THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23 | 7PM
CREEKSIDE ROOM | MILL VALLEY LIBRARY
Registration required. Register here. 

Join us as we celebrate and toast the newly appointed California Poet Laureate, Lee Herrick! He will be joined by current San Francisco Poet Laureate, Tongo Eisen-Martin, and Marin County Poet Laureate Emerita, Becky Foust. Each will share poems and we’ll have a Poet Laureate Panel for question and answers, followed by a short reception to honor Lee.

Lee Herrick is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of three books of poems: Scar and Flower, Gardening Secrets of the Dead, and This Many Miles from Desire. He is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit. His writing appears in anthologies such as HERE: Poems for the Planet, with an introduction by the Dalai Lama; Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice, with an introduction by Common; and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted to the United States at ten months, Lee is a Fresno Poet Laureate emerius that teaches at Fresno City College and the MFA program at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.

Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, "Someone's Dead Already" was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book "Heaven Is All Goodbyes" was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffins Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. He is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate.

Rebecca Foust’s fourth full-length book Only (Four Way Books 2022) received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Recognitions include runner up for the 2022 Missouri Review Editors Prize, winner of the Pablo Neruda, CP Cavafy, and James Hearst poetry prizes, a Marin County Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. Recent poems are in The Common, Five Points, Ploughshares, POETRY, and Quarterly West.