June and July events

Dear Friends,

I’m happy to announce the following events celebrating the release of Dear Traveler and the multiple award-winning audio and paperback revised edition of Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California. I’ll also be reading new work including chants from “The Undertakers.”     Please join us!

Sunday June 12, 2:00-4:00 pm — Avenue 50 Gallery, 151 North Avenue 50, Highland Park 90042. I’ll be reading with Briana Muñoz, Tom Laichas, and A. K. Toney. The flier is attached.

Looking ahead: Tom Laichas and I are having our long-delayed publication party! Drinks and treats! I will be playing my dulcimer!

Friday July 15, 8:00-9:00 pm — Beyond Baroque, 681 North Venice Blvd., Venice 90291 

Tickets will be available in a few weeks. 

I look forward to seeing you!

Susan

The Intelligent Beast: A Literary Journal & Reading Series  

Avenue 50 Gallery  131 No. Ave. 50, Highland Park, CA. 90042 (Free parking)

June 12, 2022, 2:00 – 4:00    Featured Poets:

poets

Tom Laichas’s recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rupture, Disquieting Muses, Stand, Ambit, Moon & Sun and elsewhere. He is a winner of the Nancy Hargrove Poetry Prize from the Jabberwock Review and the author of Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (forthcoming from FutureCycle Press, 2023), Sixty-Three Photographs from the End of a War (3.1 Press, 2021), and Empire of Eden (The High Window Press, 2019).

Briana Muñoz is a writer from Southern California. Raised in San Diego, she spent a lot of her time at her mother’s Mexican folklore dance classes and at ranches where her father trained horses into the sunset. She is the author of Loose Lips (Prickly Pear Publishing 2019) and Everything is Returned to the Soil/Todo vuelve a la tierra (FlowerSong Press, 2021). Her work has been published in Dryland, the Bravura Literary Journal, LA BLOGA, and in the Oakland Arts Review, among others.

Susan Suntree is a poet and performer whose work investigates the dynamics of science, art, and spiritual philosophies as they engage contemporary life. She has presented her award-winning poetry and performances nationally and internationally, and has published books of poetry, biography, and creative nonfiction, as well as translations, essays, reviews, and book chapters. Awards include the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Award for Nonfiction, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Poetic Narrative, and a Mellon Foundation Elemental Arts Award, and the audiobook of Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California was a finalist for a Society of Voice Arts and Sciences prize.

A. K. Toney is a poet, writer, educator, and performance artist. As a World Stage Performance Gallery alumnus, he had the honor to be mentored by jazz great, community leader and founder of the World Stage Billy Higgins. Toney’s skills as a performance artist have taken him across the nation and abroad. His experience as a performance artist and educator has allowed him and his organization, Reading Is Poetry, to teach workshops with LA Unified schools, NAMI, and the Natural History Museum. Toney is also a contributing writer to KCET.

From AudioFile Magazine:

“…don’t miss listening to this astoundingly creative exploration of the history of place… Gary Snyder’s introduction, read enthusiastically by Peter Coyote…The emotional nuances of Suntree and Queypo’s delivery will make your ears dance.” 

 https://shop.authors-direct.com/collections/suntree-sacred-sites-audiobook   or wherever audiobooks are offered including many libraries.

SACRED SITES AUDIO BOOK LAUNCH PARTY!

With my heart brimming with appreciation for your support, I am thrilled to announce that we will launch our Sacred Sites Audio Theater via Zoom on Saturday, March 6, at 5PM PST!

Our team has worked for a year, with support from so many of you, to create what we feel is an audio performance that speaks to the heart of the current climate and social crises and summons us to live in balance with all beings. As Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gary Snyder writes in his foreword (read by Peter Coyote): This book “brings us home.”

Please join our celebration sponsored by 18th Street Art Center! It’s going to be a joyful show! Meet the cast and crew, hear clips from the book, experience Sacred Sites presented in the oral tradition which is its source. Though there is much left to do to bring this work fully into the world, now is the time to stir up a party!

Register right away! https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_jfvznkHpRUysh-jLwffbHA

Please post and share with your friends and family. All are welcome!

With gratitude!

Susan

Spring Letter 20 March 2018

20 March 2018

Dear Friends,

The winter heat, fires, and mudslides give way to short but mostly sweet March rains. Though they don’t dissolve the drought, they rinse the leaves that have been laden with ash and Santa Ana dust and we all breathe more deeply.

Good news on the literary front:

!. I am delighted to announce that Jerome Rothenberg, the iconic poet and anthologist famed for his influential poetry collections, especially Technicians of the Sacred recently released in a 50th Anniversary edition, has included commentary about Sacred Sites: The Secret History of Southern California on his blog:

http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/search?q=sacred+sites

Technicians of the Sacred is one of my foundational texts, a book whose presentation of tribal poetry infused with shamanism from around the world, shaped my developing sense of the range, depths, necessity of poetry.

  1. On Thursday, 22 March 2018, at 7:30, I’ll be reading new work at the E.P Foster Library in Ventura. This series is curated by Phil Taggart whose brilliant contribution to promoting poetry is widely praised. People LA to Santa Barbara attend his events in Ventura and Ojai. I’m honored to be included! Please join us! Tell your friends!

EP Foster Library in the Topping Room 

Poetry every Thursday at 7:30pm

651 E. Main Street – Ventura

host:  Phil Taggart

  1. On Sunday, 6 May 2018,(NOTE: THIS DATE MAY CHANGE– I’ll keep you posted!) at 3:30 PM, I’ll be reading in the poetry series at Britt Marie, a marvelous restaurant in Albany that supports the arts! Please join us! Tell your Bay Area friends!                                                        Britt Marie Restaurant

1369 Solano Ave.     Albany, CA

 

On the Historic 11th Street Bungalow Cluster Campaign:

We hope to be on the Landmarks Commission agenda for May 14 (DATE IS NOT SET FOR SURE AT THIS TIME) and are planning a rousing show! Please mark your calendars and join the fun in Council Chambers at Santa Monica City Hall! More information to follow about time and free parking.

I will also send information about emailing your notes of support closer to the meeting date. Stay tuned! And check our Historic 11th Street Facebook page where you can read the current edition of our Community Consultants Report on history of our block and the wonderful bungalows we intend to save.

Our vision is supported by all the Santa Monica neighborhood groups, the Santa Monica Conservancy, and important local organizations plus other conservancies like the Pasadena Heritage.

Additionally, I’m collecting a set of new work: The Traveler Poems  and have begun another collection. Spring, with its burgeoning from winter ground lifts my spirits some. January brought the loss of a dear friend and others whom I admired. Not to speak of the harsh currents that challenge the very air and every aspect of what we have sometimes called civilization. But, from the mouth of chaos comes the call to action. May we respond!

 

With the burgeoning green grass and brave new leaves,

Susan

 

Spread The Word

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