On the 5/7/25 Edition of Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Doria E. Charlson joins the show to discuss the Department of Theater and Dance’s upcoming spring dance “Rules of Play.” She outlines the process behind the department’s plays, with an informal showing in the fall, and a formal showing in the spring quarter platforming the work of selected students. Charlson states the play highlights student’s unique dance training, interdisciplinary studies, modes of inquiry and approach to dance. This week's performance will highlight the legacy and generational impacts of racist practices in performance such as jim crow blackface minstrelsy. The next guest on the show is Mark Wish, who reads the first five minutes of his recent novel Necessary Deeds, which was nominated for a national book award. He describes his professional journeys, taking full time, adjunct, and editor positions alike. Wish also shares the thorough process of reviewing submissions for the anthology COOLEST AMERICAN STORIES.

Doria E. Charlson is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance in the Department of Theatre and Dance at UC Davis. Doria earned her PhD in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies from Brown University, from which she also holds MA degrees in History and Theatre Arts and Performance Studies. She also earned a BA in History with a minor in Drama from Stanford University. Her manuscript project, Consuming Crises: Migrant Labor, Spectacle, and Precarity in the 20th Century considers how the laboring body becomes mobilized during moments of economic and social crisis. Doria’s research and scholarship is deeply informed by her decades of praxis as a dancer. She has trained with ODC/Dance, Mark Morris Dance Group, the Alvin Ailey School, the Joffrey Ballet School, and at Stanford University. She completed her residency as an oncology chaplain at UCSF Medical Center and holds a certificate in Interreligious Chaplaincy from the Graduate Theological Union.

MARK WISH is the author of the novels Necessary Deeds, Watch Me Go, Show Up Look Good, and Confessions of a Polish Used Car Salesman, receiving praise from the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic's C. Michael Curtis, Salman Rushdie, Anne Serling, Daniel Woodrell, Jonathan Lethem, and Rebecca Makkai. Mark is also the founding editor of Coolest American Stories, an award-winning annual anthology of short stories by writers from all walks of life for readers from all walks of life. His own short stories have appeared in more than 125 print venues. He is the recipient of a Tobias Wolff Award, a Kay Cattarulla Award, an Isherwood Fellowship, and a Pushcart Prize. His narrative poems have appeared in venues such as Poetry, The Iowa Review, Ecotone, Prairie Schooner, New York Quarterly, Post Road, and Poetry International. Mark served as the fiction editor of California Quarterly, was the founding fiction editor of New York Stories, and a contributing editor for Pushcart.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. On Thursday, May 1, the Poetry Night Reading Series is proud to present Patrick Grizzell and Oswaldo Vargas. We meet at 7 PM on the roof of the John Natsoulas Gallery, and we hope you can join us! Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.

On the 4/30/25 Edition of Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Oswaldo Vargas joins the show to discuss his role as a board member of the Sacramento Poetry Center, coordinating and facilitating events. Vargas discusses his efforts to highlight and platform the intersection of Sacramento’s queer and poetry communities together, and how his identity and life experience influence his poetics. He speaks on behalf of the Sacramento Poetry Center as a place that hosts open mics, events, memorials, educational events, and charitable efforts for community members in need. He shares a poem “Antiprom” before discussing his upcoming champbook project and prospective writing future. The next guest on the show is Patrick Grizzell, who details the Big Day of Giving in Sacramento, which serves as a celebration of the nonprofits serving the Sacramento region. He underlines his efforts to make the Sacramento Poetry Center more equitable, stating his efforts to include spoken word poetry in the newest iteration of the Tule Review. Grizell describes his new project The Vignettes, which he is hoping to publish in the coming years, before sharing a poem called “Help Me.”

Oswaldo Vargas is a former farmworker and a 2021 recipient of the Undocupoets Fellowship. He has been anthologized in Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (Nightboat Books, 2018) and Here to Stay: Poetry & Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (HarperCollins, 2024). His work can also be found in Huizache: The Magazine of a New America, the American Academy of Poets' "Poem-A-Day" series, and Narrative Magazine (among others). He lives and dreams in Sacramento, CA.

