LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — In celebration of her new book release, the Lakeport Library is welcoming award-winning Mendocino County poet Michelle Peñaloza for a reading of her work on Saturday, Sept. 27, at 2 p.m.

An audience Q&A will follow. 

This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Lake County Library and the Lake County Literacy Coalition.

Michelle Peñaloza is the author of “All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems,” winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award and the James Laughlin Award, awarded by The Academy of American Poets (Persea Books, 2025).

Peñaloza is also the author of “Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire,” winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019), and two chapbooks, “landscape/heartbreak” (Two Sylvias, 2015) and “Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes” (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). 

Some of her honors include the Frederick Bock Prize from the Poetry Foundation as well as grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, Upstate Creative Corps, 4Culture, Artist Trust, Literary Arts, and PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists).

You can find her work at The Seventh Wave, Poetry, Honey Literary, Bellingham Review, New England Review, Lantern Review, and featured in American Life in Poetry. 

The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Peñaloza was born in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Nashville, Tennessee.

She now lives in Covelo, California. 

The Lakeport Library is located at 1425 N. High St. in Lakeport.

For more upcoming events, visit the library’s website at http://library.lakecountyca.gov/.