The next Blue Whale Reading will feature Bonnie Bolling and Laure-Anne Bosselaar on Wednesday, November 11 at 5:30 pm at Unity of Santa Barbara Chapel, 227 E. Arrellaga St., Santa Barbara. There will be a limited open mic after the featured readers.

Bonnie Bolling’s first collection of poetry, In the Kingdom of the Sons, won the Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry, and her second, The Red Hijab, won the John Ciardi Poetry Prize. She was awarded fellowships by Bread Loaf Writers Conferences, Prague Summer Writers and the University of California, Riverside, where she received an MFA. Her play, The Red Hijab, was produced at UCR by Playworks. Bonnie is editor-in-chief of Verdad and she currently lives in southern California.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and has been awarded fellowships and residencies by the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, Hamilton College, and the Vermont Studio Center. She was the McEver Chair for Visiting Writers at Georgia Tech University, and taught at Emerson College, Sarah Lawrence College and University of California, Santa Barbara. She served as the Santa Barbara Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2021.

The Blue Whale Reading Series is hosted by Christine Kravetz and Christopher Buckley. A donation of $5 is requested to help pay for the venue rental. Please bring cash to pay.