Generation to Generation, Poet to Poet

Nguyen Do's thirteen books include: The Empty Space and New Darkness (Vietnamese Association Writers, 1991, 2009); with Paul Hoover, he edited and translated the Vietnamese poetry anthology Black Dog, Black Night  (Milkweed, 2008), and Nguyen Trai’s poetry in Beyond the Court Gate  (Counterpath, 2010). He received a Poetry Foundation's grant (2005).

Robin Ekiss is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award for emerging women writers, and author of The Mansion of Happiness, winner of the 2010 Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize and a finalist for both the 2010 Northern California and California Book Awards. 

Vernon Keeve III is a educator in Oakland. Looks for his book Southern Migrant Mixtape to be released with Nomadic Press in early 2017. 

Gail Newman, a child of Polish Holocaust survivors, was born in a displaced persons' camp in Lansberg, Germany. She lives in San Francisco where she works as a Museum educator for The CJM and as a poet-teacher for California Poets in the Schools. Her poems have appeared in Ghosts of the Holocaust, Prairie Schooner, Calyx, and PRISM. A collection, One World, was published in 2011.

Brynn Saito is the author of two books of poetry, Power Made Us Swoon (2016) and The Palace of Contemplating Departure (2013), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Originally from Fresno, CA, Saito lives in Los Altos and teaches and works in San Francisco.

Cintia Santana’s work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review,The Missouri Review, Pleiades, RHINO, Spillway, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. She teaches poetry and fiction workshops in Spanish, as well as literary translation courses, at Stanford University. Santana is the recipient of fellowships from CantoMundo and the Djerassi Resident Artist Program.

Jen Siraganian is a Bay Area poet and author of the chapbook Fracture. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the recipient of scholarships from the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies such as Best New Poets 2016 (forthcoming), Cream City Review (forthcoming), Mid-American Review, Smartish Pace, Barrow Street, Southwest Review, and Natural Bridge.  

Tria Blu Wakpa is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Ethnic  Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and a graduate of  the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University.  Her poetry frequently focuses on Filipinos and Native Americans’ experiences under U.S. occupation.

Matthew Zapruder is the author most recently of Sun Bear, Copper Canyon, 2014, and Why Poetry, a book of prose about poetry, forthcoming from Ecco/Harper Collins in 2017. An Associate Professor and Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California, he is also Editor at Large at Wave Books, and Editor of the Poetry Column for The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Oakland, CA.