Our September 4, Poetry Night will feature the poet Neil McRoberts and the author of more than 30 mystery and thriller novels, Catriona McPherson. We meet at 7 PM inside the mostly air-conditioned John Natsoulas Gallery, and we hope you can join us!
Our first reader of the evening will be Neil McRoberts.
Neil McRoberts grew up in a small town in The Kingdom of Fife - a mostly rural county in the east of Scotland. His day job is epidemiology - for plants, not people - with some dabbling in social science. He joined the faculty of UC Davis in 2010.
Neil has written poetry since a high school English teacher encouraged her class of 12 year olds to give it a go. In a notable early “triumph,” Neil won the high school annual speech contest four years later with a nihilistic tirade about the pointlessness of atomic bomb response drills, written in a mixture of prose and rhyming couplets. Since 2020, Neil has collaborated regularly with English ambient music composer and producer Harry Towell to write poetry for various releases on the WhitelabRecs label. His first professionally published poem will soon appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
Our second reader on September 4 will be Catriona McPherson.
Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the United States in 2010. A former linguistics professor, she is now a full-time fiction writer and has published preposterous 1930s private-detective stories about a toff (a slang term about an upper-class or rich person); realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about an oik (a slang term about an uncouth person); and contemporary psychothriller standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comic crime capers about a Scot-out-of-water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California.
A favorite presenter at book talks and writers conferences, and the author of at least 38 novels so far, Catriona McPherson has won two Agatha Awards for Best Historical Novel, three Anthony Awards, six Lefty Awards, and two Macavity Awards. Dr. Andy says that she has published more novels than the entire living faculty of most randomly-chosen university English Departments.
McPherson is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime, an organization which promotes diversity, equality and inclusion in the mystery community. www.catrionamcpherson.com
The open mic starts at 8. Performers will be asked to limit their sharings to two items or four minutes whichever is shorter. The open mic list is typically full by 6:45. People who show up early to help set up chairs will always earn a spot on the open mic list.
Find out more about the Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting
http://www.poetryindavis.com. Encourage your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, check out his weekly podcast at
https://poetrytechnology.buzzsprout.com/. Also, see some of his recent essays on Substack:
https://andyjones.substack.com/. One recent post lists the almost 400 poets who have ever featured at the Poetry Night Reading Series.
Later in 2025, we will feature the poets John Bell, Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas (on September 18), Chris Erickson, Greg Miller, Diane Frank, Brad Buchanan, Julia Levine, and more.
Please plan to join us on every first and third Thursday of the month at 7 PM at the John Natsoulas Gallery for the Poetry Night Reading Series.
Happy birthday (September 3) to Dyson Smith.
Also check out other Arts events in Davis, Literary Art events in Davis, Workshops in Davis.
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