LAURA SCHULKIND Poet and writer Laura Schulkind is an attorney by day, where she is entrusted with others’ stories. Through fiction and poetry she tells her own. She and her husband divide their time between Berkeley and Big Sur California, and her two grown sons continue to inspire her. Her published work can be seen atwww.lauraschulkind.com

3/28/16 The Poets of Vol 1 of our PoetryExpressed Magazine will  read their published poems. 


See the Mag at PoetryExpressed.com

Poets listed below. Note that some additional poets were selected by the participants at Poetry Express readings but  their poetry was not forwarded to us for publication at this time. (They are welcome to add their work at any time.)

JUDY WELLS 

JUDY WELLS was born in San Francisco and raised in Martinez, California.  She received her

B.A. from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of

California, Berkeley. She has published ten books and chapbooks of poetry, from I Have

Berkeley to her latest, The Glass Ship (www.sugartownpublishing.com).  She was a featured

reader in the Berkeley Poetry Festival, 2006, 2009, and 2011 and a featured reader in the 2015

Irish-American Crossroads Festival in San Francisco. She is also co-editor of The Berkeley

Literary Women’s Revolution:  Essays from Marsha’s Salon (McFarland, 2005). Judy was an

academic counselor and faculty member at Saint Mary’s College of California, working with

adults returning to school.  Now a full-time poet, she lives with her husband, avant-garde poet

Dale Jensen, in Berkeley.

   GARY TURCHIN 

is the author/illustrator of the wondrous, If I Were You (Simon DeWitt 2011, and the award-winning Ditty-Ditty Doggerel; A life From Bad to Verse (Simon DeWitt, 2012).  His newest collection of poems, Falling Home, was published in 2013 by Sugartown Publications. See http://www.garyturchin.net  for these offerings and more.

    Gary is also performance artist, poet, and illustrator. His children’s poetry show, Gary T. & his PoetTree, has been performed in more than 300 schools and libraries throughout California.  

     To see/hear and learn more about Gary, see the documentary film about his life’s journey, The Healthiest Man On Earth at http://youtu.be/craVH8mzpuQ .

NADINE LOCKHART

Nadine Lockhart received her MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing with an

emphasis in Poetry from ASU; she is currently earning her PhD in Literature from the

same university. Along with Rosemarie Dombrowski, she founded and hosts the Phoenix

Poetry Series, a monthly featured reading showcasing award-winning poets; it’s in its

eighth year and won “Best of” page-poetry reading in Phoenix Magazine. Lockhart has

been awarded more than a baker’s dozen of fellowships and scholarships providing travel

and study in English, poetry, and languages to such places as India, Oaxaca, Prague, and

the UK. She presented  several times at academic conferences over the last two years on 

the ability of poetry to transform itself into continued relevancy through hybridity and

cultural relativism. Her dissertation explores Arizona poetry in the public sphere for

which she received the Lattie and Elva Coor Fellowship for Building Communities. She

recently published “Hidden Lives of the Black Cat Poets,” a five-part interview series

during April, the poetry month, for the Herald of Truth or Consequences, NM. Nadine

lives with Badger the Cat. They happily travel together throughout California and the

American Southwest in search of plays, poetry, and paintings.

GRACE MARIE GRAFTON

Grace Marie Grafton, an active community poet, has taught in the California Poets In The Schools program for over thirty years.  She was awarded twelve CA Arts Council Artist-In-Residence grants for her work at Lakeshore Elementary School in San Francisco. Through her teaching, she became involved in US Poet Laureate (1997-99) Robert Hass’ annual River Of Words Youth Poetry and Art Contest.

After many years of seeing her poems widely published in literary magazines, her first book, Zero,won the 1999 Poetic Matrix Chapbook contest.  In 2001, her book of poems inspired by the artwork of contemporary women, Visiting Sisters, was published by Coracle Books. Ms. Grafton’s most recent books are Other Clues (2010) from Latitude Press, and Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, unruly sonnets (2012) from Poetic Matrix Press.  Other Clues is comprised of surreal prose poems. Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, as the subtitle indicates, is Grace’s experimentation with the sonnet form. Author Tobey Hiller writes, of this book, “In these lush sonnets by Grace Marie Grafton the wild and the cultivated often collide.  Here the habit of observation and the outcome of wonder produce…the sensate pleasures of both language and being.”
Hermost recent book, Jester, was published in 2013 by Hip Pocket Press

Recent poems appear in Ambush Review, The Offending Adam, Talking/Writing, and Theodate.  Ms. Grafton’s poems have won prizes from The Bellingham Review, the Soul Making contest (San Francisco PEN Women), The Sycamore Review, and Coracle.

Ms. Grafton grew up in the central valley of California, earned her BA from the University of California Berkeley and her MA from New York University.  She currently resides in Oakland, CA, with her husband and extended family.

LAURA SCHULKIND

Poet and writer Laura Schulkind is an attorney by day, where she is entrusted with others’ stories. Through fiction and poetry she tells her own. She and her husband divide their time between Berkeley and Big Sur California, and her two grown sons continue to inspire her. Her published work can be seen atwww.lauraschulkind.com

ELIZABETH ALFORD

Elizabeth Alford has always had an on-again-off-again relationship with poetry; but in the wake of her graduation from CSU East Bay, she recently announced that they are now going steady (much to everyone’s relief). She lives in Hayward, CA with her loving fiancé, mother, and two dopey dogs. Her favorite things include sushi, loud music on long drives, staring at the stars, and poetry. Her work has appeared in the student literary magazine Occam’s Razor and also online at Poetry Super Highway, Haikuniverse, Quatrain.Fish, and the blogs of Silver Birch Press and Creative Talents Unleashed. 

ELANA LEVY

Elana Levy is a recent transplant to the land of her daughter, of avocadoes and redwoods, from the northeast, of snow, lakes and green.  She will read her latest poems, as well as poems from her recent collection, Legacies and Heresies with blessings.  Elana will also read from her translations of much heralded 20th century German Jewish poet, Rose Ausländer, book available this fall.  Elana taught math in community college for two decades.  First  photographed by FBI in 1959.  Student and teacher of Jewish meditation and Kabbala; factory worker, social justice activist, radio producer, video director; embraces silence one month yearly. Still studying hard, knowing there's no easy answers.  

NANCY SCHIMMEL

Nancy Schimmel has toured nationally as a singer and storyteller, and is well known in the Bay Area. Brought up in a household full of music and stories, Nancy has been sharing them with the world ever since, as well as adding many of her own inspired originals. 

BRUCE BAGNELL

Bruce Bagnell has worked as a cook, mechanic, and college professor; held various management positions including running a car dealership; and was a USAF captain in Vietnam. Now retired, along with writing he is a Poetry Express Berkeley host, does the accounting for his Masters Swim Team, and is remodeling a 1930’s French Laundry into an art space.  He also does occasional management consulting work.   He has been published in OmniVerse, The Scribbler, The Round, Blue Lake Review, Crack the Spine, Chaparrel, Oxford Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Studio1, Westview Magazine, Zone 3,  the Griffin, The Burningwood Literary Journal, Poetalk, Tower Journal, and The Alembic.

JIM BARNARD

BIO:  If all the world’s a stage, I just auditioned for the role of Grandpa.

JAN DEDERICK 

 Jan lives in the East Bay and earns her keep doing homeopathic medicine and Kairos healing work. She lives with a wonderful poet,  two cats, two ducks, a grand piano and a jungly garden.  It’s hard to find time to do everything she loves.  Poor thing.