In these times when the Earth and humanity seem so breakable, as if they might break each other, we search for answers in the air. What’s our next move? What did I just see on the news? What does this moment demand of me? Poets interpret their screens, sing to nature, and admonish us our selfishness. Califragile is a portrait of turning, questioning, stretching, stepping up.
Our name is a nod to our bioregion here in Northern California. But the fragile faultline we explore is planetwide and in each person. While we weren’t inspired by Mary Poppins, if she wanted to float down and help us straighten out the mess we’ve made, well, that would be quite a show!
About Wren Tuatha, Editor/Co-Publisher
Wren Tuatha was previously Artist-in-Residence at Heathcote Community while directing Heathcote’s Open Classroom. She co-founded Baltimore’s Sunday Salon. She received grants from Towson University’s Women’s Center and Office of Diversity to perform her slam play, This Is How She Steps on Snakes, and other productions. She won a Young Authors Award for Poetry. Her chapbook, Thistle and Brilliant, is available at Finishing Line Press. She is a frequent contributor on KZFR. Wren was shortlisted for the Disquiet Literary Prize, Jack Grapes Prize, and New Women’s Voices…Always an oddly butch bridesmaid…
Wren studied education at University of Louisville, and film and poetry at Towson University, where she minored in Gay and Lesbian Studies. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Goddard College.
Wren’s poetry has appeared in The Cafe Review, Canary, Sierra Nevada Review, Peacock Journal, Coachella Review, Arsenic Lobster, Baltimore Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Loch Raven Review, Clover, Lavender Review, and Bangalore Review, among others. Wren and her partner, author/activist C.T. Lawrence Butler, herd skeptical goats on a mountain in California.
Wren’s C.V., with links to her online work, is here.
• To learn more about Califragile and founder Wren Tuatha’s editorial sensibilities, click here for her interview with “Selfish Poet” and September Featured Poet Trish Hopkinson.
• For interviews with Wren Tuatha and C.T. Butler at Califragile’s 2018 Launch Party, click here. Thanks to ChicoSol’s Guillermo Mash for the coverage!
• Click here for Wren Tuatha’s Wombwell Rainbow interview with poet Paul Brookes.
C.T. Butler, Co-Publisher, Treasurer
C.T. Lawrence Butler is the author of three prescriptive nonfiction books: On Conflict and Consensus, Food Not Bombs–How to Feed the Hungry and Build Community, and Consensus for Cities. A former theater producer, he is a lifelong dancer, activist and vegetarian chef. Co-founder of the original Food Not Bombs collective, C.T. has participated in or organized hundreds of demonstrations concerning nuclear power and arms, war, GLBTQ, hunger, animal rights, and other issues. C.T. and Wren toured Occupy encampments teaching consensus. Now he works with livestock guardian dogs who each weight as much has he does.
Paul Belz, Outreach
Paul is an environmental educator and writer based in Chico, California. He teaches natural history for preschool and elementary students, parents, and teachers. Paul has published articles in Terrain Magazine, the East Bay Monthly, Childcare Exchange Magazine, the website Boots’n’All, and the blogs Wild Oakland and Green Adventures Travel. He’s co-editing a book on bioregional education with Judy Goldhaft of San Francisco’s Planet Drum Foundation. His poetry appears in a number of publications, including Canary, Living in the Land of the Dead (an anthology on homelessness by San Francisco’s Faithful Fools Ministry), Poetalk Quarterly, Just Like Cabbage, Only Different, The Poeming Pigeon, Blueline, Califragile, the anthology What’s Nature Got to Do With Me? and others. His joys include hiking and camping, world travel, vegetarian cooking, and long walks around San Francisco and his hometown, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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