2025 Program Schedule
April 12, 2025
8:30: Doors Open
Registration
Festival Café opens
Poets & Presenters check in
Poetry Place begins!
9:00—9:15: Welcome
On Homeland Return with Shelly Covert, Executive Director, Nevada City Rancheria, and Eliza Tudor, Executive Director, Nevada County Arts Council
9:20—10:00: Keynote
Kim Addonizio || Hope, Uncertainty, and Creativity: Notes on Living and Writing
In this keynote talk, acclaimed poet Kim Addonizio explores the intersections of hope, uncertainty, and creativity through poetry, reflection, and existential questions. Alongside her own, she will share work by poets and thinkers, offering insights into the challenges and revelations of the creative life. The session will conclude with a word/music performance featuring guitarist Danny Caron.
10:00—10:45: Morning Readings
Brynn Saito
10:45—10:55: Break
On the way to workshops….
10:55—11:55: Morning Workshops
Anthony Cody || [name of Anthony’s workshop]
Brynn Saito || [name of Brynn’s workshop]
Karen Terrey || [name of Kat’s workshop]
11:55—12:45: Lunch
Featuring Chelo’s Street Tacos
12:45—1:30: Community Voices
Celebrating our Open Mic Winners, presented by Jory Phillips
Poetry Out Loud student recitation: Dino Parks, etc. [names of POL student finalists who will join us]
Putting the Punk back in Poetry: Joey Henry, Nevada County Youth Poet Laureate
1:30-2:20: In Conversation | Annie Finch, Randall Mann and Christopher Childers
In a world shadowed by crisis, The Conversation promises to be a compelling inquiry into poetry’s role in shaping memory, resilience, and the possibility of renewal. Celebrated poet Randall Mann, acclaimed translator and classicist Christopher Childers, and visionary poet and scholar Annie Finch join us to explore Sierra Poetry Festival’s theme, Hope and History. In a dialogue as urgent as it is timeless, they will draw from ancient and contemporary verse to consider how poetry bears witness to history, reconciles past and present, and shapes what lies ahead. With Childers illuminating the lyric legacies of antiquity, Mann offering incisive meditations on contemporary life, and Finch bringing her deep knowledge of form, incantation, and poetic lineage, this conversation will open new ways of thinking about poetry’s enduring power to hold time, transformation, and truth.
2:20-2:30: Break
2:30-2:45: Poetic Cinema / musicians / improv
2:45-3:45: Afternoon Readings
Cloudy Rhodes Carrier
Judy Crowe
Armen Davoudian
Mai Der Vang
3:45-3:50: Break
On the way to afternoon workshops…
3:55-4:55: Workshops
Cloudy Rhodes Carrier
Annie Finch
TBA
5:00 Post-Poetry Unwind
Happy Hour no-host bar and refreshments
Book Signing