Join us for an afternoon of poetry and community with Gary Thomas and Salvatore Salerno. Bring your friends, your love for poetry, and even a poem of your own to share during our open mic session. Whether you're a seasoned poet or a first-time reader, we’d love to hear your voice.
Poet Bios:
Gary Thomas grew up on a peach farm outside Empire, California. Prior to retirement, he taught eighth-grade language arts for thirty-one years and junior college English for seven. He has presented poetry workshops for literary organizations, festivals, and conferences. His poems have been published in The Comstock Review, MockingHeart Review, Atticus Review, River Heron Review, Barzakh, Blue Heron Review, Split
Rock Review, Book of Matches, Hole in the Head Review, The Banyan Review, and the anthology More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. He is a founding member of the Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center (MoSt) and of the Stanislaus County writing group known as The Licensed Fools. A full-length collection, All the Connecting Lights, was released in August 2022 from Finishing Line Press.
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Salvatore Salerno has an M.F.A. from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he was awarded The Academy of American Poets University Prize. He is a retired English and drama teacher from Davis High School in Modesto. Salvatore was the Poet Laureate of Modesto from 2020-24. His recent poetry book is titled After Thoughts. He is also the president of the Stanislaus Audubon Society and has published two volumes on birds, birders, and the culture of birding.
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This reading is hosted by Nancy Gonzalez St. Clair, the inaugural poet laureate of Lodi.
