A place for meetings, readings, showings, and other creative doings.
Featured Guest Readers
​Alameda Island Poets ~ Wednesday, November 5 ~ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm ~ On Zoom
Celebrating Native American Heritage Month
Featured Readers: Alison Hart, Nanette Deetz and Youth Poet, Sehinne Yohannes
Alison Hart
National Book award-winning, best-selling author Isabel Allende introduced Alison Hart and her debut novel Mostly White (Torrey House Press, 2018) at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA. Isabel Allende praised Mostly White as: "So compelling it gave me goosebumps from the very first lines." Other works include a poetry collection, Temp Words (Cosmo Press, 2015) and selected poems in Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry in California (Scarlet Tanager, 2016).
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Hart’s work centers on her Black and Indigenous ancestors from New England, healing intergenerational/historical trauma, mixed-race identity, and uncovering the brutal truth of American history. Hart studied theater at Tisch School of The Arts, New York University (B.F.A.), and education at Saint Mary’s College (M.A.). She is a mixed-race Passamaquoddy Native American, Irish, Black, Scottish, and English woman of color. Hart is an author, musician, music educator and mother living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Nanette Bradley Deetz
Nanette Bradley Deetz is a Dakota, Lakota, Cherokee and German poet and journalist who holds a BA and MA from UCLA in Theater Arts/Dance, and a second MA in Counseling Psychology. She is the co-coordinator and host of Alameda Island Poets reading series. Her poetry has been published in Alameda Island Theme Poems 2004, 2005 & 2006 (California Federation of Chaparral Poets, Inc); Peanut Butter Jamboree, 2002-2007 (Mary Rudge, 2007); Turtle Island to Abya Yala: A Love Anthology of Art and Poetry by Native American and Latino Women (Malinalli Press, 2011); Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2012); RED INDIAN ROAD WEST: Native American Poetry from California (Scarlet Tanager Books 2016); INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY CURATED BY JOHN CURL INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY COMMITTEE Handbook for Activists & Documentary History (2017 by IPD Press). She has been a journalist for Bay Area News Group with articles appearing in the Alameda Journal, Contra Costa times, Mercury News, East Bay Times, and Native News Online, and Indian Country Today. as well as Native Business Journal, and Bon Appetit Magazine (the Covid Issue). She has been an instructor in Special Education for the Oakland Unified School District, Berkeley Unified School District, Richmond USD, San Leandro USD, and San Lorenzo USD. She also taught for the Alameda USD. Currently she tutors for the California State Department of Rehabilitation. In 2019 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the City of Berkeley for her poetry and activism for the Native American community at Berkeley City College by Sharon Coleman and MK Chavez.
Sehinne Yohannes
16-year-old Sehinne Yohannes is a Habesha poet, and a junior in the Social Justice Academy of San Leandro. She has used poetry as a catalyst of her activism, as well as a means of comfort when the planet feels like it wasn’t meant for her. Her poetry describes the reality of the world we live in, as well as the fantasies she hopes can one day come true. Poetry has helped her break out of her shell immensely since she began writing, and has given her the confidence to be her true authentic self.