Co-sponsored by Works/San José art and performance center! 38 South Second Street, downtown San José.
Open mic to start the show!
If you are unable to attend in person, we welcome you to join via Zoom! Register in advance for this event via Zoom. Link: https://bit.ly/4k5BqdQ
Adela Najarro is the author of five poetry collections, including Variations in Blue, selected for publication in 2025 through the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Collaborative. Her other works include Split Geography, Twice Told Over, My Childrens, and Volcanic Interruptions, a chapbook featuring artwork by Janet Trenchard. The 2024 Int'l Latino Book Awards designated Volcanic Interruptions as an Honorable Mention in the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award category. The California Arts Council recognized her as an established artist for the Central California Region and appointed her as an Individual Artist Fellow. Adela Najarro is a poet with a social consciousness who is working on a novel. Her extended family left Nicaragua and arrived in San Francisco during the 1940s; after the fall of the Somoza regime, the last of the family settled in the Los Angeles area. She is the Board President for Círculo de poetas and Writers and works with the Latinx community nationwide, promoting the intersection of creative writing and social justice. She holds a doctorate in literature and creative writing from Western Michigan University, as well as an M.F.A. from Vermont College, and is widely published in numerous anthologies and literary magazines. Her poetry and essays appear in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, Latino Poetics, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and other anthologies. Her work has also been featured in numerous journals, including Poetry, Huizache, Porter Gulch Review, Acentos Review, BorderSenses, Feminist Studies, Puerto del Sol, Nimrod International Journal of Poetry & Prose, Notre Dame Review, Blue Mesa Review, Crab Orchard Review, and more. She currently resides in Santa Cruz, California.
Jen Siraganian is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, won the 2024 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize, and has appeared in AGNI, Best New Poets, Cortland Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus. Her current manuscript Journal for Pomegranates has been a finalist of the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, the Perugia Press Prize, and the University of Wisconsin’s Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prizes in Poetry, and a semi-finalist for the Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, and Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry. A former managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, she is a current Lucas Artist Fellow.
Aida Zilelian is a first generation American-Armenian writer, educator and storyteller from Queens, NY. She is the author of The Legacy of Lost Things (2015, Bleeding Heart Publications), recipient of the 2014 Tololyan Literary Award. Aida’s most recently completed novel, All the Ways We Lied, released in January 2024 (Keylight Books/Turner Bookstore). Her debut poetry chapbook Dissonance was the recipient of the 2024 Swan Scythe Press Poetry Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming in June 2025. She recently completed her short story collection Where There Can Be No Breath At All. Aida was the curator of Boundless Tales, one of the first and longest-running reading series in Queens, NY. She is on the Board of Directors of Newtown Literary, a Queens-based literary journal that supports emerging writers. Aida is a board member of the International Armenian Literary Alliance (IALA), an organization that helps Armenian writers in all stages of their careers. Aida has served as a mentor for IALA’s annual mentorship summer program for the last four years and served as a judge for IALA’s first Creative Writing Grant. She is IALA NYC chapter leader. As an educator, Aida has been teaching in NYC public high schools for twenty years and facilitates creative writing workshops through various organizations. She has been performing at storytelling events (NYC’s Finest Storytelling, RISK!, Generation Woman, Suitcase Stories and others) in Boston, Los Angeles, and Montreal. For more information or to schedule an event, you can contact her here: aida [@] aidazilelian.com
Poetry Center San José is a member supported organization and is funded, in part, by grants from Applied Materials Foundation, the City of San José's Office of Cultural Affairs, Literary Arts Emergency Fund, supported by the Mellon Foundation (@MellonFdn), Knight Foundation, Poets & Writers, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, SVCREATES, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara and the California Arts Council and also supported in part by a SVCreates National Endowment for the Arts American Rescue Plan grant. We also thank Brandenburg Family Foundation and Anne & Mark's Art Party for their generous giving.
