Dear Friends of Poetry,
On Thursday, July 2, 2026, Poetry Night will feature the poets Dianna Henning and Lara Gularte. We meet at 7 p.m. inside the John Natsoulas Gallery at 521 1st Street in Davis, and we hope you can join us!
Our featured poet for July 2 will be Dianna Henning.
Henning earned an MFA in Writing from Vermont College and studied with Allen Ginsberg at the Naropa Institute. She has held fellowships and scholarships to The Frost Place, Breadloaf, and Aspen Writers Conferences, as well as a fellowship to the Dublin Writers’ Centre from Eastern Washington University.
Henning is the author of six collections of poetry: Broken Bone Tongue; Song Water Stones and Others; The Tenderness House; Cathedral of the Hand (Finishing Line Press, 2016); Camaraderie of the Marvelous (Kelsay Books, 2021); and her newest collection, Rucksacks for the Leaf Cat, published by Finishing Line Press in 2026. She is the recipient of the Event Horizon Book Award and has received nine Pushcart nominations, most recently for her poem “In the Collage of my Mind/I’m a Simple Design,” nominated by Blue Heron Review in 2024. Her work has appeared in New American Writing, Poetry International, California Quarterly, Crazyhorse, The Adirondack Review, South Dakota Review, Fugue, Memoir Magazine, and many other journals. Her papers are held in Special Collections at the UC Davis Library.
Henning is the founder and facilitator of the Thompson Peak Writers’ Workshop in Janesville, California, where she lives.
Also reading on July 2 will be Lara Gularte.
Gularte is Poet Laureate Emerita of El Dorado County and a fourth-generation California Azorean with family roots on the islands of Pico, Faial, and Flores. She lives and writes in the Sierra Foothills of California, where she hosts Poetry of the Sierra Foothills, a monthly reading series at Chateau Davell Winery in Camino, California. She is a teaching artist in art-in-correction programs and conducts ekphrastic writing workshops at galleries and community venues throughout the region.
Her new book, Soul of Black Stone: Echoes of Islands, Shadows of Time, published in 2026 through Bruma Publications and the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) at California State University, Fresno, is a collection of new and selected poems exploring Azorean identity within California’s diverse and multicultural landscape.
Her previous collections include Kissing the Bee (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2018), which follows the emigration of her family from the Azores to Northern California in the late nineteenth century, and Fourth World Woman (Finishing Line Press, 2022), which takes on border crossings, homelessness, pandemic, and mortality. Nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, her work appears in national and international journals and anthologies, including The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry and Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada.
You are invited to visit the Facebook page for this event.
Doors and open-mic signups open at around 6:30 p.m.; the first featured reader begins at 7 p.m.; open mic starts at 8 p.m. Open mic performers will be asked to limit what they share to two items or four minutes, whichever is shorter. The open mic list is typically full by 6:45 p.m. People who show up early to help set up chairs will always earn a spot on the open mic list. We expect open mic favorites Michael Gallowglas, Davis poet laureate Mercedes Ibañez, Joe Bacchus, and Allegra Silberstein to perform.
Find out more about the Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting https://www.poetryindavis.com. Encourage your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, see some of his recent essays on Substack: https://andyjones.substack.com/. One post lists the almost 400 poets who have ever featured at the Poetry Night Reading Series. Set in Monterey during a recent trip, his most recent post includes a poetic parody of the Billy Joel song “Piano Man.”
Please plan to join us on every first and third Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. at the John Natsoulas Gallery for the Poetry Night Reading Series.
Our July 2 Poetry Night features Dianna Henning and Lara Gularte. Plan to join us!
