Dear Friends of Poetry,
The Poetry Night Reading Series is excited to feature Judy Halebsky and Dean Rader at 7 PM on Thursday, June 16th, 2022 on the roof sculpture garden of the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street in Davis.
Judy Halebsky is the author of three poetry collections—Sky=Empty, Tree Line, and Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged)—and the chapbook Space/Gap/Interval/Distance. Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halebsky holds an M.F.A. in English and Creative Writing from Mills College and a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of California, Davis. On fellowships from the Japanese Ministry of Culture, she spent five years living in Japan, where she trained in Butoh dance and Noh theatre. She now directs the low-residency MFA program at Dominican University of California.
Judy Halebsky’s work has been supported by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her publications include Harvard Review, Poetry Flash, Adirondack Review, and others. Halebsky’s book Sky=Empty won the New Issues Poetry Prize, and Space/Gap/Interval/Distance won the Poets-Under-Forty Award from Sixteen Rivers Press. Tree Line was shortlisted for five awards including the Believer Poetry Award and the California Book Award. In Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), published in 2020 by University of Arkansas Press, the Tang Dynasty poets Li Bai and Du Fu encounter everyday life in Oakland, California, where Halebsky now lives with her nature guide and their daughter.
Dean Rader has written, edited, or co-edited eleven books. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry and Landscape Portrait Figure Form (2014) was named a Best Poetry Book by The Barnes & Noble Review. In 2017, Rader had three books appear: Suture, collaborative poems written with Simone Muench (Black Lawrence Press); Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence, edited with Brian Clements and Alexandra Teague (Beacon); and Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry (Copper Canyon), a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award and the Northern California Book Award.
Most recently, Dean Rader co-edited They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence) and Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversations (Tupelo). Rader’s poems have recently appeared in The Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Best of the Net, and others. Dean writes and reviews regularly for San Francisco Chronicle, The Huffington Post, BOMB, and Ploughshares. His work has been supported by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Princeton University, and Harvard University. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry. Currently, he is collaborating with the calligrapher Thomas Ingmire on a series of visual/textual projects. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry. Find out more about Dean Rader at www.deanrader.com.
This event will take place at the Natsoulas Gallery (521 1st Street) at 7 PM on Thursday, June 16th. There will be a setting-sun open mic after the featured performers. Open mic performances will be limited to four minutes or two items, whichever is shorter. No matter what the CDC or Yolo County has announced, we ask that you wear your mask inside the Natsoulas Gallery.
People interested in the local poetry scene are invited to subscribe to the weekly podcast titled Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour, also a KDVS radio show since 2000. Catch also Dr. Andy’s weekly newsletter, titled Eager Mondays.
Dr. Andy
P.S. Find the Facebook page for this event at https://www.facebook.com/events/542408707359531.
Upcoming Poetry Night Events:
July 7th: Susan Kelly-Dewitt and Tim Kahl
July 21st: Matt Mitchell and Mo Stoycoff
Upcoming readers at the Poetry Night Reading Series will include, among others, Mischa Kuczynski, Angela James, Charles Halsted, Brad Buchanan, Margaret Ronda, and Rooja Mohassessy.
