CRC Literary Series

Cosumnes River College 2011/12 Literary Series

All readings will be held in the Hawk’s Nest Bookstore, except the final celebration.
Wednesday, October 26, 12-1:20, featuring Sacramento Poetry Center Readers, Trina Drotar and Sandy Thomas

Trina Drotar, a San Francisco native, comes to poetry through prose, art, music, and design. She is the recipient of two Bazzanella literary awards, the Karen Warmdahl Memorial award for creative nonfiction, and several other awards. She has studied poetry, fiction, art, memoir, and screenwriting. She is currently working on a poetry collection entitled In the Night Garden; she recently completed her creative thesis, Missing and Other Stories, a collection of fiction, and Cormorant in the Desert, a collection of poems, was published by Rattlesnake Press in 2011. Her work has appeared on Medusa’s Kitchen,The Ophidian 01, Able Muse, Brevities, Illuminating Echoes, WTF, Primal Urge: A Journal for Diverse Humans, Rattle, and Word Riot. 

Sandy Thomas is a third-generation poet and San Francisco native. Her poems have appeared in Poems-For-All, Primal Urge, Rattlesnake Review, and WTF, and online in Medusa’s Kitchen, The Ophidian 01, and Sacramento News and Review. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Matchbook Girl (2011) and These Stones (2009), both published by Two Trees Indie Press. She is currently working on The Mastery of Momentum, a self-defense book, and is the columnist of Poetry Now’s “In-Dialogue” and “Event Mirror.” Her poet portrait photos have appeared on Medusa’s Kitchen, in Poetry Now, and on the web.

Monday, December 5, 12-1:20, featuring Lawrence Dinkins, NSAA

Lawrence Dinkins (NSAA) is a dynamic performance poet. He has recorded two CDs: NSAA Live: Lightning in a Bottle, and the 2010 release ElectroPoeticCoffee, with guitarist Ross Hammond. He also hosts a poetry series the third Wednesday of every month at the Mahogany Poets Series, at Queen Sheba's Restaurant at 17th and Broadway. In addition to his poetry and performance work, Lawrence serves on the board of the Sacramento Poetry Center, and works as a graphic artist and web designer in Sacramento.

Tuesday, February 21, 12-1:20 – Sacramento News & Review’s Kel Munger, Rachel Leibrock, and Ginny McReynolds

Rachel Leibrock is a Texas-born writer living in California. In addition to writing about arts and culture for the Sacramento News & Review; she also writes prose, poetry and fiction and is currently working on a young adult novel set in Sacramento. You can find some of her work at www.rachel-leibrock.com and thursdayafternoongirls.wordpress.com.

Kel Munger is a poet, writer and critic. She is the books and theater editor at the Sacramento News & Review, where she also reports on LGBT and feminist issues, human rights, and religion. Her first collection of poems, The Fragile Peace You Keep (New Rivers Press, 1997) was an MVP Award winner. An excerpt from her novel, Missus Finn, won the 2009 “Mighty River” fiction contest and was published in Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley. Her poems and fiction have been published in Sinister Wisdom, Appalachee Quarterly, Rattle, and Flyway; and in the anthologies The Muse Strikes Back! A Poetic Response by Women to Men and Are You Experienced? Baby Boom Poets at Midlife. Her journalism has won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and she is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Ginny McReynolds is the dean of Humanities and Social Science at Cosumnes River College. A longtime professor of English, journalism, and communications at Sacramento City College, Ginny has been writing essays and articles for more than 35 years. Many of those have been published in Sacramento News & Review, where she has also worked as a special projects editor.

 

Thursday, March 8, 12-1:20 p.m., featuring Naomi Benaron

Naomi Benaron’s novel Running the Rift (Algonquin Books 2012) was selected by Barbara Kingsolver as the winner of the 2010 Bellwether Prize, an award for a novel that addresses issues of social justice. Her other prizes include the Sharat Chandra Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Lover Letters from a Fat Man, the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, and the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in journals including New Letters, Poets’ Quarterly, Calyx, The MacGuffin, Spillway, and Green Mountains Review. She teaches writing through UCLA Extension and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, a project to mentor Afghan women writers living in Afghanistan and abroad. She is currently writing a novel about three generations of Holocaust survivors.

Tuesday, May 8, 7 p.m., featuring 6^th Annual Cosumnes River Journal Contributors’ Reading – Location TBD

Please join us for a group reading by contributors to Volume VI of the Cosumnes River Journal. This reading features student writers and artists along with the general community.