Meet the Peoples Poetry Fest Committee

Sarah K . Lenz

Sarah K. Lenz founded Writers’ Studio in July 2019. Her nonfiction has appeared in Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, The Fourth River, Entropy, and elsewhere. Three of her essays have been named Notable in Best American Essays, and she received the New Letters Readers’ award in nonfiction. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Georgia College, an MA in literature from Boise State University, and a BFA in fiction writing from the University of Nebraska, Omaha. She’s the prose editor of The Switchgrass Review. She teaches composition, creative writing, and literature at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Robin Carstensen

Robin Carstensen’s poetry manuscript, In the Temple of Shining Mercy received the annual first-place award by Iron Horse Literary Press and was published in 2017. Her poems are forthcoming or recently published inQueer in the New Century, from Jacar Press: A Community-Active Literary Press; Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast, Lamar University Press; Good Cop/Bad Cop: An Anthology; Dreaming: A Tribute To Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, FlowerSong Press, FlowerSong Press, and many more. She directs the creative writing program at TAMU-CC where she is faculty advisor for Windward Review: Literary Journal of the South Texas Coastal Bend, and co-founding, senior editor for Switchgrass Review: Literary Journal of Health and Transformation.

Chuck Etheridge

A self-proclaimed desert rat, Chuck Etheridge was raised in El Paso, Texas. After a stint in the US Navy keeping the coast of Southern California safe from the threat of enemy invasion, he attended the University of Texas at El Paso and Texas Christian University. In addition to his time in the service, he has worked as an actor, a convenience store clerk, a Rent-a-Poet, and a catalog copy writer before finding respectable employment as an English teacher, first at McMurry University and, later, at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. His poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction have been published in a variety of reviews and anthologized in a number of books, and he has written two plays that have been produced. His first two novels,Border Canto and The Desert After Rain, were published by Fine Tooth Press. A motion picture based on his Border Canto Trilogy is in development. His comic novel Chagford Revisited was just published in the UK and is available in the States on Amazon.

Alan Berecka

Alan Berecka is a recently retired librarian who lives with his wife Alice and dog Ophelia in Sinton, Texas. He has published 5 full collections of poems and three chapbooks. His latest book A Living is not a Life: A Working Title was a finalist for the 2020 the Hofer Prize.

Visit his website at https://alanberecka.com/

Tom Murphy

Tom Murphy is the 2021-2022 Corpus Christi Poet Laureate and the Langdon Review’s 2022 Writer-In-Residence. Murphy’s books: When I Wear Bob Kaufman’s Eyes (2022) from Gnashing Teeth Publishing, Snake Woman Moon (2021), Pearl (2020), American History (2017), and co-edited Stone Renga (2017) with Alan Berecka. He’s been published widely in literary journals and anthologies such as: Poetry is DEAD: An Inclusive Anthology of Deadhead Poetry, Boundless, Concho River Review, MONO, Good Cop/Bad Cop Anthology, Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast, Wine Anthology, The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, Red River Review, Switchgrass Review, Windward Review, Corpus Christi Writers Anthologies, Voice de la Luna, WordFest Anthology, Outrage: A Protest Anthology for Injustice in a Post 9/11 World among other publications. Recently retired from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, he still works with the Barrio Writers and the People’s Poetry Festival. Contact information, books or bookings tom@tommurphywriter.com https://tommurphywriter.com

Dylan Lopez

Dylan Lopez is a senior at TAMUCC pursuing a degree in English. A graduate from Richard King High School, Dylan was introduced to Creative Writing by his high school mentor, Joseph Wilson; who published Dylan in his final edition of King’s literary magazine, Open All Night. A recipient of the Robb Jackson Poetry Award, during his freshman-year at TAMUCC, Dylan was featured twice by the Island Waves student newspaper, and published in Corpus Christi Writers 2019 by Mays Publishing. In 2020, Dylan was featured in Trinity University’s High Noon literary journal, and again in Corpus Christi Writers 2020. His writing explores the themes of love, depression, and internal struggles in fantastic, mythical, and sometimes drearily realistic settings. Aside from being a full-time student of writing, Dylan is also currently the Managing Editor of The Windward Review.

Email:

Dlopez45@islander.tamucc.edu

Website: https://dylanlopez.poetry.blog/

Zoe Ramos

Zoe Elise Ramos (also known as ZER) is a native Corpus Christi poet. Their poetry is genre-fluid and can have auditory, visual, and scholarly components. With respect to the intimate relationship between time, audience, and an artist, ZER embraces the way their own pieces evolve and change naturally during performance. They often rewrite and write over works they have already published or shared. They also use photography, art media, and video to explore multiple dimensions of pieces and statements. They are a graduate student at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi where they engage in creative scholarship involving the human body and its connection to numbers. They are the Senior Editor of Windward Review creative journal and blog.

Sara Kaplan

Sara Kaplan received her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Idaho, and she also holds degrees from Miami University and Sweet Briar College. Her chapbooks includeMoon Talk and Touring West of the Mississippi. Published interviews with notable poets are on Poetry Daily and in Conversations with Natasha Trethewey. Her poems appear in the following journals, and several poems were nominated for The Pushcart Prize: TheAntioch Review, Harpur Palate, LIT 9, The Cincinnati Review, Talking River Review, The Meadow, InLand, Ruminate, The New Vilna Review, decomP magazine, Failbetter, Splash of Red, MO: Writings from the River, & Gulf Islands Review. As an Associate Professor of English at Del Mar College, she specializes in teaching Poetry and British Literature.

Karen Cline-Tardiff

Karen Cline-Tardiff has been writing since she could hold a pen. She writes poetry, flash fiction, personal essays, short stories, and grant requests. Karen also edits for a small group of friends. She has been published in a variety of online and print outlets. She was born in Texas, lived a little bit of everywhere, and now resides on the Texas Gulf Coast. When she can’t find poetry somewhere, she puts it there.

She is the founder of the Aransas County Poetry Society, which hosts a monthly open mic. She started the Poems on the Go project in Aransas County. She is the Founder/Editor-n-Chief of Gnashing Teeth Publishing.

Stefan Sencerz

Stefan Sencerz born in in Warsaw, Poland, came to the United States to study philosophy and Zen Buddhism. He teaches philosophy, Western and Eastern, at the Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi. He has numerous publications in professional philosophy journals as well as several refereed poems that appeared in various nationally distributed poetry journals. He has been active on a spoken-word scene winning the slam-masters poetry slam in conjunction with the National Poetry Slam in Madison Wisconsin, in 2008, as well as several slams in San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Chicago.

Peoples Poetry Fest

Meet the Peoples Poetry Fest Committee

Sarah K . Lenz

Robin Carstensen

Chuck Etheridge

Alan Berecka

Tom Murphy

Dylan Lopez

Zoe Ramos

Sara Kaplan

Karen Cline-Tardiff

Stefan Sencerz

Peoples Poetry Fest 2022

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