Alice Elizabeth Rogoff grew up in New Rochelle, New York. She lives in the Sunnyside District of San Francisco near Bird and Beckett. Her poetry book Mural won a Blue Light Book Award. Her other books of poetry are Materials, Painting the Cat’s Vision, and the newest, City Canyons. Painting the Cat’s Vision was a semi-finalist in the Codhill Poetry Contest.  From the San Francisco Arts Commission, she received a Cultural Equity Commission for a poetry project about local women labor organizers. Her poetry has appeared in Borderlands (Texas Poetry Review), Poetry Pacific, Blue Collar Review, Pudding Magazine and Swerve from Ireland. She has an MA in Creative Writing and is the Co-editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal.

Antoinette Vella Payne, a San Francisco native, hosts 1428 Poets, a monthly open mic reading at 1428 Haight St in San Francisco, and is a regular participant at Sacred Grounds, the longest running weekly poetry venue in San Francisco. She recently completed her first poetry collection, entitled That’s What Happens When you Live on Haight Street, and she is co editor of Richard Sanderell’s posthumous collection of poetry and prose, entitled Richard Sanderell, The Cursive Writer of San Francisco.

Bird & Beckett’s in-store monthly poetry session happens on the first Thursday of each month, with featured poets presenting their work followed by an open mic. The series is curated and mc’d by Michael Koch and Jerry Ferraz.