Eric Paul Shaffer and Julia B. Levine

On the 4/9/25 edition of Dr.Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:

Eric Paul Shaffer joins the show to discuss his upcoming and recent book publications, Free Speech and Green Leaves. Shaffer recounts his time at the University of California, Davis and discusses his most recent collection, written in two long sequences. Shaffer then praises Coyote Arts Press and reads a poem, “Watch for falling rocks” and two verses that can be sung along to The United States National Anthem. Julia B. Levine is the next guest on the hour, and details her upcoming reading on April 17th at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Levine discusses her various writing projects and her feelings upon being awarded a Pushcart and the 2024 Terrain Poetry Prize. She explains how she writes about death, love, sex, and aging, trying to articulate the unique vulnerabilities each of these domains contain. Levine then shares a poem titled “This American Spring.” 

Eric Paul Shaffer is author of nine volumes of poetry, most recently Free Speech and Green Leaves, Selected & New Poems, Even Further West, A Million-Dollar Bill; Lāhaina Noon, and Portable Planet. More than 650 individual poems appear in reviews in the USA, Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Nicaragua, India, Iran, Scotland, Singapore, and Wales. Shaffer received Hawai‘i’s 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature; Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Awards for Lāhaina Noon (2006) and Even Further West (2019); and 2009 James M. Vaughan Award for Poetry. Shaffer is a retired professor of English and lives on Oʻahu.

Julia B. Levine’s poetry has won many awards, including a 2021 Nautilus Award for her fifth poetry collection, Ordinary Psalms, (LSU press, 2021), as well as the 2015 Northern California Book Award in Poetry for her fourth collection, Small Disasters Seen in Sunlight, (LSU, 2014).  Recently she has won a 2024 Pushcart Prize in Poetry, the 2024 Terrain Poetry Prize, 2023 Oran Perry Burke Award in Poetry from The Southern Review, as well as a 2022 American Academy of Poetry Poet Laureate Fellowship for her work in building resilience in teenagers related to climate change through poetry, science, and technology. Her work has appeared in many literary journals, including, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review and Prairie Schooner.  She received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in poetry from Pacific University. Her chapbook, Lullaby for the Sixth Extinction, won the Wolfson Poetry Prize and will be published in early fall, 2025.

The Poetry Night Reading Series takes place on the first and third Thursdays of the month at 7 PM in the John Natsoulas Gallery. The event is generously supported by the people and poets of the Sacramento Valley, by John Natsoulas, and by Thea and the other members of the staff at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Your host will be Dr. Andy Jones, the poet laureate emeritus of the City of Davis.

Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, subscribe to his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com.