Writing “some of the most important poetry in the world today” (The New York Times Magazine), Jane Hirshfield is one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for concerns of the biosphere. Her ten poetry books include The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Knopf, 2023). Author also of two now-classic collections of essays on poetry’s infrastructure and craft and four books presenting and co-translating world poets from the past, Hirshfield’s honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, and selection in ten editions of The Best American Poems. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, et al. A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Hirshfield was elected in 2019 into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Bringing the Shovel Down, Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023. (From 4:00pm when doors open for Nevada County Reads Presents, admission is free of charge and open to all.)

Jason Bayani is the author of Locus (Omnidawn Publishing 2019) and Amulet (Write Bloody Publishing 2013). He’s an MFA graduate from Saint Mary’s College, a Kundiman Fellow, and is the co-director of Kearny Street Workshop, the oldest multi-disciplinary Asian Pacific American arts organization in the country. He performs regularly around the country and debuted his solo theater show “Locus of Control” in 2016 with theatrical runs in San Francisco, New York, and Austin.

Kirsten Casey is the current Nevada County Poet Laureate, and has been an active California Poet in the Schools for almost 20 years. Kirsten is also the host of Nevada County Library’s monthly “Poetry Happy Hour” (on the third Thursday of every month at the Communal Cafe). Her first poetry collection, Ex Vivo: Out of the Living Body, was published by Hip Pocket Press in 2012. Her new manuscript, Grieving Birds, was a recent finalist for the Gunpowder Press Dryden-Vreeland book prize. To read more of her work, and find her upcoming events, visit her website: kirstencasey.com.

Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and current Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective. Her debut book of poetry Sister Tongue  زبان خواهر won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. She is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Some of her poems and lyric essays appear or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, No Tokens Journal, Nowruz Journal, Pedestal Review, Poets.org, Tab Journal, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. 

Molly Fisk edited California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, with a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets when she was Poet Laureate of Nevada County, CA. She’s won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Her most recent poetry collection is The More Difficult Beauty; her latest book of radio commentary is Everything But the Kitchen Skunk. Walking Wheel, linked poems set in 1875, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Fisk lives in the Sierra foothills.

Beth Kelley Gillogly has been a professional singer for 30+ years, and it is one of her life’s greatest joys. She has performed as a soloist with many choirs, sung improvisational jazz, served as a cantor in Catholic churches, belted out 80s pop and rock, debuted new compositions, led 19 years of parent-child music classes, and crooned early jazz standards. Beth is also an avid writer and poet, and she earned her master’s degree in English and creative writing from NYU, where she was fortunate to study with Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell,
William Matthews, Billy Collins, among others.

Georgina Marie Guardado is the 2020-2024 Poet Laureate of Lake County, CA and a Poets Laureate Fellow with The Academy of American Poets. She is the Literacy Program Coordinator for the Lake County Library, President of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference, and a graduate student and scholar of the Kwame Dawes Mapmakers and Master of Fine Arts Merit endowments at the Pacific University MFA in Writing program. Her work has appeared in Poets.org, Humble Pie Magazine, Gulf Coast Journal, Yellow Medicine Review, The Muleskinner Journal, and more. She is the author of two chapbooks, Tree Speak (2019) and Finding the Roots of Water (2018).

Sands Hall is the author of the award-winning memoir, Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint). She is also the author of a novel, Catching Heaven (Ballantine), and a book on writing, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. Her stories and essays have appeared in such journals as New England Review, Iowa Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books; her recent essay in Alta Journal about the “is-it-plagiarism” scandal surrounding Wallace Stegner has won numerous awards. Sands is also a singer/songwriter, and, in addition to an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, holds a BA in Acting and an MFA in Theatre Arts. She brings her extensive theatre experience to her teaching. Professor Emeritus, Franklin & Marshall College, she lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California.

Maxima Kahn’s first full-length book of poems, Fierce Aria, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020 and was a finalist for an Eric Hoffer Book Award. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The Louisville Review, Euphony Journal, Entropy, Citron Review, Sweet, Wisconsin Review and Spillway, among many others. A recipient of fellowships and scholarships to the Vermont Studio Center and the Community of Writers, she has twice been nominated for Best of the Net. Having taught creative writing at the University of California Davis extension, she now teaches at Brilliant Playground.

The Poetry Crashers are a diverse septet of artists celebrating poetry with an aim to bring the art form down to earth in engaging and accessible ways. They are recent recipients of the Upstate California Creative Corps grant for their Postcards From Earth project—a community-wide arts program in which they are appointed as trusted messengers from our intergalactic neighbors to gather humanity’s hopes and concerns for our climate and planet.

Charlotte Scott is Director at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and Professor emeritus of Shakespeare Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has published extensively on Shakespeare, including three monographs for Oxford University Press, and numerous articles and book chapters. She has a ferocious commitment to social justice with a particular emphasis on women in the criminal justice system, neurodiversity, those who have experienced gender based violence and educational poverty. She works across the sector, through education, arts, heritage, policy and advisory roles. Her most recent edited collection Nature/Natural (Arden, 2024) examines many of these issues in relation to both culture and theory.

Nevada County pianist Lynn Schugren has been playing the piano since she was old enough to hoist herself up on the bench. She has had an active career as a soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. A champion of new music, she has commissioned and performed works by various California composers, most recently being guest soloist with the InConcert Sierra orchestra last September in a performance of Alexis Alrich’s Sierra Rhapsody, a work Ms. Schugren commissioned. She has had a long standing friendship and professional collaboration with Mark Vance, performing his solo piano and chamber works often.

CharRon Smith is a spoken word artist / poet, DJ/Remixer, producer, MC, world traveler, podcaster, and zine / chapbook creator. As a regular on the local poetry circuit in Sacramento, he has produced the full-length spoken word features Split Personality and Pacing Myself. He has also been an avid micropoet on Micropoetry.com and Twitter. He has hosted the Monday Night Poetry series at the Sacramento Poetry Center and produced Iambic Poetry Podcast. He is currently vice president of the Sacramento Poetry Center. A veteran DJ and music producer under the stage moniker CharRon Resolution, his musical tastes include diverse genres but he is a hip-hop producer at heart.

Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centers on themes of language, power, conflict, and religion. His books of poetry and prose include: Feed the Beast, Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World, Sorry for your Troubles, and Readings from the Books of Exile. Ó Tuama hosts the popular podcast Poetry Unbound, during which he reads and discusses one poem each week. He’s the author of the collection, Poetry Unbound, an expansion on his podcast that offers reflections on fifty powerful poems. He splits his time between Ireland and NYC.

Mark Vance is a composer and music educator. Vance lives in Nevada City with his wife, Estelle, and their two goldfish. He has played an extensive role composing, teaching, arranging, conducting and promoting music throughout his community in the California foothills. He serves as Executive Director of the Nevada County Composers Cooperative. Vance teaches the Young Composers Project in conjunction with the Nevada County Composers Cooperative. He is published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing and C. Alan Publications.

Sam Willetts’s first poetry collection New Light for the Old Dark (April 2010, Jonathan Cape /Random House London) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the Costa Prize, and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He was named as one of the Poetry Book Society’s Next Generation Poets in 2014. His work has appeared in TLS, LRB, Granta, Poetry Review, and elsewhere.