Readers include:
Jeannine Black, Kimberley Bermender, Taylor Gorman, Jessie Marie, Peggy Simmons, David Sullivan, Tom Brady
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Jeannine Black: Poet, memoirist, English teacher, new teacher mentor, green spaces non-profitess. Lover of language, travel & culture. No chapbooks, no paper trail: just happy to be in a room full of risk takers. 
 
Kimberley Bermender: Poet, photographer, teacher, creative wanderer. Kimberley speaks in rhyme and rhythm that weave into story. They conjure creativity in classrooms, jails, on paper and in open mics—wherever words and images yearn to come alive.
 
Taylor Gorman: Taylor Gorman is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has been featured in The New Orleans Review, The Cincinnati Review, and The Red Wheelbarrow. He lives in Santa Cruz, CA with his cats. 
 
Jesse Marie: Jessie Marie is a Bay Area–rooted spoken word artist/poet, musician, photographer, and community organizer whose work centers access, healing, and collective creativity. She began performing in the San Francisco and Berkeley arts scenes around 2005 and has spent years cultivating spaces where expression and belonging intersect. Working across poetry, music, photography, painting, and digital media, Jessie builds experiences that invite people into their creative capacity. In 2021, she founded Mic Drop!, a collaborative, poet-led community open mic rooted in care and openness. She also regularly comes alongside other creative teams in Santa Cruz, supporting local organizations and open mics, including InterAct. Based in Santa Cruz, California, Jessie continues to practice art as a living devotion—essential, connective, and alive.
 
Peggy Simmons: Peggy Simmons is a writer and facilitator who has spent much of her career elevating and amplifying others’ voices—including incarcerated teens and people experiencing poverty—and bringing people from very different walks of life together. She loves writing in community, where difference becomes a source of connection and we learn from one another in the most authentic, indirect, and surprising ways.
 
David Allen Sullivan is the former poet laureate of Santa Cruz county. His books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, Black Ice, Take Wing, Salt Pruning, and Black Butterflies Over Baghdad. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, lives in Santa Cruz with his family, and his website is: https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-1.
 
Tom Brady:Tom Brady: Tom Brady began making performance Website as art in 1972. He has performed in Milano Italy, New York at Franklin Furnace and PS1; Chicago, Links Hall and SiteLess; St. Louis, COCA, Mad Art Gallery, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Forest Park; San Francisco at odc theater and most recently in Santa Cruz, CA.