Old Capitol Books present Hari Alluri and Rachelle Escamilla for a night of poetry at the bookstore on Saturday, March 14 at 7pm. Admission is $5, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Hari Alluri, who immigrated to Vancouver, Coast Salish territories, at age twelve, is the author of Carving Ashes (CiCAC, 2013) and The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel, 2016). An award-winning poet, educator, and teaching artist, his work appears widely in anthologies, journals and online venues, including Chautauqua, Poemeleon, and Split This Rock. He is a founding editor at Locked Horn Press, where he has co-edited two anthologies, Gendered & Written: Forums on Poetics and Read America(s): An Anthology.

Alluri holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University and, along with the Federico Moramarco Poetry International Teaching Prize, he has received VONA/Voices and Las Dos Brujas fellowships and a National Film Board of Canada grant. Hari currently serves as editor of Pacific Review in San Diego, Kumeyaay land.

Rachelle Linda Escamilla is the descendant of campesinos and cannery workers from San Benito County, California. Her first book, Imaginary Animal, won the 2014 Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry and is being adapted into an off Broadway play in New York with Director Katherine Wilkinson. Her second book, Me Drawing a Picture of Me(n), is also published by Willow Books.

In 2012-2014 Rachelle co-founded Sun Yat-sen University’s English-language Center for Creative Writing in Guangzhou, China, and taught creative writing in the English Department at Sun Yat-sen University. In Guangzhou, Rachelle partnered with the United States Consulate to create a lecture series called “Literature of the Margins." She launched the reading series “Speakeasy” at a cafe along the Pearl River, managed the writers-in-residence program, and was adviser to Sun Yat-sen University’s Rainbow Alliance.

She is the founder of the Poets and Writers Coalition at San Jose State University and the founding president of Legacy of Poetry Day at San Jose State University. In October of 2015 Rachelle took over as producer and host of Out of Our Minds on KKUP, the longest running poetry radio show in the United States.