With support from the California Arts Council, Poetry Flash will promote, present, publish, educate, and advocate for poetry and literature in California. We will present the Poetry Flash Reading Series, one of the longest running and highest-profile poetry series on the West Coast, along with the annual all-genre Northern California Book Awards, California Translation Awards, Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, and the John Oliver Simon Legacy Project to bring poet-teachers into local schools. We will publish Poetryflash.org, an online review and literary event calendar for California, to provide our readership and audiences with quality reviews, essays, interviews, poems, and literary news from award-winning and insightful contributors. Poetry Flash will build community through literary presenting, publishing, and outreach, and generate enthusiasm and access for poetry and the literary arts among the widest possible audiences.
Poetry Flash publishes monthly issues online, with calendar listings of California online literary events, book reviews, interviews, poems, and calls for submission. We also facilitate the Poetry Flash Reading Series, with a new reading nearly every week, held at independent bookstores, galleries, and other venues in the Bay Area and online. Other projects include the annual Northern California Book Awards and the annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival which also includes the Strawberry Creek Walk and poetry installation art. Events like these feature numerous poets and writers, both prominent ones and newly emerging voices, from California and beyond. We are also putting out a new high-quality anthology of Berkeley Poetry. Poetry Flash has been assisting and inspiring poets and writers in numerous ways for almost fifty years, we have deep roots in the literary community and are one of the oldest dedicated poetry organizations on the west coast.

