The Writers Place Reading Series

Christopher Buckley grew up in Santa Barbara, CA surfing, playing and teaching tennis.  He attended St. Mary’s College in California and took graduate degrees in Creative Writing from San Diego State University and the Univ. of CA Irvine. He taught writing for over 40 years at several universities, including the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He lives there now with his wife, the artist Nadya Brown. Buckley has published 30 books of poetry—SPREZZATURA is just out from Lynx House Press, 2025. Among a dozen critical collections and anthologies he has edited NAMING THE LOST: THE FRESNO POETS—Interviews & Essays, 2021, is the most recent.

Denise Low, former Poet Laureate of Kansas, is author of House of Grace, House of Blood, University of Arizona Press (2024). Her essays and poems appear widely, and awards include a Red Mountain Press Editor’s Choice Poetry Award, 4 Kansas Notable Book Awards, Best of the Internet Nomination, 5 Pushcart Prize Nominations, and other honors. Board memberships include Indigenous Native Poets (In-Na-Po), Write On Door County, and former AWP board member and president. She programs the Indigenous Voices series for The 222, an arts organization in Sonoma County, CA. and teaches online for Baker University.

Jim Peterson has published eight poetry collections, most recently Towheaded Stone Thrower in 2025.  He has won The Benjamin Saltman Award for poetry from Red Hen Press, a poetry fellowship from the Virginia Arts Commission, and an Academy of American Poets award. Several hundred of his poems have appeared in more than 80 journals and anthologies.  He retired as Coordinator of Creative Writing at Randolph College in 2013 and also taught for many years in the University of Nebraska-Omaha Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing. He continues to live and write in the beautiful and mysterious foothills of Virginia.