Livermore Public Library invites the community to celebrate Latinx/Hispanic Heritage Month at the next Verse on the Vine poetry reading. Hosted by Livermore Poet Laureate Peggy Schimmelman, the program will feature special guests Naomi Quiñonez and Rafael Jesús González. Refreshments will be served, and an open mic will follow the formal presentations.

About the special guests:

Naomi Helena Quiñonez is a poet, educator, and activist. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Hummingbird Dream/Sueño de Colibri, The Smoking Mirror and Exiled Moon. She edited several critical and literary publications including Invocation L.A: Urban Multicultural Poetry, which won the American Book Award, Decolonial Voices and Caminos Magazine. Quiñonez co-founded the Bay Area Librotraficante network, is a founding member of the Los Angeles Barrio Writer’s Workshop and is on the board of directors of Circulo de Poetas and Writers. She holds a Ph.D. in American History and has appeared in programs with Quincy Troupe, Octavia Butler and Luis Rodriguez. Her work has appeared in many publications including the Colorado Review, Infinite Divisions Voices of our Ancestors and Maestrapeace. She is a recipient of the Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Award, a Rockefeller Fellowship, the American Book Award and a California Arts Grant.  She is featured in Notable Hispanic Women and the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Rafael Jesús González was born in the bicultural/bilingual setting of El Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua. In 1969, he founded the Mexican and Latin American Studies Dept. at Laney College, Oakland. He was Poet in Residence at the Oakland Museum of California and the Oakland Public Library under a Writers on Site Award from Poets & Writers, Inc. in 1996. Also a visual artist, González has exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California, the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, and various galleries in the U.S. and Mexico. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English for his writing In 2003. In 2013 he received a César E. Chávez Lifetime Award and in 2015 the City of Berkeley also honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017 he was named the first Poet Laureate of Berkeley.