Join us for a reading with Iris Jamahl Dunkle, Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate! Open mic follows. Teens & adults are invited to share poems in any form or style.

Iris Jamahl Dunkle is the 2016-2017 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Her second poetry collection, There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air, is about the untold history of Sonoma County, CA, and was published in November 2015 by Word Tech Editions. Her third collection, Interrupted Geographies, will be published by Trio House Press in 2017. Her debut poetry collection, Gold Passage, was selected by Ross Gay to win the 2012 Trio Award and was published by Trio House Press in 2013. Her chapbooks Inheritance and The Flying Trolley were published by Finishing Line Press in 2010 and 2013. Her poetry, essays and creative non-fiction have been published widely in numerous publications including Fence, Calyx, Catamaran, Poet’s Market 2013, JMWW. and Chicago Quarterly Review. Of note, her poem “How to Cope in a New Landscape” was a finalist for the The New Guard’s Knightville Poetry Contest and her poem “The Trick of Sound” was a finalist for the Yalobusha Review’s Yellowood Poetry Prize. Her essay, “Yellow Dahlias” was nominated for a pushcart prize. She is currently writing a new biography of Jack London’s wife, Charmian Kittredge London. Dunkle teaches writing and literature at Napa Valley College and is on the staff of the Napa Valley Writers conference. She received her B.A. from the George Washington University, her M.F.A. in Poetry from New York University, and her Ph.D. in American Literature from Case Western Reserve University. She currently resides with her family in Northern California.

Light refreshments will be served. For more information – please contact Melissa at the Ukiah Library: 467-6434 or carrm@co.mendocino.ca.us