Featured poets Peggy Dobreer & Rick Lupert

Peggy Dobreer was the winner of the Downey Symphony Orchestra’s Poetry Matters 2016 Contest. She was most recently published in the Leimert Park Anthology Redux Anthology, Harriet Tubman Press.  She has one Pushcart nomination and just released Drop & Dazzle, her second book of poetry with Moon Tide Press. Peggy is a long time educator and was a Program Director for AROHO2015 Retreat for Women Writers in Abiquiu,New Mexico, and currently offers her E=Mc2Bodied Poetry Workshop at Red Hen Press. Peggy is one of ten poets to be featured in the first Aeolian Harp Folio Series by Glass Lyre Press. Her poetry has been published in Pirene’s Fountain, The Bicycle Review, Mas Tequilla Press, The Nervous Breakdown, Cracked Pavement and Plastic Trees: Our Gifts to Future Generations, Everything About You Is Beautiful, Literary Angles, The San Pedro River Review, WordWright’s Magazine, Malpais Review, and LA Yoga Magazine among others. 

Rick Lupert has been involved with L.A. poetry since 1990. He is the recipient of the 2017 Ted Slade Award, and the 2014 Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center Distinguished Service Award, a two time Pushcart Prize nominee, and a Best of the Net nominee. He served as co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets for 2 years, and created the website Poetry Super Highway. Rick also hosted the weekly Cobalt Cafe reading for almost 21 years. His first spoken word album "Rick Lupert Live and Dead" featuring 25 studio and live tracks was released in March, 2016. He’s authored 22 collections of poetry, including Beautiful Mistakes, God Wrestler, Donut Famine, Professor Clown on Parade, Romancing the Blarney Stone, Making Love to the 50 Foot Woman, The Gettysburg Undress, and Nothing in New England is New, and edited the anthologies, A Poet’s Siddur, Ekphrastia Gone Wild, A Poet’s Haggadah and the noir anthology, The Night Goes on All Night.