Mary Ann McFadden, Poet Laureate of Ventura County, Caleb Nichols, Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo County, George Yatchisin, Poet Laureate of the City of Santa Barbara
Monday, November 16, 5:30 – 6:30 pm, free and open to the public
Faulkner Gallery, Santa Barbara Public Library, Central, 40 E. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara
An evening of poetry featuring the current Poets Laureate of the tri-county region. Each of the three poets will read from their own work and there will be time for Q&A.
Mary Ann McFadden is the current Ventura County Poet Laureate. Her first book, Eye of the Blackbird, won the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry, in 1995. Her second book, Devil, Dear, was published by Alice James Books in 2014. She has been published in a range of journals, including Southern Poetry Review, Kayak, Nimrod, Bloom, Green Mountains Review, and Psychology Tomorrow. Her poems have been anthologized and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2010 she was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship and spent six glorious weeks among the musicians and painters and writers there. She lives on a citrus ranch outside of Fillmore and has taught at Brooklyn College, CUNY, and has given workshops at The New York City Libraries and at the Biblioteca in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Caleb Nichols is the current SLO County Poet Laureate. A writer and musician from California, their poems have appeared in the New England Review, Poetry Wales, and many other places on both sides of the Atlantic. Caleb is the author of Lithic: A Hyperballad, winner of the 2024 Harbor Editions Laureate Prize and the editor of You & i Are Earth: Poems of the Queer Pastoral, forthcoming from 14 poems in 2027. Caleb’s discography includes several releases on the Kill Rock Stars label, and he was a member of Oakland-based neo-folk project Port O’Brien. Stone Age Is Now: Poems from Lithic, is their first spoken world album, released by Royal Oakie Records in 2026. Caleb holds a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing from Bangor University in North Wales. He teaches at Cal Poly State University and is a founding partner of Walker Street, a DIY Arts Space in San Luis Obispo.
George Yatchisin is the City of Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, 2025-2027, and the author of the chapbook Feast Days(Flutter Press 2016) and the full length The First Night We Thought the World Would End (Brandenburg Press 2019). His poems have been published in numerous journals including Antioch Review, Askew, and Zocalo Public Square. He is the editor of the anthology A Feast for Santa Barbara: Poets Celebrating Food & Drink (Gunpowder Press 2026), and co-editor of the anthologies Big Enough for Words: Poems and vintage photographs from California’s Central Coast(Gunpowder Press 2021) and Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds & Art (Gunpowder Press 2015). His poetry appears in several anthologies including California Fire & Water: A Climate Anthology (Story Street Press 2020), Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies (Everyman’s Library 2019), and Clash by Night (City Lit Press 2015). Yatchisin has an MFA and MA/W from the University of Iowa and a MA from the Johns Hopkins University.