Influence, Reinvention and Work that Endures.

What does it mean to keep writing across decades, cities, and selves? Join three Bay Area poets—Lenore Weiss, Lee Rossi and Paul Corman-Roberts—for an intimate evening tracing the long arc of a writing life. In conversation with Cari Borja, the poets will reflect on who shaped their earliest work, what they were reaching for then, and how their voices, obsessions, and forms have shifted over the last twenty years.

This is a conversation about fraught beginnings, middle passages, and what refuses to end. About how poetry evolves not by smoothing itself out, but by sharpening its grip on the world. Each poet will read from published work, offering glimpses of where they started, where they are now, and what still feels unfinished.

Raised in the Bronx and now based in Oakland, Lenore Weiss is the author of the novel Pulp into Paper and multiple poetry collections, including Video Game Pointers (2024) and a trilogy exploring love, loss, and mortality. Her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love, was published by Alexandria Quarterly Press. A member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto and Associate Creative Nonfiction Editor for Mud Season Review, she has collaborated across disciplines, most recently on Life into Light, a chapbook about photosynthesis created with scientist Dr. John Bedbrook. She is currently at work on her second novel, tentatively titled, Not a Good Season for Trust.

Lee Rossi is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Say Anything (Plain View Press), and he has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Don’t Leave Hungry: 50 Years of Southern Poetry Review and Grand Passion: the Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Harvard Review, Poetry Northwest, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Poet Lore. He has published reviews in Poetry Flash, The Los Angeles Review, Rain Taxi, and Pedestal. A recipient of both The Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the Steve Kowit Prize, he is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, a Contributing Editor at Poetry Flash, and Poetry Moderator at Portside.org.

Paul Corman-Roberts is a poet and educator whose most recent full length collection, Bone Moon Palace (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) was nominated for the Firecracker award. Recent chapbooks include his illustrated collaboration with Ray Swaney, The Sincere (Libran Apocalypse, 2022) and 19th Street Station Volume 2 (Collapse Press, 2025). Previous books include We Shoot Typewriters (Nomadic Press 2015) and 19th Street Station (Full of Crow Chap Series, 2011). He is co-founder and co-EIC of Collapse Press with poet Lynn Alexander, and he teaches creative writing with the Caravan Writer’s Collective, the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute, and the To Live and Write collective, curated by Bronwyn Emery. He also teaches with the Oakland Unified School District and likes to play drums when not spending time with his hellspawn child.

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