Dear Friends of Poetry,
The Poetry Night Reading Series is excited to feature Michael Mlekoday and Spencer X. Rico at 7 PM on Thursday, March 3rd, 2022 on the first floor of the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street in Davis.
Michael Mlekoday is a poet and National Poetry Slam winner, Mlekoday co-founded Button Publishing and currently serves as the poetry editor of Ruminate Magazine and as the editor of The Lichening. Mlekoday’s first book, The Dead Eat Everything, was chosen by Dorianne Laux as winner of the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Their newly released second book, All Earthly Bodies, was chosen by Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. Their work has won the Florida Review Editors’ Prize, the AWP Intro Journals Award, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason scholarship from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference.
Mlekoday’s work has been anthologized in The BreakBeat Poets, Read: America(s), and New Poetry of the Midwest, and has been translated into Polish. Recent poems appear in Third Coast, The Southampton Review, Sonora Review, Ninth Letter, Hunger Mountain, and The Rumpus. Mlekoday holds degrees from the University of Minnesota, Kansas State University, and Indiana University, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of California, Davis. We are excited to welcome him back to Poetry Night.
Spencer X. Rico is a Chicanx poet and undergraduate studying English and Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis. Rico has served as an editor for Open Ceilings Magazine, and a cast member of the UC Davis EOP “How We Rose” poetry series about first generation student experiences and storytelling. Rico is also in the UC Davis Creative Writing Honors Program. Rico’s work has been featured in Columbia University’s Latino Heritage Month Magazine, Open Ceilings Magazine, Protest Through Poetry, and elsewhere.
Opening for Mlekoday and Rico will be the singer and actress Gabrielle Genovieve Battista. Also a film and voice actor, Gabby has appeared in dozens of theatrical productions, many of them with the Davis Shakespeare Festival, and recently she has released the singles “Brave the Man” and “True.” Thursday night Gabby will share with us a single song to launch Poetry Night. Find out more about Gabby all over the web, including at her TikTok page.
This event will take place at the Natsoulas Gallery (521 1st Street) at 7 PM on Thursday, March 3rd. There will be an open mic after the featured performers. Open mic performances will be limited to four minutes or two items, whichever is shorter. Please mask your vaccinated selves before entering the Gallery. No matter what the CDC or Yolo County has announced, we ask that you wear your mask inside the Natsoulas Gallery.
Dr. Andy
Upcoming Poetry Night Events:
March 17th: Jabez Churchill
April 7th: Julia Levine and Frank Gaspar
April 21st: Tess Taylor
Later this spring we will feature, among others, Joseph Millar, Dorianne Laux, and Zinzi Clemmons.
