Burlingame Reads 2021
Kickoff Poetry Event
w/ Aileen Cassinetto, San Mateo County Poet Laureate
+ Kevin Madrigal, Co-Founder of Farming Hope

Featuring Poets: Alan Chazaro, Janel Pineda, Randy James, and Greer Nakadegawa-Lee

Join us via Zoom:
Wednesday, April 7th
6-7:30pm
Webinar ID: 819 4453 3645

Passcode: 823049

Find more information on Burlingame Reads and our events at https://www.burlingame.org/library/explore/burlingamereads.php

Alan Chazaro is the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley, a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco, and co-founding editor of HeadFake, an online NBA zine. He chirps about Mexican memes, the Golden State Warriors, and Bay Area rap on Twitter @alan_chazaro (alanchazaro.com)

Randy James received an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. He has also studied at UCLA. His work has been published in Myriad, Westwind, Red Cedar Review, Palette, FEM Newsmagazine and The Rumpus. Randy has performed in venues across Los Angeles and The San Francisco Bay Area. His work was featured in Hayat Hyatt’s “Villanelle,” which has been archived by Collectif Jeune Cinema. He is also a co-founder of At the Door, a monthly reading series that uplifts and features Black and Brown voices. James’ debut chapbook, Shifters, is now available on Nomadic Press.

Kevin Madrigal is a decolonizer of food, art, and health. He is a Chicano first-generation child of inmigrantes Mexicanos from Sur San Francisco. A Gates Millenium Scholar, he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Human Biology and an MA degree in Earth Systems, focusing on sustainable food and agriculture, from Stanford University. In 2016, he founded Farming Hope to provide employment opportunities in food for folks experiencing homelessness. Through his writing he hopes to honor his ancestors and work towards a better future within his community.

Greer Nakadegawa-Lee is 16 years old and a junior at Oakland Technical High School. She has written a poem every day for over two years now, and she is the 2020 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. Her first chapbook, "A Heart Full of Hallways" is out now with Nomadic Press. Greer writes poetry that is both a demand for us to all critically examine the world around us and an intimate personal exploration of her own deepest thoughts and experiences. (https://www.nomadicpress.org/store/aheartfullofhallways)

Janel Pineda is a Los-Angeles born Salvadoran poet and educator. She has performed her poetry internationally in both English and Spanish, and been published in LitHub, PANK, The BreakBeat Poets, Vol. 4: LatiNext, and The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the U.S. among others. As a Marshall Scholar, she holds an MA in Creative Writing and Education from Goldsmiths, University of London. Janel’s debut poetry chapbook, Lineage of Rain, is out now from Haymarket Books.

Thank you to our Community Partners: Citizens Environmental Council, Sustainable San Mateo County, Farming Hope, San Mateo County Poet Laureate Aileen Cassinetto, and Nethra Samarawickrema & Yuri Zaitsev of the Listening Lab

The Burlingame Public Library is one of 35 California public library jurisdictions participating in Book to Action 2021, funded by the California Center for the Book.

Book to Action is a program of the California Library Association, supported in whole or in part by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.