“Bringing our stories forward”
Saturday, November 7th, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. Free!
Join the Swedenborgian Church and esteemed creatives for a lively hour of dramatic recitations and songs by local writers of color from the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Join them afterwards for a short reception for conversations, book signings, and general fellowship in our parish house and garden.
Featuring: Shizue Seigel, Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour, Chloe Caleb-Rose, Sonya Pendre, and Bob Gomez
Participation is free, no tickets required, and all are welcome!
Featured Presenters
Shizue Seigel
Shizue Seigel is a third-generation Japanese American writer, visual artist and community activist who explores complex intersections of history, culture and spirituality through prose, poetry and visual art.
The child of former incarcerees, she was born in 1946 and grew up in segregated Baltimore, Occupied Japan, California farm labor camps and skid-row Stockton. She’s a college dropout who learned by doing—from the Haight-Ashbury to Indian ashrams, from the corporate advertising to HIV prevention to San Francisco’s vibrant activist arts community.
Shizue has garnered scores of awards and grants from state and civic arts commissions, arts councils for decades. She is the author of or contributor to several anthologies of prose, poetry, and art, as well as authored memoirs and, as Nisei herself, written biographical portraits of internment survivors and their advocates.
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Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour
Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour is a a Filipino and French Creole Spoken Word Poet and Hip-Hop Artist from the Midwest now living in Santa Cruz. He has delivered memorized poems and songs to countless audiences, globally, over the past 30 years. With his partner and fellow artist, Rica Smith De La Luz they perform as Sacred Poets, sharing their practice through books, prints, and apparel.
Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour is a Filipino and French Creole Spoken Word Poet and Hip-Hop Artist from the Midwest now living in Santa Cruz. He has delivered memorized poems and songs to countless audiences, globally, over the past 30 years. With his wife and art/life partner, Rica Smith De La Luz, they often perform as Sacred Poets.
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Chloe Caleb-Rose
Chloe Caleb-Rose (formerly published as Chloe Gentile-Montgomery) is a poet, educator, activist, and lover of her community. Her writing has been published in her self-published chapbook, Rustlings of the Spirit, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Journal X, and La Raiz Magazine.
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Sonya Pendrey
Hey! I’m Sonya Pendrey, a mixed Latina endemic to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, I’m writing and advocating for writers from the Richmond of San Francisco. My words have homes in Mission Local, KQED, Fourteen Hills, Journal X, and Chinquapin Literary Magazine, among others. Currently, I’m teaching a docupoetics workshop at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts and engaging in the Bay Area Women in Publishing (BAWiP) Mentorship Program as a mentee. In 2025, I was a Creative in Residence at The Ruby, a Robin Seaman Award recipient from BAWiP, and a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow at University of San Francisco. Previously, I served as Nonfiction Editor at Invisible City Literary Journal, intern at ZYZZYVA, and creative writing mentor at Chapter 510. I hold an MFA in Writing focused in Poetry from University of San Francisco and a BA in Environmental Studies concentrated in Global Environmental Justice from UC Santa Cruz.
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Bob Gomez
Robert (Bob) Gómez is a poet, educator, musician, and community advocate who has called Watsonville home since 1984. He spent 26 years as a migrant and bilingual resource teacher in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District before retiring in 2010. Named Watsonville’s Poet Laureate in 2022, he now serves as a Poet-Teacher and Area Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools, mentoring local poets and promoting poetry education (californiapoets.org). In 2023, he founded the Watsonville Youth Poet Laureate program.
Gómez’s community service includes marching with César Chávez in the 1970s, volunteering with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), and supporting cultural and musical programs in Watsonville. He and his wife, Denise, also volunteer as docents at the Castro Adobe State Historic Park. A published poet and songwriter, Gómez has written across genres, from haiku to satire and celebratory music. His poetry has appeared in El Andar (“Güelcon Tu Waztlanville”) and Américas Review (“Hacia Ti”), as well as Japanese-American community newsletters.