Joan Schoettler: September 4th at 7:00pm in the Reedley College McClarty Center for Fine & Performing Arts.
Children’s author Joan Schoettler, will read from and discuss her two most recent books: The Honey Jar: An Armenian’s Escape to Freedom and Books Travel the World.
"I gave my sister away. She was two. I was not yet nine."
In 1920, eight-year-old Bedros fled Armenia with his young sisters, grandmother, and uncle to escape the Turkish soldiers invading their town. But in the confusion, Bedros lost sight of the adults and was left alone to protect his siblings. Told in verse, suspenseful and heart-rending, The Honey Jar depicts a journey from desperation to freedom, anchored in Bedros’ promise to return to his native land and to find the one he left behind. His story will touch the hearts of families everywhere, especially those who have experienced the longing for a new life.
Books Travel the World tells the story of librarians who travel the world in impossible ways―by boat, donkey, elephant, and more― hoping to change a child's life, by handing them a book.
From Colombia to Kenya and Syria to Thailand, real life librarians bring books to children who don’t have easy access to a library. This creative non-fiction tale shows how librarians in ten countries travel far and wide to deliver books to hungry readers without local access to libraries. A wonderful way to educate readers on the often overlooked, heroic lives of librarians.
Joan Schoettler earned a Masters in Arts in Reading and Language at Fresno Pacific University. At CSU, Fresno, she taught children’s literature, storytelling, and reading and writing. Her interest in the roots of Fresno Armenians led her to this story. Other of her picture books include Ruth Asawa: A Sculpting Life, A Home for George, and Good Fortune in a Wrapping Cloth which received the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. She also received the Sydney Taylor Manuscript Award.
Khalid White: October 1 at 1:00pm (First Wednesdays at One) in the Reading and Writing Center, Reedley College Library
Dr. Khalid White will discuss his children’s book series including, Little Sister, and Little Brother, as well as the bilingual books, Hermanita (Little Sister) and Hermanito (Little Brother).
Dr. White is an award-winner in the fields of Education, Film and Literature. A career educator, Khalid began educating California’s youth and young adults in 2004. Presently, he is an African-American Studies Professor at San Jose City College. He continues to work with education and community-based organizations to advance equity, inclusion, and social justice.
David Campos: October 16 at 7:00pm in the Reedley College McClarty Center for Fine and Performing Arts.
American Quasar is a visual-textual collaboration between poet David Campos and artist Maceo Montoya. What began as an exploration of the precipice of violence evolved into an excavation of self, a deep meditation on how country, family, and trauma affect the ability to love. The images and words build a poetic space where the body is understood in both physical and celestial terms, giving a spiritual dimension to the collection's larger claim that the political is personal.
David Campos is the son of Mexican immigrants, a CantoMundo Fellow, the author of Furious Dusk (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), and American Quasar (Red Hen, 2021). His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and The Normal School. He's the winner of the 2014 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, and the Annual Prairie Schooner Strousse Award for the best group of poems in Prairie Schooner. He teaches English at Fresno City College.
Soreath Hok: November 13 at 7:00pm in the Reedley College McClarty Center for Fine & Performing Arts.
Soreath Hok is a multimedia journalist with experience in radio, television and digital production. She is a 2022 National Edward R. Murrow Award winner. At KVPR she covers local government, politics and other local news.
Soreath began her journalism career in Fresno, graduating from Fresno State with a B.A. in English and minor in Mass Communication & Journalism. Her first media job at KFSR, the campus radio station, helped to launch her career in broadcast news. She worked as a producer at two Fresno stations, KMPH FOX 26 and KSEE 24, before moving to KCRA 3 in Sacramento.
After more than a decade behind-the-scenes as a producer, Soreath explored other creative outlets outside of news in advertising, marketing and social media. A Cambodian-American, Soreath has had the opportunity to report on mental health issues affecting the Cambodian community amongst survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970's. At KVPR, she completed a five-part series as a part of her 2022 California Fellowship with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. She continues to explore this topic for the 2022-2023 Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.
Join us for an evening of food, music, and fun in support of the Literary Arts at Reedley College. Additional details TBA.
Mai Der Vang: February 26 at 7:00pm in the Reedley College McClarty Center for Fine & Performing Arts:
Mai Der Vang’s poetry―lyrically insistent and visually compelling―constitutes a groundbreaking investigation into the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities, the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam, the lives of refugees afterward, and the postmemory carried by their descendants. Her most recent collection Primordial is a crucial turn to the ecological and generational impact of violence, a powerful and rousing meditation on climate, origin, and fate.
Mai Der Vang is the author of Primordial (Graywolf Press, 2025), Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), and Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017). Her honors include the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an American Book Award, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets, among others. The recipient of a Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowship, she teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State and has served as the Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University.
The mission of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival is to make Shakespeare and the performing arts available to everyone regardless of age, ethnicity, financial status or level of education.
More details TBA.
Tim Z. Hernandez: April 16 at 7:00pm in the Reedley College McClarty Center for Fine & Performing Arts.
They Call You Back -- Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. In this highly anticipated memoir, he takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together. Hernandez’s mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You, which The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed “a stunning piece of investigative journalism,” and The New York Times hailed as “painstaking detective work by a writer who is the descendent of farmworkers.” In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations—a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world. They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man’s obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America’s past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.
Tim Z. Hernandez is an award winning author, investigative researcher, performer, and documentary filmmaker. As a writer, his work includes poetry, novels, historical fiction, memoir, and screenplays, many of which have received international acclaim. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, C-Span, and highlighted in NPR’s Latino USA, All Things Considered and Alt.Latino. In 2013, Public Radio International hailed his book, Mañana Means Heaven, as a Book of the Year, and in 2011 he was selected among the “New American Poets” by the Poetry Society of America.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Author of All The Agents & Saints
“Tim Z. Hernandez is one of the most soulful witnesses of our time. He doesn’t just voyage to the end of the earth for his stories, he steps beyond, invoking the spirits as he follows the blood. They Call You Back is the genesis of his artistry!”
