Poets Judith Ayn Bernhard and Byron Spooner, read, followed by an open mic.

Judith Ayn Bernhard is a former Berlitz School of Languages instructor and translator. She is a founding member of The Marin Poetry Center and a current member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Byron Spooner, where she teaches writing and occasionally gives public readings of her work. Her latest book, Prisoners of Culture, was published by in 2014 by CC Marimbo.

“Judy Bernhard is a voice packed with both insight and irony in the face of social and political injustice, and a deeply compassionate humor that belongs with the people of the world suffering under its current reign of corporate fascism.”
–Jack Hirschman, from his introduction to Prisoners of Culture.

Byron Spooner is the Literary Director of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, where he and his team sell donated used books to benefit the SFPL, generating $1.4 million in revenue annually. He has produced three San Francisco International Poetry Festivals. With San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus and current Friends Poet-in-Residence Jack Hirschman, he has run the acclaimed poetry series Tuesdays at North Beach (formerly Thursdays at Readers) for the last eight years. With SF Poet Laureate Emeritus Alejandro Murguia, Spooner presented Flor y Canto en el Barrio, a major poetry festival featuring contemporary Latino poets. Spooner is founder and current co-editor of The Readers Review, the Friends’ literary blog, where he writes about books, music, film and bookselling.

With his wife, the writer and poet Judith Ayn Bernhar, Spooner co-edited Arcana: A Festschrift for Jack Hirschman (Andover Street Archives Press, 2014). His writing has been published in the San Francisco Examiner, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Autobiography and Isis. He has written introductions to several Poets 11 anthologies published by the FSFPL. His short story, “A Book for Christmas,” was published as a chapbook by Red Berry Editions in 2011. He is on the San Francisco Poet Laureate Nominating Committee and the One City, One Book Selection Committee and serves on the Advisory Boards of Litquake and the Beat Museum. With three partners, Spooner is co-owner of Andover Street Archives, a business that brokers cultural archives to scholarly libraries. He established and ran Books Revisited, the award-winning Marin County new-and-used book store, from 1982- 1996.