Our popular Poets & Writers sponsored events take place in Point Arena, California. Each month’s gathering begins at 7:30 P.M. with an open mic and concludes with a reading by our featured poet. The guest performer generally reads between 20 and 40 minutes.

On Thursday, October 18, at 7:30pm The Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz Reading Series at 215 Main in Point Arena will feature Albion poet Karen Lewis.

Karen Lewis writes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and uses hybrid forms. She’s widely published in journals and anthologies including most recently Mothering Through the Darkness and Minerva Rising. She also manages a blog Wordjourneys, and contributes to BookBrowse, a subscription literary review. She is currently working on a poetry collection.

Karen has lived on four continents, traveled on six. Borders, migration, and diverse habitats are favorite themes in her work. She is interested in the spaces between here and there. Where ocean touches earth. Where sky touches mountain. Where “impossible” touches “maybe” and where the blank page turns into a character with a story.

Karen grew up in Los Angeles and studied at UCLA, Mount Holyoke College, and Stanford University then earned an MFA from Antioch. Since 1995, she has been active with California Poets in the Schools, teaching K-12 hands-on creative writing workshops in Mendocino County. She is the recipient of six California Arts Council – Artists in Schools grants. She has also worked with the Arts Council of Mendocino County – Get Arts in Schools (GASP) project. In addition, Karen develops curriculum to connect poetry, language arts, and English language learning with other topics like science, watershed, social studies, and math. She’s presented nationally on these topics.

From 2014-16 Karen directed the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, and remains on the advisory board.

She is married to the artist-sculptor Will Lewis and lives in Albion. When not spending time writing, taking care of the family business, or exploring the outdoors with the family, Karen is passionate about farm-to-table cooking, and scavenging plastic from local beaches.

Readings are held at 215 Main, a wine bar/pub in downtown Point Arena. A small jazz combo plays before and after the reading and generally accompanies the local as well as our featured poets (just about all of them elect to read with the band). The usual audience is comprised of regulars (a mix of young and old, and everything in the middle, as well as reflecting our multi-racial community), visitors from points, north and south of Point Arena, plus the smattering of tourists who just happen to stumble upon us. All of our past readers rave about how attentive, responsive, and open our audiences are.