David Starkey, Santa Barbara's Poet Laureate for 2009-2011, hosts our semi-annual live poetry series featuring poets from the greater Santa Barbara area.                       This month, David and the Goleta Valley Library welcome poets Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Daniel Thomas.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for her debut collection, "Crossing the Penninsula," and the American Book Award for her memoir, "Among the White Moon Faces." Lim was a professor of English and chair of the Women’s Studies department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.                 She retired in 2012 after more than a decade of service to the school.

Daniel Thomas's poetry has been published in a wide array of journals, and his second collection of poems, "Leaving Base Camp at Dawn," was published in 2022. He has an MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University, as well as an MA in film and a BA in literature. David has lived in Santa Barbara since 2015.