Lyrics & Dirges: A Monthly Reading Series

Lyrics & Dirges features a mix of prominent, emerging and beginning writers. Its aim is to highlight various forms of writing in an effort to spotlight the diverse literary community of the Bay Area.

Reading in February:

Jenny Qi is a writer and scientist. Her essays and poems are published or forthcoming in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Rattle, ZYZZYVA, BLR, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net, and her first manuscript was a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize. She has a PhD in Cancer Biology and works in science and health communications. She also co-hosts a storytelling podcast called Bone Lab Radio, now in Season 2. Website: www.jqiwriter.com

Tony Aldarondo Is a Puerto Rican poet who has read his poetry from San Fran to Japan, and in many venues throughout the bay area. He is an actor and a voiceover artist. And a member of the screen actors Guild, and has toured the state of California with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. He loves writing Poetry, plays, and music and is super excited to read at Pegasus Books.

Heather June Gibbons was born in Utah and grew up on an island in Washington. She is the author of the poetry collection Her Mouth as Souvenir, winner of the 2017 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize (University of Utah Press) and two chapbooks, Sore Songs (Dancing Girl Press), and Flyover (Q Avenue Press). Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including Best New Poets, Blackbird, Boston Review, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, jubilat, New American Writing, and West Branch. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has been the recipient of a Full Fellowship Residency from the Vermont Studio Center, the Pavel Strut Poetry Fellowship from the Prague Summer Program, and the Harold Taylor Prize from the Academy of American Poets. She lives in San Francisco, CA and teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University, the Writing Salon, and as a Teaching Artist for Performing Arts Workshop, a youth arts education non-profit.

James Cagney is a poet from Oakland. He has appeared as a featured poet at venues throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Vancouver, and Mumbai. Nomadic Press will publish his first collection Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour Of Chaos Theory in August. Visit his blog at https://thedirtyrat.blog/

Yaccaira Salvatierra is an educator and art instructor living in San José. Her poems have appeared in Huizache, Diálogo, Puerto del Sol, and Rattle, among others. She is a VONA (Voices of Our Nation) alumna, the recipient of the Dorrit Sibley Award for achievement in poetry, the 2015 winner of the Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize, and a nominee for a Pushcart Prize. Although she has lived in over seven cities in California, San José has been home for the past 17 years where she lives with her two sons.

Hosted and Curated by Mk Chavez.