Performance: Kim Shuck's Poem Jam with Tobey Kaplan and Lauren Parker

San Francisco Poet Laureate emerita Kim Shuck invites Tobey Kaplan, Lauren Parker and special guests to read at SFPL’s monthly poetry reading. 

Kim Shuck was San Francisco’s seventh Poet Laureate. Her poetry draws on her multiethnic background which includes Polish and Cherokee heritage, and her experiences as a lifelong resident of San Francisco. Her most recent book of poetry, Pick a Garnet to Sleep In, was published in 2024, and her book of essays, Noodle, Rant, Tangent, was published in 2022. In her term as Poet Laureate, she hosted scores of free poetry and art workshops for all ages at neighborhood libraries and schools and worked closely with San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Arts Commission to launch major citywide initiatives to honor Native American Indigenous Peoples' heritage. 

Tobey Kaplan is a poet originally from New York City. She holds degrees from Syracuse University and San Francisco State University and has been teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area for over forty years. Widely anthologized, she is the author of Across the Great Divide: Selected Poems (Androgyne Books, 1995). Kaplan's Ritual Desire: Recent and Selected Poetry is forthcoming from Bombshelter Press. 

Lauren Parker is a fourth generation female breadwinner descended from male charlatans and thus has grown up to become a very educated liar. She is a writer, zine maker and visual artist and has written for Toast, Strange Horizons, The Racket, Xtra Magazine, Catapult and Autostraddle. Focusing on the intersection of class, queerness and the occult, she is the author of the poetry collection We Are Now the Thing in the Woods (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Dark Way Down (Animal Heart Press, 2025) and Spells for Success (Simon Element, 2025).