Poetry tonight!

Victoria Dalkey (in red) and Mary Zeppa (with mic) will be the featured readers Wednesday, November 10 @ 6:00 p.m. in the Sacramento Room of the Central Library, 828 I Street.  The reading, hosted by Bob Stanley, is part of the Sacramento Poetry Center’s First (and occasionally Second) Wednesdays at Central series.  Come out and spread the word!

Victoria Dalkey is a Sacramento native who earned her master’s degree in Creative Writing from California State University, Sacramento, where she studied with Dennis Schmitz. She is the author of two books of poetry: 29 Poems, from Red Wing Press, and In the Absence of Silver, from Rattlesnake Press.  Her poems have appeared in many small press journals, among them Abraxas, bakunin, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, and Napa Review, and in anthologies, such as Landing Signals and The Sacramento Anthology: One Hundred Poems. She has given many poetry readings, including ones at The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento Poetry Center, and California State University, Sacramento. She has participated in collaborations with her artist husband, Fred Dalkey, in In ‘Lak Esh; with composer and guitarist Gilda Taffet, insub rosa, a project  of the New Works in Performance Program of the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission; and with composer George Rockberg and the Camellia Symphony. She is the long time art critic for the Sacramento Bee and her reviews, articles and feature stories about art have also appeared in Art of California, Arts, West Art, and Art Week.

Mary Zeppa, a singer and lyricist as well as a poet and literary journalist, has been active in the Sacramento Poetry Center since 1981.  A longtime Member of SPC’s Board of Directors, she was a Co-Editor of Poet News(1984-1995) and a founding Editor (1993) of The Tule Review.  Zeppa, who currently serves as SPC’s Principal Archivist, was Executive Editor of Keepers of the Flame:  The First 30 Years of The Sacramento Poetry Center (Rattlesnake Press, 2009).  She also co-hosts the Third Thursdays at Central Brown Bag Reading Series.

Zeppa’s poems have appeared in a variety of print and on-line journals, including Perihelion, Switched-on Gutenberg, Zone 3, The New York Quarterly and Permafrost, and in several anthologies, most recentlyBeyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease (Kent State University Press, 2009).  She is the author of two chapbooks, Little Ship of Blessing (Poets Corner Press, 2002) and The Battered Bride Overture (Rattlesnake Press, 2005).

Zeppa, a 2008 and 2010 Fellowship recipient at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, is also a 20-year veteran of the a cappella quintet Cherry Fizz.