Laurel Benjamin, Caroline Goodwin, Robin Michel, Lisa Rosenberg

26 OCTOBER 2025 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents Women in a Golden State, California Poets at 60 and Beyond, an anthology celebration and contributor's reading featuring poets Laurel Benjamin, Caroline Goodwin, Robin Michel, and Lisa Rosenberg, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm (poetryflash.org).


Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series. The featured anthology will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash. This event will be posted on the Poetry Flash YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UClwdR-uPFNz7XxbBbLcnoEA.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Laurel Benjamin's new book is Flowers on a Train. Lorette C. Luzajic says, "Laurel Benjamin has an uncanny way of getting inside you even though her words are about someone else. Her exquisite poetry stirs up memories and impressions as if you shared them. These are poems about difficult conversations and loneliness, of beauty and regret. The bridge between reader and writer is made of art and jazz and faded photographs, of beloved poets whose words inspire hers and ours." Her poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Mom Egg Review, and elsewhere.
Caroline Goodwin's recent books include Old Snow, White Sun; Madrigals; Trapline; and The Paper Tree. Aileen Cassinetto says, "Exquisite and precise, Caroline Goodwin's newest poetry collection, Old Snow, White Sun…traverses various terrains with grace and a commitment to astonishment. Ferocity and decaying bodies populate these poems but also tenderness and rhythmic hope. Find in these poems a heron, a river, a hurricane, a floodgate, a levee, a story. "The one where the girl is strong enough. The one where she survives." Where she dwells and how she rises. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University, She lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Robin Michel is the author of the award-winning chapbook, Things Will Be Better in Bountiful, and the full-length collection, Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky. She is a professional writer, editor, and creative writing instructor. Her poetry and fiction have been widely published in print and online journals. Her honors include awards from the Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference, and Soul-Making Keats Awards (poetry and fiction); she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Short Stories. She founded Raven & Wren Press in 2019, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Lisa Rosenberg's most recent collection is A Different Physics, winner of the American Legacy Book Award for Poetry. A former space program engineer trained as a physicist, her work has been recognized by a Djerassi Leonardo Residency, Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and MOSAIC America Fellowship. She served as the Poet Laureate of San Mateo County and is a frequent speaker on the confluence of the arts and sciences. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Plume, Poetry, and California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology.