On the 4/9/25 edition of Dr.Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Eric Paul Shaffer joins the show to discuss his upcoming and recent book publications, Free Speech and Green Leaves. Shaffer recounts his time at the University of California, Davis and discusses his most recent collection, written in two long sequences. Shaffer then praises Coyote Arts Press and reads a poem, “Watch for falling rocks” and two verses that can be sung along to The United States National Anthem. Julia B. Levine is the next guest on the hour, and details her upcoming reading on April 17th at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Levine discusses her various writing projects and her feelings upon being awarded a Pushcart and the 2024 Terrain Poetry Prize. She explains how she writes about death, love, sex, and aging, trying to articulate the unique vulnerabilities each of these domains contain. Levine then shares a poem titled “This American Spring.”

Eric Paul Shaffer is author of nine volumes of poetry, most recently Free Speech and Green Leaves, Selected & New Poems, Even Further West, A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon, and Portable Planet. More than 650 individual poems appear in reviews in the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nicaragua, India, Iran, Scotland, Singapore, and Wales. Shaffer received Hawai‘i’s 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature; Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Awards for Lāhaina Noon (2006) and Even Further West (2019); and 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry. Shaffer is a retired professor of English and lives on Oʻahu.

Julia B. Levine’s poetry has won many awards, including a 2021 Nautilus Award for her fifth poetry collection, Ordinary Psalms, (LSU press, 2021), as well as the 2015 Northern California Book Award in Poetry for her fourth collection, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, (LSU, 2014). Recently she has won a 2024 Pushcart Prize in Poetry, the 2024 Terrain Poetry Prize, 2023 Oran Perry Burke Award in Poetry from The Southern Review, as well as a 2022 American Academy of Poetry Poet Laureate Fellowship for her work in building resilience in teenagers related to climate change through poetry, science, and technology. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review and Prairie Schooner. She received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in poetry from Pacific University. Her chapbook, Lullaby for the Sixth Extinction, won the Wolfson Poetry Prize and will be published in early fall, 2025.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM in the John Natsoulas Gallery. The event 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.

On the 4/2/25 Edition of Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Clarence Major joins the show to discuss his storied career as a writer and his upcoming release, Four Days in Algeria. He shares a poem from the collection titled “Closed on Sunday” before the next guest, Professor Anne Schilling joins the show. Professor Schilling details the upcoming play which is coming to the UC Davis Campus, “Diving Into Math with Emmy Noether,” which will play at the Wyatt Theater, April 9th at 6 P.M. The next guest of the hour is Seo Nguyen, who outlines some exciting upcoming events hosted by UC Davis’s Fashion and Design Society (FADs). Nguyen describes FADs new print magazine and their upcoming Fashion Show on Picnic Day, “Through the Looking Glass.” The last guest on the show is April Ossman, who details the thematics of her recent release, We. Her collection takes an unapologetically spiritual stance in bridging politicized divides, exploring conscious and unconscious prejudices with lyricism, warmth, and self-implicating humor. Ossman shares two poems, “Knee Deep” and “Deer Atilla.”

Clarence Major won a National Book Award Bronze Medal for Configurations: New and Selected Poems. He is the author of seventeen collections of poems. His forthcoming collection is Four Days in Algeria (2025). He has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harvard Review and many other periodicals. Major is distinguished professor emeritus in English at the University of California Davis.

Professor Anne Schilling studies quantum algebras and representation theory using combinatorial methods. In particular she is interested in affine crystal graphs [2], which first arose in the exactly solvable lattice models in statistical mechanics. She is also involved in the study of affine Schubert calculus [1], which is a vast generalization of classical Schubert calculus. Many parts of her research involve computational experimentation. She is an active developer for Sage, http://www.sagemath.org/.

Seo Nguyen is a third year double major in Design & Psychology. As the Co-editor in chief for FADS, Seo manages a team of graphic designers and is designing the first physical issue of the FADS magazine that will be printed in May! She derives a lot of inspiration from Japanese and editorial fashion magazines from the early 2000's and is creating something unique and physical to keep and remember FADS by.

April Ossmann is the author of We (Red Hen Press, 2025), Event Boundaries and Anxious Music, recipient of a VAC Creation Grant, and former director of Alice James Books, and an independent editor at: www.aprilossmann.com

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM in the John Natsoulas Gallery. The event 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. The readers on 4/3/25 will be Clarence Major and April Ossmann.

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 3/26/25 Edition of Dr Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Allison Proffitt joins the show to discuss the duality of her scientific and artistic practices. She details the upcoming event "ASSEMBLAGE: A Concert of Music Featuring Rare and Intriguing Instruments" which will feature seven newly commissioned works, highlighting the guzheng, shakuhachi, duduk, glass harp, kamancheh, and taiko drum. Proffitt then shares lyrics to “Mantra” by Santiago Jimenez. Chris Hennessy is the next guest of the program, and he shares exciting news about his upcoming memoir Touched by Hannah. He shares a sample from the manuscript before the last guest of the programs, Isabelle Sato joins. Sato speaks on her love and appreciation for the natural world, and how that influences her poetics. Sato describes the writing class she has been taking, which author Grant Faulkner teaches before sharing a poem “Bright Midnight.”

Allison Proffitt is a classical soprano who performs with the professional-level women's vocal ensemble Vox Musica. She has been performing in choirs for over twenty years. Allison holds a B.S. in Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior from UC Davis, where she sang in the Early Music Ensemble. Allison works at UC Davis Health conducting clinical research studies. She is a regular performer at Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis.

Award-winning filmmaker, author, and speaker. Board Member, California Writers Club, Sacramento. Chris Hennessy dominated the San Francisco Bay Area's independent filmmaking scene from 1990 to 2018, marketing, selling, and producing over 1,500 professional projects for clients, including Google, eBay, the SF 49ers, Deloitte, Office Max, and The American Cancer Society. His digital content has garnered more than 8 million views across various platforms. After retiring from professional filmmaking in 2018, Hennessy launched his television series Yolo YoYo's which won Sacramento's Best New TV Cable Series (2019). The show attracted 125,000 Facebook views (TV stats unavailable), aired four segments on CBS's GoodDay Sacramento, and generated multiple newspaper articles written by Hennessy. The series' season two premiere, "Miracles on College Street"—produced to promote his forthcoming memoir, Touched by Hannah—won the prestigious 'Film Heals' award (most inspirational) at the 2022 Manhattan Film Festival and was runner-up for 'Best Narrative Episode West Coast' at the 2022 ACM Western Region WAVE Cable TV Awards.

Isabelle Sato graduated UC Santa Barbara in 2020 with a B.S. in Physics. While in college she hosted 2 Startup Weekends. And after graduating, she worked as a Jr. Scientist at TAE Technologies in the field of fusion energy for 3 years doing computational plasma reconstructions. She left in Nov of 2023 and since then she has been exploring new topics and ways of being through reading, traveling, volunteering. She has recently picked up hobbies like poetry, music production, and designing clothes.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM in the John Natsoulas Gallery. The event 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.