The Santa Barbara Public Library and Santa Barbara Poetry Series present a reading by David Oliveira, SB’s millennium Poet Laureate (1999-2000), and Laure-Anne Bosselaar, SB’s eighth Poet Laureate (2019-2021).

David Oliveira is a native of Hanford in California’s San Joaquin Valley. For many years, he was publisher of Mille Grazie Press in Santa Barbara, California, and was a founding editor of Solo, an award winning national journal of poetry. He founded the still-running Santa Barbara Poetry Series, and in 1999, was named Santa Barbara’s millennium Poet Laureate. He has published five poetry collections, most recently Still Life with Coffee (Brandenburg Press, 2022). He has also co-edited four anthologies, including California Poetry: from the Gold Rush to the present (Heyday Books, 2004). He lives and writes on the banks of the Mekong River near Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar—who served as Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2021—is the author of six books of poetry. Her latest, entitled Lately, came out from Sungold Press. Her poems have appeared in The Washington Post, Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Vox Populi, Askew, and the Anacapa Review.  Garrison Keillor read four of her poems on NPR’s The Writers’ Almanac, and her poems have been widely anthologized. She is herself the editor of five anthologies,including While You Wait which showcases many Central Coast’s poets. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, and was a Writer in Residence at The Vermont Studio Center as well as at Hamilton College.  She was the McEver Chair for Visiting Writers at Georgia Tech University. She taught poetry at Emerson College, in the Creative Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College, and at the College of Creative Studies at UCSB. 

Friday, March 27, 5:30-6:30 pm

Santa Barbara Public Library, Fireplace Room, 40 E. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara

Free and open to the public