Sit in on a USF Poetry Class!

We will welcome poet D.A. Powell, who is leading a San Francisco Poetics class with University of San Francisco here at the bookshop!
About this Event

Bookshop West Portal will be welcoming poet D.A. Powell, who is leading a San Francisco Poetics class with University of San Francisco students. On October 1st, the class will take place at Bookshop West Portal. The class will include a poetry reading, learning about Bookshop West Portal and the literary history of that part of the city, and some general discussion. Benjamin Gucciardi, author of the West Portal poetry collection and Shelley Wong, author of As She Appears will also be joining.

This class will not only include the students from D.A. Powell's class but it is open to the public! You are encouraged to sit in and participate in the class to learn about our neighborhood and hear from poets who wax lyrical about our very own West Portal.

This event is FREE! Though we encourage RSVPing for our planning purposes. Seating is first-come, first-served.

About the Poets

D. A. Powell is the author of five collections, including Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. His honors include two Northern California Book Awards, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and the John Updike Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Originally from San Francisco, California, Benjamin Gucciardi is the author of Arguments (Persea Books, 2026) winner of the 2025 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and West Portal (University of Utah Press, 2021), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry. His poems appear in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine, On Being’s Poetry Unbound, and elsewhere.

Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books), longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and winner of a 2023 Lambda Literary Award and the 2019 Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. A Kundiman and MacDowell fellow, she lives in San Francisco.

Agenda

🕑: 06:30 PM - 07:00 PM
Buy the book, browse the shelves, snag your seat!
🕑: 07:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Hear from the author + Q&A
🕑: 08:00 PM - 08:30 PM
Signing Line - Get your copy personalized by the author