Patrick Grizzell is a poet, songwriter, journalist and visual artist. His books include Dark Music, Chicken Months (about which Robert Bly wrote, "... the poems have a sweet spontaneity and tenderness.”), Minotaure Into Night (with sumi paintings by Jimi Suzuki), 13 Poems, It's Like That, and The Vignettes, a work in progress. A founding member and current president of, as well as an editor for, the Sacramento Poetry Center, he founded or co-founded most of the SPC publications, and was editor-in-chief of On The Wing, an arts magazine, and has written reviews and articles for many other publications. He has performed poetry and music with Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, Leon Redbone, Jim Ringer, Ed Sanders, Robert Creeley, Gary Snyder, Shizumi Shigeto Manale, William Stafford, and others. His band, Proxy Moon, released its premiere CD in 2016. A second is in the works. John Lee Hooker once said he "sound pretty good" on the dobros.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. On Thursday, May 1, the Poetry Night Reading Series is proud to present Patrick Grizzell and Oswaldo Vargas. We meet at 7 PM on the roof of the John Natsoulas Gallery, and we hope you can join us! Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.

On the 4/23/25 Edition of Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Barbra Ruth Sanders joins the show to speak on the publication of her debut collection. Hearing Voices. Ruth Sanders states that the collection took years of work and contains poems that touch on family, places from the past, and hearing voices. She shares two poems, one that closes the book, “Wayfinding at Pere Lachaise,” and another, “Ode to Wicklow Mountains,” before delving into a discussion surrounding her vivid imagery. The next guest of the program is Veronica Jarboe, who discusses her recently published chapbook Dragon Girl. Jarboe shares the title poem from her Chapbook and also describes how her creative projects often lead into each other. She discusses workshops with Joshua McKinney and the process of boiling down poems into a body of work. The last guest of the hour is Indigo Moor, who reveals he has a book coming out next March titled Reconstructing Eden. He discusses how jazz influences his work and explains his creation of the invented form “The Bastard Villanelle.” Moor ends his segment by sharing a poem, “Transubstantiation.”

Barbara Ruth Saunders writes poetry, memoir, and criticism and performs at poetry readings and solo performance venues in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut poetry collection, Hearing Voices, was released in 2024, and her work has recently appeared at Highland Park Poetry and in the anthology, Silence is Consent.

Veronica Jarboe is the author of the MicroChap collection i tell the finches with Rinky Dink Press, which earned her a Pushcart nomination. She is also the author of Sweethearts and Sorrows, and Dragon Girl with Bottlecap Press. Some of her other published works can be seen in Re-Side Magazine, Yours Poetically, Moss Puppy Magazine, The Broken Spine, Ethel, and Folio Magazine, among others. Veronica is currently an undergraduate English Major at California State University, Sacramento. Additionally, she is a prose and poetry reader for Moss Puppy Magazine. Veronica can be found on Instagram @veronicajarboe and Twitter @VJarboe.

Poet Laureate Emeritus of Sacramento, Indigo Moor’s fourth book of poetry, Everybody’s Jonesin’ for Something, took second place in the University of Nebraska Press’ Backwater Prize. Jonesin’—a multi-genre work consisting of poetry, short fiction, memoir pieces, and stage plays—was published in the spring of 2021. Through the Stonecutter’s Window, won Northwestern University Press’s Cave Canem prize. His first and third books, Tap-Root and In the Room of Thirsts & Hungers, were both parts of Main Street Rag’s Editor’s Select Poetry Series. Indigo is part of the visiting faculty for Dominican’s MFA program, teaching poetry and short fiction. His stageplay, Live! At the Excelsior, I was a finalist for the Images Theatre Playwright Award. The subsequent screenplay was optioned as a full-length film.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, by John Natsoulas, and by Thea and the other members of the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.