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Joshua Escobar curates our 152nd Wednesday Poetry Reading with Michelle Detorie, Mel Elberg, Jodi Lin, and Vivian Storm.
In this talk
Michelle Detorie
Michelle Detorie is the author of numerous chapbooks of poetry, prose, and visual poetry including Our Clean Heart (Outside Voices), Fur Birds (Insert Press), How Hate Got Hand (eohippus labs), and Bellum Letters (Dusie), as well as the full-length collection, After-Cave (Ahsahta Press). She is the recipient of an National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, as well as a direct to artist grant from the Santa Barbara Art Collaborative for her public art project, The Poetry Booth. Her current projects include the collections Rainbow Weather and Feral Planets. By day she works at Santa Barbara City College training tutors and supporting students in the Multimodal Lab.
Mel Elberg
Mel Elberg makes biblical erasures and hides precious objects in a non-functional dishwasher. She has poems published in the Brooklyn Rail, Bathhouse, New Pinky, the chapbook ROT/RED, and elsewhere. Her first full length book, THE KISSER, is forthcoming.
Jodi Lin
Jodi Lin is a Queer/Trans AAPI poet and filmmaker. They find focus in creating work that engages individuals who have ever sought a connection with something spiritual. Their poetry can be experienced in Olney Magazine, Amethyst Review, Poetry Project Footnotes, and in Leaving Beauty, their video diary on YouTube. They were invited to complete a course of study at Maysles Documentary Center and was a fellowship recipient at Brooklyn Poets. Their short film Borte, Queen of Tibet, a fearlessly honest autobiography about their recovery from Schizo Affective Disorder, was nominated for the festival prize at the Soho International Film Festival and received numerous other screenings. They are a graduate of the ART Institute at Harvard and Sarah Lawrence College.
Vivian Storm
Vivian Storm is a Milwaukee native with the energy of a million storms. She has lived in Santa Barbara for over seven years and has helped cultivate spaces encouraging joy and belonging. Her love for performing and entertaining shines through each of her performances. She hopes to leave her audience better than they came! Her love for joy drives her work, allowing her to coach others to be their best self. Storm Chasers unite and hang on to something because a storm is coming!
Joshua Escobar
Joshua Escobar is the author of the poetry collection Bareback Nightfall (Noemi Press), which was awarded the 2023 Bo Huston Award. His novel Demons of Eminence is forthcoming in the Fellow Travelers Series at Publications Studios. He directs the Creative Writing Program and Title V Grant at Santa Barbara City College.
❤️ 🌈 We'd like to thank the The Terra Foundation for American Art for making these daily conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive.