Inter|Act Spoken Word Open Mic Featuring James Lenfestey

Are you ready to get your poetry on? Join us on October 7, 2025 at Satori Arts for Inter|Act, a FREE spoken word open mic night, from 7-9 pm, featuring James Lenfestey.

After a career in academia, marketing communications and journalism on the editorial board of the Minnesota StarTribune, where he won several Page One awards for excellence, since 2000 Lenfestey has published eight collections of poems, two collections of personal essays, edited three poetry anthologies and co-edited Robert Bly in This World, University of Minnesota Press.  His haibun memoir, Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain (Milkweed Editions) was a finalist for the 2014 Minnesota Book Award.  His sixth poetry collection, A Marriage Book:50 Years of Poems from a Marriage (Milkweed Editions), was a finalist for two 2017 Midwest book awards.  In 2020 he received the Kay Sexton Award for significant contributions and leadership in the Minnesota Literary Community.  In November 2024 Milkweed Editions published his eighth poetry collection, Time Remaining: Body Odes, Praise Songs, Oddities, Amazements. For fifteen years he chaired the popular Literary Witnesses poetry program in Minneapolis and led a summer poetry class on Mackinac Island, Michigan. He currently serves on the boards of Red Dragonfly Press in Minnesota, the Hellbender Gathering of Poets in North Carolina, and is the founder of Poets, Writers and Musicians Against the War on the Earth.

Come share your spoken word work or poetry with the community, or come out to support our local readers! Sign up to read starting at 6:30 pm. Limited seating. For more information, visit www.maginei.com/openmic.

1st and 3rd Tuesdays.

Free.

Satori Arts, 815 Almar, #9, Santa Cruz (warehouse building near the back, follow signs)

Also check out other Arts events in Santa Cruz, Literary Art events in Santa Cruz.