Five MPC Board Members read for Litquake! Sandra Cross, Rebecca Foust, Siân Killingsworth, Amanda Moore, and Meryl Natchez. This is MPC’s first San Francisco Litquake event.

Sandra Cross, a retired lawyer, was born in St. Louis and raised in San Francisco. She attended the University of Chicago in the late 60s and has always been proud to have come of age in the 60’s when rock & roll was born, and rebellion was the language of the streets. Having been in the poetry closet for most of her life, she began taking classes and attending poetry workshops about 6 years ago. She is a regular with the First Thursday group of writers in Stinson Beach, where she has lived for the past 15 years, and for the last few years has written with an international group of poets in an online workshop. Her poems have been published many times in the Marin Poetry Center’s Anthology. She is the current Chair of the Marin Poetry Center.

Rebecca Foust’s books include The Unexploded Ordnance Bin (Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Award) and Paradise Drive (Press 53 Poetry Award), reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. Recognitions include the CP Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes, the Lascaux and American Literary Review fiction prizes, and fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. Foust was Marin County Poet Laureate in 2017-19 and works as Poetry Editor for Women’s Voices for Change and as an assistant Editor for Narrative Magazine.

Siân Killingsworth’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Typehouse Literary Journal, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Columbia Poetry Review, Mom Egg Review, Oakland Review, and others. She has an MFA in poetry from the New School, where she served on the staff of Lit. She leads a children’s poetry program, “Beatnik Café” for schools and other kids’ groups, and is a current board member of the Marin Poetry Center. Read more about her at www.sianessa.com.

Meryl Natchez’ most recent book is a bilingual volume of translations from the Russian: Poems From the Stray Dog Café: Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Gumilev. She is co-translator of Tadeusz Borowski: Selected Poems. Her book of poems, Jade Suit, appeared in 2001 and her new book is forthcoming from Longship Press in 2020. Her work has appeared in “The American Journal of Poetry,” “Poetry Northwest,” “ZYZZYVA,” “The Pinch Literary Review,” “Atlanta Review,” “Lyric,” “The Moth,” “Comstock Review,” and many others. She is on the board of Marin Poetry Center and you can see her work at www.merylnatchez.com

Amanda Moore‘s poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including ZZYZVA, Cream City Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Best New Poets, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and she is the recipient of writing awards from The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s blog, and she is a Contributing Poetry Editor at Women’s Voices for Change. She received her MFA in Poetry from Cornell University, where she served as Managing Editor for EPOCH magazine and a lecturer in the John S. Knight Writing Institute. Currently a Board member for the Marin Poetry Center and 2019 Fellow at The Writers Grotto, Amanda is a high school teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with her husband and daughter.