2024 San José Poetry Festival – Closing Night with Rachel McKibbens, Josiah Luis Alderete and Sally Ashton

This is Day Four of our four-day festival! Check out the complete list of events that are part of the 10th Annual San José Poetry Festival! Our festival pass will get you into all live events and online events.

This event is free to all youth aged 19 and under and to those with a festival pass. $20 for general public and $15 for PCSJ Members. Admission may be purchased at the door.

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We close our 2024 festival by bringing together New York spoken word legend Rachel McKibbens, San Francisco’s pocho poeta, Josiah Luis Alderete, and former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, Sally Ashton. A trio and treat for lovers of poetry that moves. 

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Rachel McKibbens is a two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and author of three critically-acclaimed books of poetry, blud, Pink Elephant and Into the Dark & Emptying Field. In 2012, McKibbens founded The Pink Door Writing Retreat, an annual writing intensive held exclusively for non-men writers of color.

Ploughshares recently called McKibbens “the witchy folk hero of the disenfranchised.” For over two decades, she has taught poetry to the outcasts, misfits and witches of the world while raising five children. In 2022, Mckibbens was the subject of the podcast We Were Three, from The New York Times and the creators of Serial.

She is currently writing a romance novel and believes Palestine will be free in this lifetime. rachelmckibbens.com

Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded Spanglish speaking Pocho y left handed callejero de Aztlán who has been part of La Area Bahia’s spoken word scene for over twenty years. He is the curator and host of the long running Latinx reading series Speaking Axolotl and is the author of two books of poetry Baby Axolotls & Old Pochos (Black Freighter Press 2021) and the chapbook Fuchi Faces de los Estados Jodidos (For The Pueblo 2023). In 2023 he was the Poetry Center’s Mazza Writer in Residence at San Francisco State.  Along with his bookstore sister Tân Khanh Cao, Josiah tends the portal known as Medicina Para Pesadillas Bookstore y Galeria on 24th street in La Mission. medicinefornightmares.com

Sally Ashton is a poet, writer, Editor-in-Chief of the DMQ Review, San José State University professor emerita, lecturer, blogger, and workshop presenter who has taught over 100 workshops. Author of 5 books including this year's Listening to Mars (Cornerstone Press) and The Behaviour of Clocks (WordFarm, 2019), she was appointed the second Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, 2011-2013. She is a Lucas Artist fellow at Montalvo and has collaborated with both visual artists and musicians. Her current project is a book of essays about going to the Moon. sallyashton.com

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Want more poetry? Check out the rest of the San José Poetry Festival lineup.

Follow Poetry Center San José on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for announcements about other amazing South Bay poetry events happening throughout the rest of the year. Help support Poetry Center San José by becoming a member.

San José Poetry Festival 2024 is presented by Poetry Center San José and is sponsored in part by: Festival and Cultural Affairs grants from the City of San José; a grant from 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; Literary Arts Emergency Fund supported by the Mellon Foundation; and with support from Anne & Mark's Art Party, and Brandenburg Family Foundation. Many thanks Four Points by Sheraton for hotel accommodations and Robertino R. Ragazza for his guidance and hospitality. We would like to acknowledge and offer our deepest gratitude to past and current venues worthy of your support: San Jose Stage, Central Park Library Santa Clara, Convergence Arts Center, SJZ Break Room, Art Boutiki, Books Inc., Caravan Lounge, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, First Unitarian Church of San José, History/San José, MACLA, Mama Kin, Recycle Bookstore, The School of Arts and Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza, Tabard Theatre (R.I.P.), Willow Glen Public Library and Works/San José. Please support these spaces however you can. And we thank all our volunteers whose time and effort make this festival possible.