Terri Ehret Featured at Third Thursday Poetry at 215 Main Hosts Sonoma County Poet

     On Thursday, August 16, at 7:30pm The Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz Reading Series at 215 Main in Point Arena will feature Sonoma poet Terry Ehret. The reading will begin with live improv jazz, followed by an open mic with jazz improv; the reading will conclude with our featured poet and more live improv jazz.

     Terry Ehret was born in San Francisco in 1955. She received a BA from Stanford University in 1977, and an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 1984.

     Ehret’s poetry, essays, stories and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Literary awards include the National Poetry Series, California Book Award, Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize, Nomination for the Northern California Book Reviewer’s Award, and five Pushcart Prize nominations.  

     Ehret’s first collection of poems was a collaboration with poets Susan Herron Sibbet and Steve Gilmartin called Suspensions (White Mountain Press, 1990). Her full length collection of poems, Lost Body, was selected by Carolyn Kizer for publication with Copper Canyon Press for the National Poetry Series in 1993. In 1995 Protean Press published Travel/How We Go on Living, a letter press, limited edition chapbook. In that same year, her series of poems based on Picasso’s portraits of women took first place in the Pablo Neruda Poetry Competition, and was published in Nimrod’s Awards Issue. This series is also featured in her 2001 collection, Translations from the Human Language. Her most recent publications are Lucky Break (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2008) and Night Sky Journey (Kelly’s Cove Press, 2011).

     Terry Ehret has taught writing at Santa Rosa Junior College since 1991, and at other colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Sonoma State, San Francisco State, California College of the Arts, and Napa Valley College. From 1991-2001, she taught with the California Poets in the Schools Program, and currently offers creative writing workshops through The Sitting Room Community Library in Cotati. She also leads summer travel/writing workshops in Ireland, Wales, and Tuscany.

     In 1999, Ehret co-founded Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared-work publishing collective run by and for San Francisco Bay Area poets. From 2004-2006, she served as poet laureate of Sonoma County where she lives with her husband. Together, they have three grown daughters.

     Her latest poetry project is a collaboration with the Fondo de Cultura Económica and Sixteen Rivers Press to publish a bilingual edition of Plagios, selected poems by Uruguayan-Mexican poet Ulalume González de León (1928–2009). Celebrated in Mexico and Latin America, González de León’s poetry is not widely known to English-speaking audiences. However, Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz called González de León “the best Mexican poet since Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,” recognizing the visionary quality of her work. The first volume of Plagios is due to be released in 2019.

Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz is supported by

The Third Thursday Poetry Group, many anonymous donors, and Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.