The Pat Conroy Literary Center’s monthly Open Mic Night will be presented as a virtual event, live-streamed to our Facebook page, on Thursday, November 13, from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Our featured presenter is poet Devreaux Baker, winner of the 2025 Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry. Open Mic will also feature short readings of 3 to 5 minutes each by other writers in many genres, with host Melissa Whiteford St. Clair.
Interested in reading as part of virtual Open Mic? Let us know at contact@patconroyliterarycenter.org.
About Our Featured Author:
Devreaux Baker is a poet who lives on the Mendocino Coast in Northern California. Her awards include the 2025 Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry; 2024 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Prize, from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; 2022 Fischer International Poetry Prize; 2019 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Prize; 2017 Joe Gouveia Outermost National Poetry Prize; the 2014 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Prize; the 2012 Hawaii Council on Humanities International Poetry Prize; the 2011 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Poetry Award; and the 2010 Women’s Global Leadership Poetry Prize. She is a Fellow at the Macdowell Colony, the Hawthornden Castle, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Her published books of poetry include Hungry Ghosts, out of the bones of earth, Red Willow People, Beyond the Circumstance of Sight, and LIGHT AT THE EDGE. She is the first Poet Laureate of Mendocino County.
“Devreaux Baker’s contemplation of the blues and its artists is beautifully achieved in her poem ‘Blue Requiem,’…Her readers are reminded of history and the many voices in its chorus.”–Susan Kinsolving, judge, Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry
“A deep wisdom runs throughout Devreaux Baker’s work–a reminder that we are not merely connected to nature, but that we are part of nature itself.”–Katherine Hastings, USA Today bestselling author
