Jack Hirschman, San Francisco’s 4th poet laureate, between devorah major and Diane di Prima, and one of the most productive poets to have held that position, is one of our favorite people in the world and a magnificent and prolific poet. He’s also unwaveringly committed to and the champion of the masses of individual humans who live, breath, celebrate life and fight for justice, and bear with admirable grace, courage and fierceness, the brunt of society’s economic oppression and societal indifference.

Kitty Costello’s immigrant, working-class heritage and upbringing, her thirty years’ work for the San Francisco Public Library, Shaolin kung fu practice and experience as a social justice organizer and healer has brought her far. She is literary trustee for native Alaskan writer Mary TallMountain, created a library archive for the 70-year-old San Francisco Writers Workshop and is writing a history of that group. The publisher Freedom Voices, with whom she has long worked to publish profound work by marginalized writers and artists of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, has just brought out her first collection of poetry,

Bring your ears, hearts and brains, and if you’re game, your poems & voices for the open mic as well!