A NIGHT OF CAFFEINE & POETRY

Join us for a night of poetry featuring some of the Bay Area's freshest and powerful poetic talent!

MIGHTY MIKE MCGEE

Storyteller/comedian/poetry champion, he is the first and (so far) only person ever to win the Grand Championship at both the National Poetry Slam (2003) and the Individual World Poetry Slam (2006). He has toured at least 3/4 of a million miles throughout the U.S., Canada & Europe, and performed at the University of Paris, on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, CBC Radio & Television, and regularly on NPR's Snap Judgment. In Search of Midnight, his first book of poetry, is available through Write Bloody Publishing. Check out his website to find out more: http://www.mikemcgee.net/

CAESAR KENT

Caesar Kent is a semi-nomadic California wordsmith, living around the Bay Area and dividing his time between open mic stages, dive bars, and clouds. He writes from the frontier between flash narrative and spoken word poetry. His work has been described as "Exquisite," "Pretty good," and "Zip Zap."

DONNA STEELMAN

Donna Steelman is a South Bay Area, CA poet/painter. Briefly living on the Coushatta reservation in Louisiana influence her as a writer and painter, resulting in a degree in Intercultural Studies. Publications include 1995 “Interracial Love” - New People Interracial Magazine; “Getting’ Away” - 1998 anthology, Womankind: The Poetry of Women. Most recently, her poem "My Father Wanted A Boy" was included in the 2017 anthology - Spring Mother Tongue: Poetic Voices of Santa Clara County. Over the last decade she has shown her paintings in New Haven, Baltimore, and San Francisco, and is currently involved in the Bay Area Open Mic Scene as a spoken word artist.

BILL COZZINI

Bill Cozzini has been performing and promoting poetry in San José since 1989. He studied Theater and English, and graduated with an English degree from San José State University. He currently serves on the boards of Poetry Center San José and Stabbydoll Media while working as a documentarian. 

SHELLEY VALDEZ

Shelley Valdez was born in 1996 and is working towards degrees in English, Studio Art, Creative Writing, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Santa Clara University. Her poetry has won several paid prizes, and she is the current poetry editor of The Santa Clara Review. Mostly, she would like to spend her life telling good stories, giving good love, and making good art.