Double Book Launch with Two Petaluma Writers!
Sunday, September 24th 3 - 4:30 PM
Finishing School, a poetry chapbook by Sandra Anfang
The House on Liberty Street, a novel by Frances Rivetti
First in our Fall Literary Line-up! Two Petaluma writers team up to offer freshly published works in prose and poetry! Please join us for this double launch! Free admission, all donations gratefully accepted. Wine, beer, coffee/tea available for sale and homemade baked items by donation.
Following selected readings by the writers, there will be a Q&A, with book sales and signing in the lobby.
Free admission, all donations gratefully accepted. Refreshments/wine and beer for sale.
Finishing School (Kelsay Books, 2023 by Sandra Anfang is a chapbook of poems that capture the memories of being a young student as well as a classroom and poetry teacher. The poems span a lifetime of learning from both sides of the teacher’s desk.
‘In these poems, a teacher urges her students to curiosity and sensory delight…Perspectives vary: the Special Ed student, drawn out of self-rejection into feistiness; the “Throwaway kids . . . with meth-head fathers, cocaine mothers;” in science class, the “goofy” boy who earnestly asks about aliens. Ultimately, everything craves connection, like “the infant navigating the air with / the periscope of her lips.” This wise book, full of vitality, compassion and striking detail, should delight teachers and all readers of poetry.’
Dorothy Gilbert, author of Fox Woman: Poems and Marie de France: Poetry
Sandra Anfang is a Northern California award-winning poet, teacher, artist, and editor. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, The New Verse News, The MacGuffin, Spillway, and numerous other journals. Her books include Looking Glass Heart (Finishing Line Press 2016), Road Worrier: Poems of the Inner and Outer Landscape (FLP 2018), Xylem Highway (Main Street Rag 2019), and Finishing School (Kelsay Books 2023). She’s the founder and host of Rivertown Poets (since 2013) and teaches poetry to children and adults. She also hosts a Sunday afternoon poetry radio show on Petaluma’s KPCA.FM. She spends a lot of time walking the hills of Sonoma County, California, snapping photos and writing poems. You can enjoy her art and poetry at sandeanfangart.com.
Email: rivertownpoet@gmail.com
Website: http://www.sandeanfangart.com/poetry
The House on Liberty Street, Home of Second Chances, a novel by Frances Rivetti, uncovers the dark side of a Christmas in Petaluma, which was to be a cozy uneventful family holiday. A taut, compressed timeline hones in on a resilient, all-female household on the brink of irreversible change. Unexpected events slowly unfold after a stranger disturbs the sleep of the widowed matriarch in the early hours of Christmas morning, intensifying the physical, financial and emotional conflicts faced by these formidable and unforgettable womenfolk.
‘Fast-paced and suspenseful…A wild roller coaster of a story.’ The Prairies Book Review
Frances Rivetti is an Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal winner for her 2019 debut novel, Big Green County. She trained as a provincial newspaper reporter in her native UK. and made her home in Petaluma in the early 1990s with her British Italian husband and their three sons. A former columnist for the Petaluma Argus Courier she has published widely throughout Sonoma County with articles in a variety of wine, lifestyle, travel and leisure print and online publications. The House on Liberty Street, (Fog Valley Press. December 2022) was a Finalist medal winner in the 2023 National Indie Excellence Awards and is her fourth book and second novel. Northern California natural history, pioneer ranch culture and European settler heritage inform her work as she explores the rambling backroads of coastal Sonoma and Marin counties.
Join her Reader’s Club at www.francesrivetti.com. Look for her on Instagram, Twitter and her author Facebook page. The House on Liberty Street is available in e-book and will be released as an audiobook this fall.
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