Ben Lomond Author to Read in Saratoga


By Mary Ann Cook
for Los Gatos Weekly Times

LITERARY TWOSOME:

Sally Ashton and Kat Meads are local authors who met when both won artist fellowships from Arts Council Silicon Valley. Ashton is a poet; Meads writes prose and poetry, but both share a love of prose poetry and flash writing, which is a shortened form of short story writing. Ashton lives in Los Gatos; Meads is a former Los Gatan who now lives in Ben Lomond.

Both have new books out. Now the two have teamed up to present a reading and Q&A session at the Saratoga Library May 15. Ashton's latest book is Some Odd Afternoon. This follows hard upon her prose poem "Her Name is Juanita," which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches creative writing at SJSU and is editor of the online poetry/art journal DMQ Review.

Meads is the author of The Invented Life of Kitty Duncan, Sleep, Born Southern and Restless, Not Waving and four books of poetry. Her latest, Little Pockets of Alarm, was runner-up for the U. of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize. She has received national and California grants and fellowships, plus artist residencies to Provincetown, Yaddo and Millay Colony.

Mead won the Chelsea award for fiction, the New Letters award for essay, and her short plays have been produced in New York and Los Angeles. Meads was writing program coordinator at UCSC Extension.