zoom

Publisher Diane Frank and friends - including Jack Hirschman, Katherine Hastings, and Alejandro Murguia - read from the best-selling anthology Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here

Plus poetry open mic

Hosted by George Wallace

** To watch directly on zoom and to read on the open mic, you must register via Eventbrite by 3:30pm on the day of the event. The features will also be live-streamed to the great weather for MEDIA facebook page.

“In this book of poems written by San Francisco poets, we show you the city that most tourists miss. You'll find poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alison Luterman, Thomas Centolella, Jack Hirschman, Alejandro Murguía, George Wallace, Marianne Betterly, Meg Pokrass, Robert Scottelaro, Barbara Quick and a spectacular line-up of local Poetry All Stars. It's our love letter to San Francisco.”
- Diane Frank

Jack Hirschman is an emeritus Poet Laureate of San Francisco, founding member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco and of the World Poetry Movement of Medellin, Colombia. His masterwork are 3 thousand-page books of poems called The Arcanes, published in the American Language in Salerno, Italy.

Katherine Hastings is the author of three full-length collections. She grew up in the Cow Hollow neighborhood of San Francisco and explored the city by cable car, electric bus and foot as soon as she was allowed off the block.

Alejandro Murguía is a two-time winner of the American Book Award, most recently for This War Called Love– Nine Stories, and Stray Poems, both published by City Lights Books. He was the Sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate, and he teaches at San Francisco State University.

Barbara Quick won the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize for her debut chapbook, The Light on Sifnos. She donned feathers to dance six years in a row in the City's Carnival Parade, and has become a habituée backstage at the San Francisco Symphony, where her husband plays Viola. She is best-known throughout the world as the author of Vivaldi's Virgins.

Beau Beausoleil is a poet and activist with Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, based in San Francisco. He has loved San Francisco and its writers/artists since the moment he arrived in the late 1960's. He is the author of 15 books of poetry, his most recent – I Meet The Muse On Her Terms.

Joan Gelfand is a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her reviews, stories, essays and poetry have appeared in over 150 national and international literary journals. "The Ferlinghetti School of Poetics," was made into a short film by Dana Walden and has been shown at 20 international film festivals.

Marsha M. Nelson was born in Trinidad and lives on Long Island, New York. She visited San Francisco in August of 2018 to attend the Blue Light Press Summer Writing Workshop and fell in love with San Francisco. Her chapbook, Night Visions, was published by Blue Light Press.

Diane Frank is author of eight books of poems, two novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Nepal Himalayas. Her New and Selected Poems, While Listening to the Enigma Variations, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press. She plays cello in the Golden Gate Symphony, teaches at SF State University, and creates her life as an art form.

Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here.

Blue Light Press, 2021