Catamaran Summer Launch Party

Catamaran Literary Reader, founded in 2012, is located in the Tannery Art Center in Santa Cruz. This beautiful, high quality, full-color quarterly magazine features fine art, poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. The contributing artists and writers come from California and beyond. It has a loyal following of readers who celebrate culture, arts, books and museums. Catamaran also features a poetry prize for West Coast poets and an annual Catamaran Writing Conference during the summer. Visit the website at www.catamaranliteraryreader.com.

Mechanics' Institute is delighted to collaborate with Catamaran to celebrate their Summer 2025 edition. 

Join us for a reception at 6:00 pm, with readings beginning at 6:30 pm until 7:30 pm, followed by a tour of Mechanics' Institute for interested guests.

Magazines will be sold onsite.

About the Readers

Les Bohem 

Les Bohem is a songwriter with songs recorded by Emmylou Harris, Randy Travis, Johnette Napolitano, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and some others, as well as the writer of such films as Dante’s Peak and the television miniseries Taken, and the novels Junk (Brilliance Audio, 2020), a New York Times Notable Book, and Jive (Brilliance Audio, 2021). He has won Emmy, Television Critics Association, and Saturn Awards, and been nominated for both Golden Globe and Writers Guild Awards. His stories and poetry have appeared in print and online in such places as Polychrome Ink, Soledad, deLuge, Clever, Fabula Argentea, BigCityLit, Belmont Story Review, The Kenyon Review, and in Catamaran Literary Reader. He lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife, their son, and their cats.

Maureen Bhutong Boyd

Maureen Bhutong Boyd is a mixed Thai/Scottish North American writer and holds an MFA in creative writing from Pacific University in Oregon. She has published work in The Pinch, Bellingham Review, Joyland Magazine, and TIMBER Journal, among others. She has read as a showcase artist at APAture, Kearny Street Workshop’s festival for emerging Asian Pacific American artists. Most recently, she wrote and performed a dramatic autobiographical monologue for this is my body, a storytelling showcase for women of color in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Leslie Hodge

Leslie Hodge lives in San Diego, California. Her poems appear  or are forthcoming in Catamaran Literary Reader, Faultline, The Main Street Rag, South Florida Poetry Journal, ONE ART, Whale Road Review, Sheila-Na-Gig online, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, ESCAPE and other poems, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. Currently she is reading for The Adroit Journal.

Kristen Keegan

Kristin Keegan has published fiction and poetry in various literary magazines, including A Public Space, Arkansas Review, California Quarterly, and South Dakota Review, among others. She is the recipient of a Fellowship from A Public Space (2022) and a Hambidge Fellowship (2021). She lives and writes in Northern California.

Anya Kirshbaum

Anya Kirshbaum is a queer poet and therapist living in Seattle, Washington. Her work has appeared in Whale Road Review, Sweet Lit, Crannóg, Solstice Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the New Millennium Writing Award and the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, was nominated for a 2024 Forward Prize, and was the recipient of the 2023 Banyan Poetry Prize.

Erin Rendoni

Erin Rodoni’s most recent collection of poetry, And if the Woods Carry You, won the 2020 Southern Indiana Review Michael Waters Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2022 Northern California Book Award. New poems are forthcoming in North American Review, Permafrost, and Terrain.org, among other journals. She teaches and mentors through the Writing Salon in San Francisco, California.

Patrice Vecchione

Nonfiction writer, poet, and artist Patrice Vecchione finds solace these days with a trowel, a pen, or a pair of scissors in hand. Her latest book is My Shouting, Shattered, Whispering Voice (Seven Stories Press, 2020). New work appears in Edible Monterey Bay, monthly in Monterey Herald, and in the new anthology Women in a Golden State. Her art show Imagination Pollination, with Stefanie Quintanilla, will be on display at Sweet Elena’s Bakery in Sand City, California, through July. This summer, Vecchione will lead monthly women’s writing workshops in her Monterey, California, garden.

Patsy Creedy

Patsy Creedy is a native Californian, living in San Francisco for the last thirty years. She recently published her second memoir, Boy, Man, Bird: Anatomy of Addiction (wolfmotherlit, 2024).

Tickets can be purchased online below, or onsite in Office 510 during the following box office hours:

Monday: 10 am to 6 pm

Tuesday: Closed

Wednesday: 1 pm to 6 pm

Thursday: 12 pm to 4 pm

Friday: 1 pm to 4 pm

Saturday: Closed