RSVP REQUIRED: https://forms.gle/ej9BYhDrR5HJGU9ZA
**Space will be limited to 30 people for this Member Spotlight so be sure to RSVP to hold your spot!
For 2025, AKASF is excited to kick off our first Member Spotlight of the year! This will be our fourth Member Spotlight as part of an ongoing series! Our Member Spotlights allow our community to share their adoption stories and journeys in whatever way they feel most comfortable. Since the format of these Member Spotlights is primarily driven by the guest speakers - the group space, size, and discussion format of these Member Spotlights will vary from speaker-to-speaker. The ultimate goal with our Member Spotlights, is to create a platform for those who wish to share their adoption story, while also allowing others to engage and deeply connect with those shared journeys.
**IMPORTANT NOTE: With respect to these individual's personal stories, AKASF would kindly ask that attendees not video or audio record Member Spotlights unless the speaker(s) has/have given explicit permission to do so.
INTRODUCING LEE HERRICK
Lee Herrick is the California Poet Laureate. He is the author of four books of poems: In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems (Gunpowder Press, September 2024); Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award; Gardening Secrets of the Dead; and This Many Miles from Desire.
He is co-editor of The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit (Orison Books 2020) and Afterlives: An AGNI Portfolio of Asian Adoptee Diaspora Writing. His poems appear widely, in The Poetry Foundation, Academy of American Poets, The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed, Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice with a foreword by Common, HERE: Poems for the Planet, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, among others. Herrick serves on the advisory board of Terrain.org and Sixteen Rivers Press. He co-founded LitHop in Fresno. He has taught in Qingdao, China, and for Kundiman.
He was born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted as an infant. He lives with his family in Fresno, California and served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017. He teaches at Fresno City College and in the low-residency MFA program at University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role.
EVENT DETAILS
WHEN: Saturday, January 18, 2025 from 12 - 3 PM
WHERE: 536 Coralie Dr, Walnut Creek, CA 94597
WHO: To ensure that we are keeping adoptee voices at the center of this discussion, this event will be for adoptees only.
POTLUCK: As part of the Member Spotlight, we invite you to bring your favorite dish. After eating lunch together, we will move into the main event.
OTHER: During the Member Spotlight, Lee will be reading excerpts from his new book, In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems. Those attending this event are welcome to bring a copy of the book as we will be designating some time to book signing. While we will not have copies of the book for sale during the event proper, you may purchase the book here prior to the event.
Following the Member Spotlight, participants are invited to join for Happy Hour at Luna Sea Lounge (a 5 min drive from where the Member Spotlight will be hosted). Attendees will be responsible for their own food/beverage at the lounge.
We hope that you will help us celebrate the shared stories of our AKASF community!