State Senator Anthony Portantino represents California’s 25th State Senate District, which stretches along the 210 Freeway from Sunland/Tujunga to Upland. Priorities for Senator Portantino during his time in office have encompassed support for public education, awareness and treatment of mental health, and sensible gun control. His accomplishments include increasing funding for special education, banning the…
Poet, novelist, and professor Al Young served as California Poet Laureate from 2005-2008. Young often read to musical accompaniment, and his poetry reflected his interest in music, specifically jazz and blues, as well as his life in California. His collections of poetry include Dancing: Poems (1969), The Blues Don’t Change: New and Selected Poems (1982), Heaven: Collected Poems 1956–1990 (1992), The Sound of…
Charan Sue (Cher) Wollard was poet laureate of Livermore, California, 2009-2013. She also served on the board of directors of the Ina Coolbrith Circle, the nation’s oldest continuous poetry circle, 2014-2019. Her award-winning poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies including the Carquinez Review, The Gathering, Bird Black as the Sun: California Poets on…
Maw Shein Win was the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito. Her recent poetry book is Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn) nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, long-listed for the PEN America Open Book Award, and short-listed for the California Independent Booksellers Alliance’s Golden Poppy Award for Poetry. D.A. Powell wrote…
Amanda Williamsen lives in Bainbridge Island, Washington. She served as poet laureate of Cupertino, CA, in 2016. Sheis a native of Ohio, where she grew up along the Maumee River. Her favorite activities include canoeing, gardening with her family, taking cat naps next to a cat, and purchasing fireworks at roadside stands with the intent…
Jonathan Kinsman fell in love with creating poetry in high school. He met his wife as a result of his words. He wants others to feel that love of the art form, “I fell into a pond of words in my teenage years. The mud of it permeated my skin.” Jonathan served as poet laureate…
Andy Jones was named poet laureate of the city of Davis in September, 2014. His second term began in 2016, and concluded in September 2018. In addition to placing poems in a great number of small journals and magazines, and anthologies such as Flatman Crooked’s Slim Anthology of Contemporary Poetics – 2010, Andy published his…
Ron Koertge grew up in an agricultural area in an old mining town in Illinois, just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, Missouri. He received a BA from the University of Illinois and an MA from the University of Arizona. A prolific writer, Ron began publishing poetry in the sixties and seventies in such seminal…
D.L. Lang is a contemporary Jewish-American poet and spoken word artist. From 2017 to 2019 she served as Vallejo, California’s poet laureate and edited the anthology Verses, Voices, & Visions of Vallejo. She has performed hundreds of times across California from county fairs to political demonstrations. Lang has published 14 poetry collections, most recently Heaven is Portable. She…
Glenna Luschei has published Solo Press books and poetry magazines for fifty years. She has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a D.H Lawrence Fellowship in New Mexico, an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina and a Master of Life Award from her alma mater, The…
Ann Muto investigates her personal history and pursues her love of nature through poetry. Her book Open Passage was published by the Japanese American Museum of San Jose. Her poems have appeared in Japanese American Internment During World War II, Dancing on the Brink of the World, Point Lobos Magazine, Inspiring Generations: 150 Years, 150…
Cynthia J. Patton, poet and memoirist, has written two books on wetland restoration and a poetry collection, Across An Aqueous Moon: Travels in Autism (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her award-winning work has appeared in fifteen anthologies, numerous publications, her blog, An Unplanned Life, and onstage. The Museum of Motherhood featured her work in 2015. Patton is an attorney, activist, educator, and…