Featured this year the poems of Barry Spacks, poet laureate of the City of Santa Barbara; Chryss Yost, also of Santa Barbara; Dan Gerber of the Santa Ynez Valley; and Bob Isaacson, faculty member at Allan Hancock College.

The readings were preceded by a short concert featuring the guitar music and vocals of singer songwriter, Kate Bennett.

This event was sponsored by the Valley Foundation.

Poets:

Dan Gerber

Dan Gerber’s Trying To Catch The Horses, published by Michigan State University Press, received Foreword Magazine’s 1999 Gold Medal Book of the Year Award in poetry. He has published five earlier collections of poems, including A Last Bridge Home: New and Selected Poems (Clark City Press), and a new collection of poems, A Primer on Parallel Lives, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in the spring of 2007. His work was selected for Best American Poetry 1999, and been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. His poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Georgia Review, Solo, and in numerous anthologies. He has also published novels, short stories, and a collection of essays, and received The Michigan Author Award in 1992 and The Mark Twain Award in 2001. He and his wife, Debbie, live in the Santa Ynez Valley.

Robert Isaacson

Robert Isaacson was born in Santa Barbara and lives in the Gaviota area on El Chorro Ranch. He attended The Thacher School, Claremont McKenna College, and The University of California at Santa Barbara, where he earned a Master’s Degree in English. Since 1978 he has taught literature and composition at Allan Hancock College and has published two textbooks. He has also served on the local school board and is currently a member of the Land Trust of Santa Barbara County. A third-generation cattleman, he and his wife, Sally, manage a beef cattle operation on the family ranch.

Barry Spacks

Known mainly as a poet/teacher, Barry Spacks has also been a painter for over forty years and has brought out two novels, dozens of short stories, and three poetry-reading CDs. He teaches at UCSB, was named the first Poet Laureate of the City of Santa Barbara in 2005, and has published nine poetry collections - the most extensive being Spacks Street: New and Selected Poems from Johns Hopkins, the newest (both 2004) Regarding Women, winner of the Cherry Grove Collections Prize, and The Hope of the Air from Michigan State University Press.

Chryss Yost

Chryss Yost is an editor of two poetry anthologies: California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present with Dana Gioia and Poetry Daily: A Year of Poems from the World’s Most Popular Poetry Website with Don Selby and Diane Boller. She was an editor of Solo: A Journal of Poetry and currently edits The Journal of Haitian Studies. Her poems have been published in journals including Art/Life and the Hudson Review, two chapbooks, and numerous anthologies. She lives in Santa Barbara.