3/4/19 D. R. Goodman & Judy Bebelaar

3/4/19 D. R. Goodman & Judy Bebelaar hosted by The Last Word Reading Series

D. R. Goodman and Judy Bebelaar will read at 7 pm on Monday, March 4th, at Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University Avenue, cross street California, in Berkeley, as part of the Last Word Reading Series, with thanks to Poetry Express and Himalayan Flavors for their hospitality. Cafe phone is 510-704-0174. There is also an open reading.

D. R. Goodman, author of Greed: A Confession (Able Muse Press), is a past winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award and two-time winner of the Able Muse Write Prize for poetry. Her work has appeared in many journals across the U.S., and has been selected for inclusion in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and in the anthology, Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, William Baer, editor.  A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, she now lives in Oakland, California, where she is founder and senior instructor at a martial arts school. She is also the author of The Kids’ Karate Workbook: A Take-Home Training Guide for Young Martial Artists, from North Atlantic/Blue Snake Books.Goodman claims she always meant to be a poet, but got distracted and went for more than twenty years without writing – until one day while driving, she heard Kay Ryan reading on KQED. She laughed out loud, turned the car around and drove to Berkeley, where she bought the only two Kay Ryan books she could find. She soon began writing again, and has been at it ever since.

Judy Bebelaar's poetry has been published widely in magazines and online, and has won many awards, most recently a first prize, two thirds, and the Grand Prize in the Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Contest. Her work is also included in many anthologies, among them The Widows’ Handbook (foreword by Ruth Bader Ginsberg) and River of Earth and Sky. Walking Across the Pacific is her first poetry chapbook. And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown, non-fiction, is about the students from Peoples Temple she and co-author Ron Cabral came to know before most of them were sent to Jonestown. Ron and Judy were recently named Library Laureates 2019 by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

The Last Word Reading Series is now presented by Himalayan Flavors, a restaurant that serves Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese cuisine in a beautiful and colorful atmosphere. Dinner here is wonderful and should not be missed. Admission is free, but a one-drink or one-plate minimum is suggested. There is ample parking in the lot next to the restaurant.