5:15-6:15pm Docents available at the Marion Davies Guest House to discuss the site
6:30-8:00pm Reading

Join Red Hen Press in celebrating poetry at the Beach! In this third of four readings this summer, featured readers are Matthew Shenoda, recipient of the Hala Maksoud Award, Ilya Kaminsky, winner of the Whiting Writers’ Award and Dana Goodyear, staff writer at The New Yorker, moderated by Alice Quinn, director of the Poetry Society of America.

Matthew Shenoda is a writer and educator who has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Shenoda’s collection of poems, Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press, 2005), was named one of 2005’s debut books of the year by Poets & Writers Magazine, and won the Hala Maksoud Award for Emerging Voice and a 2006 American Book Award. His latest collection is Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2009). Currently he is Assistant Provost for Equity & Diversity and Professor in the School of Critical Studies at California Institute of the Arts. Additionally, Shenoda serves on Board of Directors of the Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts and is Director of Poetry for the Planet at the Wangari Maathai Center for Economic, Educational & Environmental Design. matthewshenoda.com.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union, in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. Ilya is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) which won the Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship. It was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year in 2004 by ForeWord Magazine. He co-founded Poets For Peace, an organization which sponsors poetry readings in the United States and abroad. Currently, he teaches Contemporary World Poetry, Creative Writing, and Literary Translation in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University. ilyakaminsky.com

Dana Goodyear is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Honey and Junk (W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), a collection of poems. She teaches literary nonfiction, with an emphasis on new media, at the University of Southern California, and is a co-founder of Figment, a youth-oriented mobile platform for reading and writing fiction. danagoodyear.com

Alice Quinn was the Poetry Editor of The New Yorker from 1997-2007. She is also director of the Poetry Society of America and professor of poetry at the Graduate School of the Arts at Columbia University, New York. Before joining the magazine she worked as an editor at Alfred A. Knopf publishers, where she edited the Knopf Poetry Series, as well as works of fiction by Ann Arensberg, Steven Millhauser, and Celia Gittelson; and works of non-fiction, including Ann Douglas’s The Feminization of American Culture.

About Red Hen Press
Now a national presence in independent publishing, Red Hen Press was founded in 1994 by Mark E. Cull and Kate Gale. As a nonprofit literary press that publishes twenty works of poetry, literary fiction, and autobiography each year, they are dedicated to supporting quality writing that is being ignored or overlooked by large or commercial publishers. The Press also donates books to schools, libraries and other institutions, and presents seven reading series in New York and Los Angeles showcasing current and backlist authors. The Red Hen Press is a place for writers’ work to be published and celebrated; a literary family for a diversity of voices that articulate the variety of human experience.

For more information regarding this event, please email publicity@redhen.org. This event is supported in part by Poets & Writers and by the Poetry Society of America.

Stop by early for information on the Beach House and Guest House tours by docents from the Santa Monica Conservancy before every Beach=Culture evening, from 11am-2pm and 5:15-6:15pm.

Tickets are free but seating is limited and reservations are required. If you would like to attend, please reserve online. Please plan to arrive by 6:15pm to retain your reservation. Late seating, even for reservation-holders, is not guaranteed. To adjust or cancel your reservation for this event, email beachhouse@smgov.net. We appreciate your keeping in touch!

Directions: The Beach House is located at 415 Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica, CA 90402 on the west side of Pacific Coast Highway, a half mile north of the California Incline and a half mile south of Chautauqua Blvd. Plenty of public parking is available - enter off PCH at the Beach House Way traffic light. The facility is easily accessible by foot or bike from the beach bike path, although the Beach closes at sunset. There is ample bike parking at racks throughout the site - remember to bring your own lock.

Parking: There is an hourly/daily parking charge at the park and pay machines available in three areas of the ACBH parking lot. Weekday fees are $4/hr and 8/day; plan to pay for two hours and please check the website for updates.

Other events: To view & make reservations for future free Beach=Culture events, check http://annenbergbeachhouse.com/beachculture.

General Info: For hours, events and more, visit http://www.annenbergbeachhouse.com, or call 310-458-4904. Back on the Beach Café is open until 8pm daily.