April may be
the cruelest month,
according to poet T.S. Eliot, but it’s a big month for the
written word. Since 1996, it has been celebrated as National
Poetry Month in the U.S., and it also contains Drop Everything
and Read Day (April 12), World Book and Copyright Day (April 23),
and Independent Bookstore Day (April 25). Capital Region readers
can join the celebration at events highlighting local poets,
publishers and more.
Sacramento Book
Festival
The Sacramento Book
Festival, hosted by
the Sacramento branch of the California Writers Club, is set to
take place April 19 at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center. This is
the festival’s third year, with co-chair and local author J.
Scott Coatsworth saying the event has grown significantly since
its test run at McKinley Park Farmers Market in 2024.
“It wasn’t crazy busy, but the
people that came bought books, so there’d be times where no one
was walking by, but in four hours we still sold like 20 books per
booth,” Coatsworth says. “Obviously there was a hunger for it, so
we decided to do the real thing and set up to run the festival
this last year.”
That second event featured over
130 authors, while this year’s has grown to feature over 270. One
returning author from last year is Sharon
Fujimoto-Johnson, a
children’s book writer and illustrator based in Roseville.
Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson, a children’s book writer and illustrator
based in Roseville, will be taking part in this year’s Sacramento
Book Festival. (Photo courtesy of Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson)
“The wonderful thing about doing
festivals like this is getting to meet readers and potential
readers,” Fujimoto-Johnson says. “I found this festival was very
diverse in the sense there were so many authors of different
backgrounds. I felt like it was a very inclusive space, and
that’s super important to me personally.”
In addition to author panels and
readings, the event features food trucks, coffee vendors and a
passport stamp hunt. The latter offers prizes that include season
passes to B Street Theatre and free dinners at Zocalo, among
others.
Sacramento Book Crawl
The
Sacramento Book Crawl is a three-day event held across various
bookstores to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day. Taking place
April 24-26, the book crawl is organized by Read the Region, a
collective of various independent bookstores in the Sacramento
area.
“This will be our sixth year as a
group celebrating Independent Bookstore Day as a collaborative of
indie bookstores here in Sacramento,” says Sue Richards, owner of
Crawford’s Books. “Read the Region began as a way for us to
celebrate each other but also let people in Sacramento know we
have a pretty thriving independent bookstore community and
explore the other stores in a really fun way.”
There will be 14 bookstores
participating in the crawl this year, and readers who make
purchases at these shops can enter into a raffle for prize
baskets valued around $200 in goods, including various gift
certificates and bookstore merch.
The front entrance to Crawford’s Books at 5301 Freeport
Boulevard. Owner Sue Richards said the independent bookstore
community in Sacramento was tight-knit, with shop owners being
open to helping one another. (Photo by Jacob Peterson)
“We used to have a minimum
payment of $10 to get into the raffle, but when we had 10 stores
that was $100, which is asking a lot of people,” Richards said.
“It’s really just showing up, participating and coming out to
support the events and authors that really matters.”
Richards notes that Independent
Bookstore Day is generally the busiest day of the year for
Crawford’s.
“My sales quadrupled for the
day,” Richards says. “This really helps us as bookstores, because
you’ve got Christmas and then a slump, and this kind of gets us
up until summer. It’s at least 200 to 300 people, and that’s just
at my store.”
Sacramento Poetry
Center
The Sacramento Poetry Center
holds its Sacramento Poetry Week
in October, but it has plenty planned for National Poetry Month.
President Patrick Grizzell says there will be a focus on
education around poetry.
“We have several additional
workshops going on this month, one being the haiku workshop,”
Grizzell says. “It’s being put on by a poet named Vincent Kobelt, who is a teacher and has been working with
this idea of adding a graphic element to it, a flipbook, as part
of teaching people about haiku.” Grizzell says the haiku
workshop, set for April 22 at the center, is a fun, educational,
all-ages event.
The poetry center will also hold
an April 26 workshop on cordels — inexpensive, often homemade
literary pamphlets sold in Brazil since the 1930s — hosted by
award-winning poet and novelist Mary Mackey. Mackey will read some cordels and help
attendees make their own.
The Soft Offs, a band who mixes music and poetry, performers at
the Sacramento Poetry Center, April 12, 2025. The band has
performed at the center for 13 years, helping to raise funds for
the various events it runs throughout the year. (Photo by Jacob
Peterson)
“The cordel is kind of an early
version of a zine, very often a political statement or a
political poem handcrafted by common folks,” Grizzell says.
“People do like to make zines these days; it seems to be a real
big deal, so we’ll be teaching people how to do this.”
Grizzell says the center is also
preparing for the 40th anniversary of Sacramento Poetry Day
(now Sacramento Poetry
Week), set for October
26. He said there is a conference planned for later this year to
coincide with the day, and as such they pared down the number of
events this April.
“Last year we did 32 events in 30
days, it was nuts,” Grizzell says. “Part of what we did the last
couple years was incorporate aspects of what we would generally
do in a conference, but since we’re doing the actual conference
this year we thought we’d back off a little from filling up
April.”
Drunk Poetry and Into the
Canon
For those who need a little
liquid courage — or a meal — to launch into lyricism,
Sacramento’s bar and restaurant scene is ready to receive you.
Andru Defeye, Sacramento poet laureate emeritus, is helping
organize two such events:
Drunk Poetry
April 19 and
Into the Canon
April 26. Both are fundraisers
aimed at supporting October’s Sacramento Poetry Week.
“Drunk Poetry is at the Torch
Club, Sunday before Sunday Sessions with the Lab Rats,” Defeye
says. “It’s a whole day of entertainment. It’s a wild series of
literary games we play to really bring poetry to life in a whole
different way.” Tickets are available on Eventbrite on a
name-your-price basis.
Meanwhile, Canon restaurant will
host Into the Canon, bringing together various poets to read
while attendees enjoy food prepared by the Michelin-recognized
restaurant. Tickets are $30 on Eventbrite and include
food.
“These are the top tier poets
from Sacramento, the poets who’ve really put the city on the
map,” Defeye says. “We’ve got laureates from other cities,
Tama Brisbane from Stockton, Angela Drew, aka SheSpitsFire — she’s from Modesto —
just a lineup of incredible poetry.”
Defeye notes that both
fundraisers are an important part of being able to celebrate
Sacramento Poetry Week.
“These fundraisers fund the cash
prize contests and allow us to pay artists for their
contributions to the curriculum we use,” Defeye says. “There’s
been a cut or two to funding as far as the arts go from this
administration, and we’ve definitely felt that these last few
years.”
Defeye says it took a lot of love
and support from the community to put together Poetry Week last
year, and he and other artists wanted to use National Poetry
Month to make sure people could be compensated for the work they
put into the event this year.
“As those funding streams tighten
up, it forces us all to really look at what’s important to us to
have in our communities, and to fund and support those things,”
Defeye says. “And it has created this groundswell for really
authentic and organic support for the arts. People have kind of
realized that if you don’t come out to shows and get behind
efforts to activate the arts in the community, it may not
happen.”
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