Author Event with the San Francisco Wild Writing Women

Join us for a special event with San Francisco Wild Writing Women: Elize Kazanjian, Heather Saunders Estes, Angie Minkin, Robin Michel (editor), and Kathryn Santana Goldman, authors of Season Lightly with Salt. This event is free, but we appreciate your RSVP below so we can plan for your attendance.

“Just like poetry, cooking and sharing food are all acts of appreciation and connection—with ourselves and others, and yes, our planet.” — Heather Saunders Estes

“Preparing and sharing meals together with family and friends transcends differences and builds relationships. Breaking bread with one another is one of life’s greatest joys.” —Kathryn Santana Goldman

“Food has always been important to my Armenian family, making me think we definitely have a food gene in our communal DNA. When we share dishes we find a common ground that erases despair, elicits peace, and makes us feel one with others.” — Elise Kazanjian

“I remember turning the food-splattered pages of an old cookbook, marveling at time-saving recipes cut from the pages of women’s magazines or scribbled in my grandmother’s handwriting....I still have the book.” — Robin Michel

“I love to cook, and I love to gather together with friends and family over delicious recipes that we’ve lovingly prepared for each other—perfectly made things, just like poems...” — Angie Minkin

Season Lightly With Salt, Poems and Recipes from the Test Kitchens of the San Francisco Wild Writing Women (Raven & Wren Press, 2024) is a joyful and sometimes bittersweet collection of poems and recipes that pays tribute to family, friends and community. Written by the San Francisco Wild Writing Women, poets Angie Minkin, Elise Kazanjian, Heather Saunders Estes, Kathryn Santana Goldman, and Robin Michel, anthology editor, —this delectable book serves up poems centered around food and family and includes recipes from each poet’s test kitchen. Preparing and sharing meals with one another nurtures and sustains, comforts and consoles, and heightens our pleasures. Every palette will find something to satisfy their tastes in these poems and recipes from the various cultures blending in America’s stewpot. You will even learn how to read fortunes in a cup of Armenian Coffee.

Angie Minkin is an award-winning Pushcart Prize-nominated poet who loves making chicken soup and fantasizes about baking wedding cakes. Her work has been published in Birdy, Loch Raven Review, The MacGuffin, Rattle, Swamp Ape Review, and elsewhere. Poems are also forthcoming in SRPR (honorable mention, 2024 Editor’s Prize) and in SWWIM Every Day. Angie’s chapbook, Balm for the Living, was published in 2023.

Elise Kazanjian is a poet and writer with a collection of over 100 fountain pens and several awards, including winning the Chicagoland Poetry Contest and being selected for San Francisco Poets Eleven, the Ina Coolbrith Circle (2024) and the Marin Poetry Center (2022) anthologies. Her work is also found in New Verse News, Persimmon Tree, San Francisco Chronicle, and Fog Light: SF as Seen Through The Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here (Blue Light Press, 2021). Elise is a marvelous reader, and has been a featured reader on Coastside Poetry, Rivertown Poets, and the Marin Poetry Center’s Traveling Show.

Heather Saunders Estes is the author of three books of poetry and her work is found in multiple journals. Her latest work, All in Measure: A Book of Hours, 2020-2022, intimately chronicles gratitudes, fears, and contemplations during the pandemic years using the ancient format of the day. One of the book’s poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Blue Light Press.

Kathryn Santana Goldman, a San Francisco native, has been writing poetry for over 20 years. Her work is published in the journals Monterey Poetry Review, Poetry Breakfast, and Vistas and Byways; and in the anthologies Conestoga Zen, Fog and Light: San Francisco Through The Eyes Of The Poets Who Live Here, and The Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2022. Kathryn hones her craft as a member of the Le Deux Magots Poetry in Napa Valley and the San Francisco Wild Writing Women. Kathryn also facilitates a guided wellness program, Your Write To Resilience, through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI)—San Francisco State University, and at the Napa Valley Library.

Robin Michel is the editor of Season Lightly With Salt and an award-winning writer and poet whose work has appeared in many print and online journals, including a commended poem in Passionfruit, a flash memoir in Longridge Review, where she was a finalist for the 2023 Anne C. Barnhill Prize for Creative Nonfiction and author of Things Will Be Better in Bountiful (Comstock Review, 2024), winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Poetry Chapbook Contest, one full-length poetry collection Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky, and editor of How to Begin: Poems, Prompts, Tips and Writing Exercises from the Fresh Ink Poetry Collective, both by Raven & Wren Press.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Napa Bookmine, 1625 2nd St, Napa, United States