On the 3/8/23 edition of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour:
Teacher, writer, and Davis resident Dawn Yackzan, along with novelist and lecturer in the UC Davis University Writing Program David Masiel, join Dr. Andy in the studio to talk about their books, getting listeners excited to hear them excerpted and read by actors at Stories on Stage Davis. Later, Peter Shahrokh tells us stories about his college years, his decision to become a Davisite, his dad’s friend’s Frankenstein-esque experiments and his free newsletter.
Dawn Yackzan, a first-generation American-Lebanese, is a writer, mother, teacher, and activist. Her background includes teaching in public elementary schools, primarily low socio-economic, under-served communities, for thirty years. This work led her to found the Sexual Assault Awareness Campaign in 2013, a grassroots program which gained support from local schools, law enforcement, University of California leaders and state politicians. Having moved once a year in her first two decades of life, she discovered different regions and cultures of the United States. These nomadic and diverse cultural experiences, including living as an expat in North Africa at seventeen, have influenced her writings and become prominent subjects in her nonfiction and fiction writing. Since retiring, her projects include her memoir Precious Crazy and a young adult novel called Leap Frog. An early draft of Precious Crazy won a spot at the Community of Writers (in the High Sierra) and was selected as a 2022 finalist in an international book contest in Paris. Dawn and her husband live in Davis, California, and have two adult children.
David Masiel lives, writes, and teaches in Davis. A graduate of the UC Davis creative writing program, Masiel has taught in the English Department and University Writing Program over the past two decades, teaching courses in fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and professional editing. Between 2011-2019, he served as editor of Writing on the Edge, a UC Davis journal on writing and teaching writing, co-editing the journal’s collected interviews with writing scholars, Teachers on the Edge: The WOE Interviews (Routledge). His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Outside Magazine, and The Washington Post. He has published two novels: 2182 Kilohertz (Random House 2002), a New York Times Notable Book that year, and The Western Limit of the World (Random House 2005).
Peter Shahrokh was born in Berkeley and earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley. He has a PhD in American Literature from UC Davis, and much later received a working-professionals MBA from the same institution. He worked as an analyst for the University of California Davis Office of Architects and Engineers and retired in 2016. Shahrokh has studied in Vienna, and taught English and American Literature at the Università di Pisa. In 2005 he learned to paint with watercolors, and, from his website, he now delivers eclectic biweekly online-newsletters to 150 subscribers to accompany digital images of his latest paintings. His website is petershahrokh.com.
Dawn Yackzan and David Masiel will be featured authors at Stories on Stage Davis on Saturday, March 11th, 2023.
Former California poet laureate Dana Gioia will read at the Poetry Night Reading Series on Thursday, March 16th, 2023.
Find out more about Dr. Andy's Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting http://www.poetryindavis.com. Invite your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, visit his weekly newsletter at https://andyjones.substack.com and follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andyojones.