Editor Shizue Siegel presents a reading by Dee Allen, James Cagney, Francée Covington David Erdreich and Richard Sanderell, Norma Smith, Lyzette Wanzer, Avotcja  — all contributors to the just-published anthology Civil Liberties United: Diverse Voices from the San Francisco Bay Area (Pease Press, 2019) — 300 pages of poetry, prose and art from 100 writers and artists of color and white allies celebrating the rich variety that truly makes America great. Civil liberties matter—to everyone, not just those who are targeted now. Those who keep silent may be next.

People of color are 60% of Bay Area population, yet we remain under represented and underpublished. In polarized times, democracy cannot be taken for granted. We need to reach within ourselves and reach out to others, moving forward together to create the society we want to see.

Shizue Seigel is a third-generation Japanese American writer, visual artist, and community activist who explores complex intersections of history, culture, and spirituality through prose, poetry, and visual art. Her work is informed by her family’s release WWII incarceration, her experiences in segregated Baltimore, Occupied Japan, California farm labor camps, and skid-row Stockton, the Haight-Ashbury, Indian ashrams, corporate cubicles and public housing. Civil Liberties United is her sixth book. www. shizueseigel.com.

Dee Allen. is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early 1990s. Author of Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater, and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press, and 18 anthology appearances including Poets 11: 2014, Feather Floating On The Water, Rise, Your Golden Sun Still Shines, What Is Love, The City Is Already Speaking, The Land Lives Forever, and Extreme.

James Cagney is a poet from Oakland, California. He has performed in venues and museums throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. His first book, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory, is out now by Nomadic Press.

Francée Covington. During a successful TV career as a producer, director, and writer of news, documentaries, public affairs, and magazine shows, Francée Covington worked at television stations WCBS in New York, WBZ Boston, and in San Francisco at KGO, KPIX, and KQED. She later formed her own video production company and led it for more than twenty years. Her clients included numerous Fortune 500 companies, The Oprah Show, and city and state agencies. Active in the community, she currently serves on the San Francisco Fire Commission. She’s retired, lives in San Francisco, and is working on a collection of short stories.

David Erdreich has worked as a psychiatric social worker, day care owner, house parent in a half-way house for youth, senior meals program, street vendor, airbrush artist, truck driver, and gardener. He sings with two semi-professional choruses, plays alto sax, bird watches ,and presents an annual poetry/jazz show, as director, composer, arranger, producer, singer, horn player, roadie, fool.

Richard Sanderell is a Vietnam veteran against all of USA’s wars. As an activist, he has supported Native Struggle since Alcatraz in 1969, vets’ struggles and the issues of those we declare war against! In recent years, he’s become a poet, jazz-poet. His work has been published in District 11, 2017; Overthrowing Capitalism, Vol. 2; Bay Area Generations #41; and The City Is Already Speaking.

Norma Smith was born in Detroit, grew up in Fresno, California, and has lived in Oakland since the late 1960s. She has worked as a journalist, a translator/interpreter, an educator, and as an editor and writing coach. Norma’s writing has been published in academic, political, and literary journals. She has been part of white anti-racist organizing networks since the 1970s. Her book of poems, Home Remedy, was published in 2017 by Nomadic Press.

Lyzette Wanzer, MFA is a San Francisco author, editor, and writing workshop instructor. Her work appears in over twenty-five literary journals and books, and she is a contributor to The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays (Wyatt-MacKenzie), The Naked Truth, Essay Daily, and San Francisco University High School Journal. She is a two-time San Francisco Arts Commission, and a three-time Center for Cultural Innovation grant recipient.