Poetry Reading: James Lenfestey and Chryss Yost
**Events may have been canceled or postponed. Please contact the venue to confirm the event.
Date & Time
Thu, Nov 06 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Address (map)
227 E. Arrellaga, St., SB, CA 93101
Venue (website)
Unity of Santa Barbara
The “Guess Who’s in Town” reading series will feature poets James Lenfestey and Chryss Yost on Thursday, November 6 at 5:30 pm in the Unity Santa Barbara Chapel.
After a career in academia, marketing communications and journalism on the editorial board of the StarTribune, where he won several Page One awards for excellence, since 2000 James Lenfestey has published a collection of personal essays, seven collections of poems, edited two poetry anthologies and co-edited Robert Bly in This World, University of Minnesota Press. His haibun memoir, Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain, was a finalist for the 2014 Minnesota Book Award. His sixth poetry collection, A Marriage Book: 50 Years of Poems from a Marriage, was a finalist for two 2017 Midwest book awards.
In 2020 he received the Kay Sexton Award for significant contributions to the Minnesota literary community. For fifteen years he chaired the Literary Witnesses poetry program in Minneapolis and led a summer poetry series on Mackinac Island, Michigan. He is the founder of Poets, Writers, Musicians Against the War on the Earth. James lives in Minneapolis and on Mackinac Island with his wife the political activist Susan Lenfestey.
Chryss Yost is a Santa Barbara Poet Laureate who served from 2013-2015. She was awarded the 2013 Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize, and many other honors including multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Chryss is co-editor and designer at Gunpowder Press, an independent literary 501(c)(3) based in Santa Barbara, California. Gunpowder is part of the legend of Saint Barbara.
Chryss’s poems have been included in the most popular poetry textbooks in the country and widely anthologized elsewhere. Poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Quarterly West, and Solo as well as other national and international publications.
Thanks to Santa Barbara’s strategic place on California’s Coast, the “Guess Who’s in Town” series will offer readings by established poets from out of town who come to visit our beautiful city. Our visitor poet will share the reading with a local poet. The series is hosted by former SB Poet Laureate Laure-Anne Bosselaar.
