Gunpowder Press: 10 Years and Counting of Dynamite Poetry

Gunpowder Press celebrates its 10th anniversary at Beyond Baroque! Published poets by Gunpowder Press read from new and selected work. Featuring Catherine Hodges, Nan Cohen, Nicholas Reiner, Crystal AC Salas, Amelia Rodriguez, and Susan Kelly-DeWitt. Co-editors David Starkey and Chryss Yost are interviewed by George Yatchisin about the press’s origins, its mission, and accomplishments in the literary community it has fostered in its first decade. Home of various publishing initiatives and an avid community supporter, Gunpowder Press serves as a host of the Barry Stacks Poetry Prize; Shoreline Voices Project anthologies which publishes poets in Central California; Alta California Chapbook Prize highlighting Latinx poets; and Anacapa Review, an online journal which presents a curated selection of poems each month.

Book signings and reception to follow after the readings.

Doors Open: 1:30 PM I Readings: 2:00 PM

Catherine Abbey Hodges is the 2015 winner of the Barry Spacks Poetry Prize from Gunpowder Press for her book Instead of Sadness and the author of three other full-length collections: Empty Me Full (Gunpowder Press, 2024), In a Rind of Light (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2020) and Raft of Days (Gunpowder Press, 2017). Individual poems appear in venues including Narrative, Plume, CALYX, Plant-Human Quarterly, SALT, Tar River Poetry, Atticus Review, Gyroscope Review, Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. English Professor Emeritus at Porterville College, Catherine writes, edits, teaches privately and collaborates with musician Rob Hodges on ancestral Yokuts land.

Amelia Rodriguez is a journalist and poet from the Coachella Valley, California. The recipient of the San Diego Press Club's 2023 Rising Star award and 2024 Best of Show award, she is currently the associate editor at San Diego Magazine, where she covers art, culture, and obscure women's sports. Her articles and poetry have been published in Rolling Stone, Spectrum Literary Journal, and other national and regional publications. The First Amelia (2023 Gunpowder Press) is her first book. She lives in San Diego with her partner Michaela and their two cats, Clementine and Persimmon.

Nan Cohen is the author of two poetry collections, Rope Bridge and Unfinished City, winner of the Michael Dryden Award from Gunpowder Press and finalist for the Koret Award for an Emerging Writer on Jewish Themes, and a chapbook, Thousand-Year-Old Words. Awards for her poetry include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the longtime co-director of poetry programs for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

Nicholas Tino Reiner is an American poet of Mexican heritage. His debut poetry chapbook Levitations was co-winner of the inaugural Alta California Chapbook Prize, available in a bilingual edition from Gunpowder Press. His poems appear in Spillway, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Western Humanities Review, Zocalo Public Square, and elsewhere. Nicholas is Senior Press Strategist at the ACLU of Southern California, where he works to protect the liberty of all people. He holds degrees in English from Stanford University and University of California, Irvine, where he completed an M.F.A. He lives in Southern California with his wife and two daughters.

David Starkey is publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press. He served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate and is Emeritus Professor at Santa Barbara City College. His most recent books of poetry are You, Caravaggio and The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light. (davidstarkey.net).

Crystal AC Salas is a Xicanx poet, essayist, educator, and community organizer. Her poetry chapbook Grief Logic is co-winner of the inaugural Alta California Prize, from Gunpowder Press. She has work in Omnium Gatherum Quarterly, Alta Journal, Northwest Review, [PANK] Magazine, World Literature Today, Chaparral Poetry, Acentos Review, and others. A founding member of the BreakBread Literacy Project, which elevates the voices of young creatives under 25, she serves as poetry editor for BreakBread Magazine. She holds an M.F.A. from University of California, Riverside and is the recipient of a 2021-2022 California Arts Council Established Individual Artist Fellowship.

George Yatchisin is the author of Feast Days (Flutter Press 2016) and The First Night We Thought the World Would End (Brandenburg Press 2019). He is co-editor of the anthology Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds & Art (Gunpowder Press 2015), and his poetry appears in anthologies including Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies (Everyman's Library 2019).

Sacramento resident Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow. Her previous collection, Gatherer’s Alphabet, was published by Gunpowder Press in 2022 as the inaugural book in the California Poets Series. She is also the author of Gravitational Tug (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2020), Spider Season (Cold River Press, 2016), The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press, 2008), and a number of previous small press and online collections. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies, and in print and online journals at home and abroad, recently as the featured American Poet in the UK journal The High Window. Her past professional and writing life includes having been a reviewer for Library Journal, the editor-in-chief of the online journal Perihelion, the Program Director of the Sacramento Poetry Center and the Women’s Wisdom Arts Program, a Poet in the Schools and a Poet in the Prisons, a blogger for Coal Hill Review, and a longtime instructor for the UC Davis Division of Continuing Education. She is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Northern California Book Reviewers Association and a contributing editor for Poetry Flash. She is also an exhibiting visual artist. Please visit her website at www.susankelly-dewitt.com

Chryss Yost is the co-editor of Gunpowder Press. She is a Santa Barbara Poet Laureate who served from 2013-2015. She was awarded the 2013 Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize from Carlow University, and has multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her first collection, Mouth & Fruit, was one of the titles that launched Gunpowder Press in 2014. Her poems have been included in the most popular poetry textbooks in the United States and are widely anthologized.

Tickets will be available at Beyond Baroque's bookstore on the day of the event, but we recommend registering in advance through Eventbrite. Masks are encouraged while inside our center. No one turned away for lack of funds.

If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]

Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, fellow attendees, or performers.

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