July Westhale

July Westhale is a poet, translator, and essayist living in Oakland, CA. She is the author of Via Negativa, Trailer Trash (winner of the 2016 Kore Press Book Award),  The Cavalcade (Finishing Line Press), Quantifiable Data (Alley Cat Books), and Occasionally Accurate Science (Nomadic Press). Her essays, poems, fiction, and translations are published in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies.

When July isn’t writing, she’s teaching and working as an editor for PULP Magazine, a publication devoted to sexuality and reproductive rights. She is also a community educator, working with all ages of students in all types of settings—in after school programs, community colleges, libraries, living rooms, bookstores, fields, etc. Her work focuses on dismantling the inaccessibility of creative writing and bringing it into a contemporary focus as a necessary way for marginalized communities to archive their experiences. 

She is currently at work translating Patagonian poet, Rolando Cárdenas (1933-1990), with the hopes that her project will bring English-speaking audiences the work of writers censored and/or disappeared as a result of the 1973 coup d’état in Santiago.  

July has received support and funding from the California Humanities Council, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Alley Cat Books, Poets & Writers, Writing by Writers, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Lambda Literary Foundation.

Via Negativa will be published June 15, 2020 and is available for pre-order now through end of March at a discount.

Via Negativa tour information is forthcoming.

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Trash Tour Reading Tour Dates: February-May 2018

February 2018 (West Coast + South)

OREGON: Feb 2-9

• Portland (Feb 2-9th)
  • Portland Community College Cascade Campus, Feb 5th, 11am-12pm
  • Another Read Through, Feb 8, 7pm

WASHINGTON: Feb 9-20

• Sou’wester (Feb 9-15th)
  • July will be reading & teaching a workshop at Sou’wester on Feb 10th

• Seattle (Feb 15-20th)
  • Reading at Open Books: A Poem Emporium at 2114 N. 45th Street Seattle, February 16, 7pm

March / April 2018 (East Coast & Midwest)

GEORGIA: March 1-5

• Atlanta: Charis Books

FLORIDA: March 5-10

• Tampa: AWP, March 9, 7pm (Kore Press, Kelsey Street Press, Belladonna joint reading) at The Bunker in Ybor City, FL

PENNSYLVANIA:  March 12 week

• Philadelphia: March 13, 8pm, for You Can’t Kill a Poet at Tattooed Mom
• Harrisburg: March 14-15, LGBT Center

NEW YORK: March 13-23

• NYC: East Coast Book Launch, March 16, at WORD bookstore with Genevieve Walker, Courtney Gillette, Nico Grelli, & Jenn Baker

MASS: March 23

• Northampton, March 23, 4pm at the Smith Poetry Center with Leslie Aguilar
• Northhampton, March 25, Living Room Reading Series

DC: March 28th-31st

• With Liz Laribee 

OHIO:

• Dayton, April 1
• Columbus, April 2nd, 7pm, at Bossy Grrls
• Dayton, April 3rd, 7-9pm, at Dayton Distillery
• Dayton, April 4th, meeting with the LGBTQ Youth Advocacy Group at Dayton High School (time TBD)

CALIFORNIA:

• Oakland, April 7th, feature National Poetry Month poet for the Oakland Public Library, 2:30pm at the Temescal Branch

MICHIGAN: April 5-9th

• Grand Rapids

April 2018 (Southwest & West Coast)

ARIZONA: April 15 & 16

Tucson, April 15, 10am-noon, at Kore Press in The Dunbar Pavilion, Workshop & Talk. $20 $10 for LGBTW writers, AIDS/HIV and Trauma workers).

April 16, 6pm, at Kore Press in the Dunbar Pavilion, 325 W 2nd St 85701, room 201. Featured reader at Kore’s Open House. Proseco, nibbles, and books. Free and open to the public.

NEW MEXICO: April 18-24

• Santa Fe, April 18th at Collected Works
• Albuquerque, April 21

CALIFORNIA: April/May

• Oakland, West Coast book release party at the Starline Social Club

GEORGIA:

• Atlanta, October 18th, 7:30pm, at Charles Bookstore

Titles available from Kore Press

Via Negativa by July Westhale
Trailer Trash by July Westhale