Writers Read Ukiah last Thursday poetry series will meet on Thursday, November 30, at 7 PM at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah. The featured reader will be Ukiah writer Dan Hibshman, launching his new book, Of a Lifetime: Stories 1963-2023.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1945, Dan Hibshman has lived in Mendocino County since 1969.   He’s been an English teacher most of those years, but also a law librarian, amateur actor/director, for a little while a clerk in a natural-foods store. He has continually been a writer. In the ‘70s and again in the ‘80s he wrote for the alternative weekly Mendocino Grapevine. He edited books at The Yolla Bolly Press in Round Valley and via that connection wrote Your Affordable Solar Home, published by Sierra Club Books in 1982. Work experience at the Mendocino County Law Library led to his publication in 2020 of a work of fiction, Disquiet.  It’s a sequence of linked short stories, nearly all set inside a rural Northern California county courthouse.

Since high school Dan has made continual attempts at telling stories, fictions derived from his life. From time to time he revised some of them, occasionally began new ones. He kept journals, particularly of travel, containing a few true events he developed into narratives. Years went by with those writings stored in boxes.

In September he published a collection of work from those boxes. The book’s title is Of a Lifetime: Stories 1963-2023.

Dan lives with his wife, Leslie Kirkpatrick, in Ukiah.

Open mic session will follow the featured reading. Maximum time for each reader is six minutes. Event will end at 9 PM.

Next month:

No event in December. There may be a potluck and poetry get together at someone’s house. Details next month.

For Information, contact Writers Read Ukiah MC Michael Riedell, innisfreeriedell@gmail.com

Writers Read happens on the last Thursday of almost every month and has been happening in Ukiah since 1999. This reading series is sponsored by Colored Horse Studios, Michael Riedell, Dan Barth, the Poet Laureate Committee of Ukiah, the Grace Hudson Museum and donations. Since the start of 2023, donations have not been keeping up with expenses. Please consider a one-time or once-a-year larger than usual donation to help us keep this reading series going. Contact Michael—innisfreeriedell @gmail.com—if you can help. Thanks.