​Vida Felsenfeld was born and raised in Oakland, California by her mother with 11 siblings. She attended Catholic school and graduated from college at age 40. It was then that she discovered she was an artist and embarked upon becoming a flamenco dancer and writer. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing with the goal of publishing a book about growing up in Oakland during the 1970s. She continues to dance and teach writing to children.  
Her poems have been published in Milvia Street Art & Literary Journal, The Racket Journal SF, Rag Zine an Art and Literary Zine, Berkeley Times Fifth Annual Poetry Edition, and Penumbra Art & Literary Annual. She has read at various open mic venues and was a featured reader at Eves at The Beat Museum, the Berkeley Annual Poetry Festival, Alameda Island Poets, Lyrics and Dirges, Alley Cat Bookstore & Gallery, and the Milvia Street Annual Poetry Book release party. She has performed poetic flamenco dance works at the online Get Lit Poetry reading series, the Saturday Night Special (SNS) reading series, Broad Statements: Perspectives on Womxnhood, the Berkeley Annual Poetry Festival, La Misión Flamenca San Francisco, and Deadication Flamenco Student Showcases I and II.

Angel Sunlight is from the Bay Area and is a mother, a writer, a daughter, a niece and a friend.  She is the author of the poetry chapbook Candy, as well as the screenplay I Want Candy. Sunlight graduated from Berkeley City College in May 2023 with her AA degree in English Language and two certificates in creative writing. She enjoys the poetry and music of the late Tom Petty and knows all of the words to the Disney Pixar movie Cars, as she watches it every night with her three-year-old son, Liam. Sunlight is planning on attending her dream school: the University of California (Santa Cruz!) in the fall to continue her education in English, as she is aspiring to become a librarian. You can contact her at angelsunlight95@gmail.com 

Heather Canfield was born and raised in the Bay Area and currently resides in Oakland, California. Her writing is largely autobiographical and often weaves back and forth through the spaces between poetry and memoir. She is currently curating an anthology of sexy, uplifting, positive stories of sexual awakening and/or reawakening written by survivors who are healing from the trauma of past sexual abuse. She holds two degrees from the University of California, San Diego and currently attends courses at Berkeley City College.

Mary Magagna comes from Rock Springs, Wyoming, and lives in Berkeley, California. Saying her paradigm radically shifted is an apt summation. While working as an R.N., her professional fields included critical care units, hospice, and community mental health. She has a doctoral degree in psychology and a life-long habit of writing poetry. 

Mylene r.a.d. Leng Leng Amoguis Cahambing, RN, PHN, MPH, recent AA in Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences. A daughter of Bisayan immigrants, a twin sister, an auntie, a wife, a multimedia ARTibista, an emerging shy poet with recent published works in Milvia Street Art & Literary Journal 2021/2022; honored to be part of NAPIESV.org’s Wellness Kit Guide 2021, they continue to develop as An Integrative Resilience Advocate as Founder of Rekonstraksyon, a social media platform to erase stigmatized invisible conditions i.e. mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). They are Vision Holder/Co-Founder of Balik sa Dagat Bangka Journey that built a 2-spirit gifted ‘World Canoe’ and co-facilitated búgsay (paddle)-dream power paddle-making sessions. She enjoys learning hand-building ceramics. Contact: callmerad1@gmail.com. Follow IG  @callmerad1 

Tracy Abeyta is a Native American-Latinx third grade dropout who didn’t get a GED but did snag two Master’s degrees. After she turned forty, she decided to write for real and has been published by Hobart Pulp, the Brooklyn Review, Milvia Street and Diagram. Last year she attended Disquiet in Portugal and the International Literary Seminars program in Kenya as a fiction contest finalist and is working on an MFA in fiction from the Institute for American Indian Arts.  She teaches literature and lives in Oakland with a free-roaming lionhead rabbit named Betty who is two pounds but can eat a tunnel through a couch. 

Antoinette Vella Payne, a San Francisco Native, host of 1428 Poets a monthly open mic reading at 1428 Haight St in San Francisco, 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”.

D. A. "Roarshock" Wilson is a poet and spoken word artist. He performs regularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, nationally and internationally live and via the social web. He is author of "First Hours of a Rainy Day and Other Poems" and publisher of "Roarshock Page" a literary street flyer. His work can be found online at http://www.roarshock.net

 

What does it mean to be a California writer / poet? With floral superblooms currently blooming, CWC-Berkeley is interested in hosting six blooming masters of the page. Through prose / poetry, they are all defining their own unique California identity. Along with literal superblooms, a superbloom can take metaphorical, symbolic, and spiritual dimensions. "Superbloom: A CWC-Berkeley Reading" would like to explore all these growing dimensions.
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Keith Mark Gaboury earned a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His poems have appeared in such literary publications as Poetry Quarterly and New Millennium Writings along with two full-length poetry collections forthcoming from Kelsay Books and Falkenberg Press. Keith is also the president of the Berkeley Branch of the California Writers Club. Learn more at keithmgaboury.com.