Event Date
The Poetry Night Reading Series is excited to feature Brad Buchanan with Frank Dixon Graham at 7 PM on Thursday, January 19th, 2023, on the first floor of the John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st Street in Davis.
Brad Buchanan’s writings have appeared in more than 200 journals, and he has published four book-length collections of poetry: The Miracle Shirker; Swimming the Mirror: Poems for My Daughter; The Scars, Aligned: A Cancer Narrative; and Chimera. His medical memoir, Living with Graft-Versus-Host Disease: How I Stopped Fighting Cancer and Started Healing, was published in 2021 by Armin Lear Press. He has also published two academic books, and a third, a monograph on Hamlet, is forthcoming from McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Now Professor Emeritus of English at Sacramento State University, Buchanan retired in 2017 for medical reasons: he was diagnosed with a rare form of T-cell lymphoma in February 2015, and after chemotherapy and radiation, he underwent a stem cell transplant in early 2016. The transplant, though successful, brought on temporary vision loss and disability, a compromised immune system, and an ongoing illness: first acute and then chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease. In late 2016, he underwent an experimental treatment through a clinical trial for malignant B-cell lymphoma (caused by the Epstein-Barr virus); he is currently in remission.
Frank Dixon Graham’s work appears in over fifty national literary journals, including Evansville Review, Nassau Review, This Land, Hawaii Pacific Review, and the Harvard University Scriptorium. His chapbooks include The Infinite In Between (Broken Arrow Press, 2013) and Out On the Reach (Broken Arrow Press, 2009). Graham recently was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and received honorable mentions for the Muriel Craft Bailey Prize and the Jack Kerouac Prize. Graham’s manuscript was also a semi-finalist for the New Issues Poetry Prize.
Graham organizes and hosts The National Gathering of Social Justice Poets at the American Writers and Writing Programs Conference. Graham founded the Literary Lectures Series and the Fifth Mondays Charity Benefit Reading Series. Prior to founding the literary arts organization known as the Sacramento Poetry Alliance with other Sacramento poets in 2020, he served on the board of the Sacramento Poetry Center for fourteen years. Graham was Editor-in-Chief for Tule Review for five years, a genre editor for the journal Pitkin Review, and Editor-in-Chief for the newsletter/zine Poetry Now. Graham holds an MFA in Writing from Goddard College and is certified in Teaching English as a Second Language. In recent years, Graham has taught for Los Rios Colleges and the University of California, Davis.
This event will take place on the first floor of the John Natsoulas Gallery (521 1st Street) at 7 PM on Thursday, January 19th, 2023. There will be an open mic after the featured performers. Open mic performances will be limited to four minutes or two items, whichever is shorter. As the Bard says, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” The open mic list typically fills by 7 PM, so please arrive early if you would like to perform something during the 8 o’clock hour.
Please reread Brad Buchanan’s bio to understand why we ask you to wear a mask to Poetry Night. According to a Yolo County December 6 press release, “This winter is the first in several years where we are seeing significant flu and RSV activity, in addition to COVID-19, so we are now making masking recommendations based on all circulating respiratory viruses, not just on COVID,” said Yolo County Health Officer Dr. Aimee Sisson. “Wearing a high-quality mask indoors is a great way to protect yourself and others from respiratory viruses like flu, RSV, and COVID-19.”
The Poetry Night Reading Series, taking place on first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM, is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, and by John Natsoulas and the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis. This event is supported by Katerina Hanks, producer, Poetry Night Reading Series.
Find out more about the Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com.