Thank you to all our poets, audience members, sponsors, social media specialists, videographers, photographers, caterers, our many volunteers, presenters, performers, staff, students, and participants for your support of the 2024 Festival!
The Fringe Festival of pop-ups around the county continues. Info here.
2024 Program Schedule
April 13, 2024
8:30: Doors Open
Registration
Festival Café opens
Poets & Presenters check in
Poetry Place begins!
9:00-9:15: Welcome
On Homeland Return with Shelly Covert, Executive Director, Nevada City Rancheria, and Eliza Tudor, Executive Director, Nevada County Arts Council
9:20-10:00: Keynote
Jane Hirshfield || Saying Yes to the Difficult
A poem is this moment's answer to this moment's question, this moment's refuge from this moment's weather; a temporary stay—in Robert Frost's description—against confusion. In this year's keynote, Jane Hirshfield will read from her recently published The Asking: New & Selected Poems, looking at how, over a lifetime, poems—her own and those of others—have found, over and over, new ways to meet grief, meet bewilderment, meet crises individual and communal: as not only the weather of all that is difficult but also the house of any fully lived, fully human life.
10:00-10:45: Morning Readings
10:45-10:55: Break
On the way to workshops….
10:55-11:55: Morning Workshops
Jane Hirshfield || Storm and Sanctuary Q and A
Charlotte Scott || “Had I the motive and the cue for action”: Exploring the Poetics of Selfhood in Hamlet
Jason Bayani || From Page to Body: How to Read Your Work for Audiences
11:55—12:45 Lunch
Featuring Chelo’s Street Tacos
12:45—1:10: Community Voices
Celebrating our Open Mic Winners, presented by Michael Clarity
Poetry Out Loud student recitation: Dino Parks, Mariposa Freeling, Sam Uelmen, Joey Henry, and Mia Guerra.
1:10-2:00: In Conversation
Poetry for Storm and Sanctuary || Poets Pádraig Ó Tuama and Sam Willetts on where we find sanctuary as writers and readers of poetry. In a world filled with wrath and clamor, pain and prejudice, what paths of deep reflection can deliver refuge and repose, courage and release, and where do we find in poetry the potential for change. Moderated by Sands Hall.
2:00-2:10: Break
2:10-3:05: Afternoon Readings
3:05-3:40: Poetry in Community
California Poets In The Schools featured student poets, including Joey Henry, Sophie Conner and Trinity Holm.
Poetry in Song: A musical setting of “A Funeral in My Brain” Text by Nevada County Poet Laureate Kirsten Casey . Music composed by Mark Vance, Beth Kelley Gillogly, soprano, and Lynn Schugren, piano
Announcing applications for our next Nevada County Poet Laureate
Announcing Nevada County Youth Poet Laureate
3:40-3:50: Break
on the way to workshops….
3:50-4:50: Afternoon Workshops
Farnaz Fatemi || Freedom Inside Form(s)
CharRon Smith || Hip-Hop Has Poetry!
Georgina Marie Guardado || Writing the Private Poem
4:00: Doors open for Ross Gay in Conversation
4:50-5:30: Happy Hour — & Book Signings!
5:30: Nevada County Reads Presents
Ross Gay in conversation with Tricia Caspers-Ross on his book, A Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.
NOTE: Admission to Nevada County Reads Presents is free of charge for all.