Featured Guest Readers
​Alameda Island Poets ~ Wednesday, October 2~ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ~ On Zoom
Featured readers: MK Chavez and Leticia Hernández-Linares. Youth Poet, Jovina Zion Pradeep
MK Chavez
MK Chavez is an art monster, a siguanaba, writer, and educator. Chavez’s writing explores mixed-race identity, social justice, environmental resilience, horror cinema, magic, ritual, and the creative process. Chavez’s work has been recognized with the Pen Josephine Miles Award, San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award, and the Ruth Weiss Maverick Award. Chavez’s literary offerings include Dear Animal, Mothermorphosis, the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie, and Virgin Eyes. Recent work can be found on the walls of the art installation Manifest Differently.
Leticia Hernández-Linares
Leticia Hernández-Linares is an award-winning, interdisciplinary, bilingual writer, artist, & racial justice educator. She is the author of Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl & Alejandria Fights Back! ¡La lucha de Alejandria! Widely published, she is the co-editor of The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and she has performed her poemsongs throughout the U.S. and in El Salvador. She has lived, created, & protested in the Mission District for thirty years. She teaches in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University.
Jovina Zion Pradeep
The inaugural 2024 Alameda County Youth Poet Laureate
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Jovina Zion Pradeep is the 2024 Alameda County Youth Poet Laureate, freelance writer, singer, photographer, an editor at Blossomer Literary Magazine and at Polyphony Lit. Her work is published at the Tri City Voice, Moonstone Arts Center New Voices Anthology, San Francisco Youth Anthology, The Howl, SeaGlass Literary, and The Dungeness Press. As a writer, she has interned at Bay Area Green Tours & Mind4Youth, worked with Young STEAMers to promote STEM education, and is a member of the Alameda County Science and Engineering Fair Student Leadership Board. When she is not writing, taking photographs or studying, you can find her singing, reading mythology or listening to music.