6:00 - 7:00
Poets Elaine Brown aka Poet E Spoken, Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, Connie Post and Jacki Rigoni lead a One City One Book inspired reading.
Elaine Brown aka Poet E Spoken is an explosive freestyle artist, History Teacher, Co-host of VENT an online literary Empathy Circle, and My Word Open Mic. "Never afraid to normalize conversations of trauma!"
Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu is a Tongan/Pacific Islander scholar, poet and community organizer. She received her doctorate from the Comparative Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley in 2019. She is currently working on her book manuscripts, The Mana of the Tongan Everyday: Tongan Grief and Mourning, Patriarchal Violence, and Remembering Va and a book of creative non-fiction titled, Looking For Hine Nui Te Po: Searching for Our Mother. Niumeitolu is part of Sogorea Te Land Trust, an Urban Indigenous women’s land trust located in Oakland, California.
Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California from 2005 to 2009. Post’s Chapbook And When the Sun Drops (Finishing Line Press 2012) received the Aurorean Editors Chapbook Choice Award for Fall 2012. Her first full length book Floodwater, released in January 2014, earned the Glass Lyre Press Lyrebird Award. Post’s full length collection, Prime Meridian, released in January 2020 was a finalist in the 2020 Best Book Awards for Poetry and the 2020 American Fiction Award (poetry).
Jacki Rigoni writes within the found spaces of single parenting her three children in the San Francisco Bay area, where she serves as Poet Laureate of Belmont, California. She has an M.A. in English from UC Berkeley and is a credentialed teacher. A finalist for the 2018 Francine Ringold Award for New Writers, her poems appear or are forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, Moon City Review, and Poems-For-All. An educator and award-winning copywriter by profession, Rigoni’s other writing can be found on TV and the back of snack packaging. Connect - Website | Instagram | Facebook