2007 Festival Press Release (Updated)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, including photos of all poets, contact:

John Kertis, 805-640-1508, jkertis@adelphia.net.

GARY SNYDER AND SHERMAN ALEXIE TO HEADLINE THE 2007 OJAI POETRY FESTIVAL MAY 18-19 IN LIBBEY BOWL

The third biennial Ojai Poetry Festival, "Poetry and the Voice of the Earth," will take place May 18 and 19, 2007, under the live oaks in Libbey Park Bowl in Ojai, CA. Four of the nation's premier poets, Gary Snyder, Sherman Alexie, Sandra Alcosser and María Meléndez, will spend the weekend in Ojai reading and discussing their work and ideas. Readings are at 8PM May 18 and 19. From 10:30AM to noon on Saturday, all poets will take part in a roundtable discussion on the Festival theme, followed that afternoon by free readings by invited regional poets and free open mike readings.

Gary Snyder, a Pulitzer-Prize winning poet and pioneering environmentalist, will read Saturday evening, May 19, along with María Meléndez, a young California poet now living in Logan, Utah.

Snyder was an early translator of the Buddhist hermit poet Han-shan, before moving to Japan to study Zen. He returned to America to become a major force behind the modern environmental movement, for which his books Earth Household and Turtle Island are touchstone texts. He recently completed his long poetry cycle, Mountains and Rivers Without End. Among his many awards for sixteen volumes of poetry and prose are the Levinson Prize from Poetry Magazine, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times and the Shelley Memorial Award. Snyder was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2003. He is emeritus professor of English at University of California-Davis, and lives in the High Sierras.

María Meléndez, a former student of Snyder's at UC-Davis, writes essays, stories and poetry and has just released her first poetry collection, How Long She'll Last in This World, from University of Arizona Press. While at Davis, she received a California Arts Board grant for her work as writer-in-residence at the UC-Davis Arboretum, where she taught environmental poetry workshops. She has also worked at a wildlife biology field assistant and as Area Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools. She now lives in northern Utah, where she teaches literature and writing that explore the "ragged edges" of environmental writing and cultural studies.

Sherman Alexie will read Friday night, May 19, along with Sandra Alcosser. Best know for his award-winning short stories, novels and films, including the runaway hit Smoke Signals, Alexie began his writing career as one of the most celebrated poets of his generation, and has returned to poetry again and again. Among other poetry awards, he was four-time World Heavyweight Poetry Champion at the Taos Poetry Circus, and his poem "Avian Nights" won the 2005 Pushcart Prize. His short stories and novels have earned an American Book Award, National Magazine Award and LA Times Best of the Best, among many others. In addition, he is gifted musician and performer. Ruminator Review wrote of Alexie, a Spokane Indian now living in Seattle: "Do not miss a reading by Sherman Alexie! He is drop dead funny, acerbic, broadly satiric, and quite moving."

Sandra Alcosser is the National Endowment for the Arts Conservation Poet for the Wildlife Conservation Society and Poets House, New York. The first poet laureate of Montana, where she lives in the mountains, she was a 2006 recipient of the Merriam Award for Distinguished Contribution to Montana Literature. She also founded and directs the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University each fall, as well as SDSU's International Writers Summer Program at National University of Ireland, Galway. Her most recent book of poems, Except by Nature, selected for the National Poetry Series, received four national awards including the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin Award. James Tate selected A Fish to Feed All Hunger to be the Associated Writing Programs Award Series winner in poetry. Her poems have appeared The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. Celebrated poet Jane Hirshfield says Alcosser's "superbly sure-voiced poems possess intelligence and passion in equal measure, and they explore, question, surprise and inform in utterly distinctive ways."

Tickets can be purchased on the website, ojaipoetryfestival.org, by calling 805-289-4873, or in downtown Ojai at Bart's Books, Table of Contents and Ojai Creates! A weekend pass is $40, individual readings range from $10 to $20.

Previous Ojai Poetry Festivals featured poets Robert Bly, Coleman Barks and Jane Hirshfield in 2003, and Joy Harjo, Galway Kinnell, Suzanne Lummis, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 2005. The Ojai Poetry Festival website, www.ojaipoetryfestival.org, contains links to each poet.

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