The Shoreline Voices Project

While committed to publishing individual poets from across the United States, Gunpowder Press launched the Shoreline Voices Project as a way to increase the visibility of the many talented poets living in the Central Coast of California, including Santa Barbara County as well as Ventura and San Luis Obispo Counties.

The Shoreline Voices Project has included collaborations with Lotusland (Buzz and Rare Feathers), the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (To Give Life a Shape), and the Santa Barbara Public Library (for the forthcoming Edson Smith Collection anthology).

Most recently, the Shoreline Voices Project published While You Wait, edited by Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Laure-Anne Bosselaar. The project includes an online version, a hygienic option for visitors to Sansum Clinic during Covid-19. The poems are available to anyone. The print version will be released in April (National Poetry Month). With generous community support, as a gift from grateful poets, Gunpowder Press will be donating copies of While You Wait to over a thousand healthcare workers at Sansum Clinic, who have been working to protect and comfort our community during the pandemic.

80 Santa Barbara County poets contributed to the collection, including: Ronald A. Alexander, Lisl Auf der Heide, Rick Benjamin, Ann Bennett, Elizabeth Blakeslee, Gudrun Bortman, Jessica Bortman,  Laure-Anne Bosselaar, M. L. Brown,  Christopher Buckley, Molly Jane Burns, José María Carpizo, Katherine Casey, Eric M. Castro, Susan Chiavelli, Kundai Chikowero, Clayton Clark, Susan Read Cronin, Frances Davis, Pamela Davis, Margarita Delcheva, Camille Diehl, Danielle Diehl, Andrea Ellickson, Joshua Escobar, Mary Freericks, Maya Shaw Gale, Louise Borad Gerber, Christina Gessler, Cie Gumucio, Ellen Hayward, Roy Hildestad, Barbara Holguin, Linda L. Holland, Rebecca Horrigan, Ibn Salma Ibrahim, e. j., Eliot Jacobson, Finn Janssen, Luci Janssen, Ellen Chavez Kelley, Lois Klein, James Ph. Kotsybar, Nancy Lee, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Perie Longo, Jacqueline Lunianski, Teddy Macker, Gracie Meinzer, Claudine Michel, Kathee Miller, Anne Neubauer, Enid Osborn, Dairine Pearson, Christine Penko, Peg Quinn, Diana Raab, Tamara Zdenek Riley, Sojourner Kincaid Rolle, Shelly Rosen, Nicolasa I. Sandoval, Lauren Schweitzer, Greg Spencer, David Starkey, Daniel Thomas, Emma Trelles, Jace Turner, Sydney Vogel, Isabelle Walker, Kaelie Walker, Mark Walker, Carol Ann Wilburn, Bruce Willard, Paul Willis, Ann Michener Winter, George Yatchisin, Estella Ye, Olivia York, Chryss Yost, Marilee Zdenek.