A border city’s arts org. Built for everyone who lives in one.
SDEAG, the San Diego Entertainment + Arts Guild, is the 501(c)(3) nonprofit behind the San Diego Poetry Annual, the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize, and free poetry workshops across the region.
For 20 years, the work has been simple: publish more voices, remove more barriers, and make poetry available to the people and places the literary world too often overlooks.
From public schools to the Rincon Reservation to juvenile hall, SDEAG creates more ways for people to write, read, submit, gather, and be published.
What SDEAG does.
Publishing
Three volumes every year: the San Diego Poetry Annual, the bilingual edition, and KIDS! San Diego Poetry Annual.
Each volume gives poets a real path to publication and gives readers a living record of the region’s voices.
The Prize
The Steve Kowit Poetry Prize honors original poetry and carries forward the legacy of one of San Diego’s most influential poetry teachers.
Open to any poet, anywhere, the prize recognizes work with courage, craft, and staying power.
The Outreach
SDEAG brings free workshops and readings into schools, libraries, community spaces, detention facilities, and Native communities.
Every workshop is built around the same idea: poetry should not be reserved for people who already know where to find it.
Bilingual is not a feature.
It is the philosophy.
San Diego is a border city. That matters.
The bilingual edition of the San Diego Poetry Annual reflects the place it comes from: multilingual, layered, cross-cultural, and impossible to flatten into one voice.
For SDEAG, access means more than opening a door. It means asking who the door was built for in the first place.
Built with the region.
SDEAG’s work is made possible through public institutions, libraries, universities, arts organizations, funders, and community partners across San Diego County and California.
We Work With
City of San Diego Poet Laureate Program
San Diego Memoir Writers Association
Border Voices Poetry Project
Funded in Part By
Leadership
SDEAG is led by poets, teachers, organizers, editors, and community advocates who believe publication should be within reach for more people.
William Harry Harding
William Harry Harding‘s novels include Three Women and the River or The Englishman Who Forgot His Own Name (Lymer & Hart: 2018), Rainbow, Young Hart, Mill Song and a children’s book, Alvin’s Famous No-Horse – all from Henry Holt. He chairs an arts nonprofit, founded Garden Oak Press and is the founding publisher of the San Diego Poetry Annual.
Founder
Anthony Blacksher
Anthony Blacksher, known as Ant Black in performance poetry circles, took the reins as publisher with the 2020-21 edition. He earned a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University and is a professor at San Bernardino Valley College. His performance poetry has been posted on YouTube and has appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual. He serves on the board of directors and as Vice President of the San Diego Entertainment + Arts Guild (SDEAG), a local 501(c)(3) arts nonprofit that sponsors the annual. He also serves as a workshop facilitator for the KSDPA.
Publisher
Eleanor Parks
Michael Klam also serves as Associate Publisher of the SDPA. He organizes the Poetry & Arts Series, ongoing since 2001, and hosted events for the San Diego Art Institute in Balboa Park. He is also the host of the San Diego Central Library’s Conversations with Poets. His newest collection is Anything for a Dull Moment (Garden Oak Press: 2020). Previous books include The Cheapest Flight to Paradise (Puna Press: 2017) and Emma and the Buddha Frog (Puna Press: 2007).
Executive Editor
Seretta Martin
Seretta Martin holds an MFA from SDSU. A finalist for the Philip Levine award, she helps direct Border Voices, co-edits Synesthesia Literary Journal and teaches at San Diego Writers, Ink and in area schools. She also serves the annual as a Regional Editor and is a workshop facilitator for the Kids! SDPA.
Managing Editor
Valarie Hastings
Valarie Hastings earned the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize in 2020. Her poetry has appeared in more than a dozen literary journals including Crab Creek Review, Literary Mama, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Paterson Literary Review, and the San Diego Poetry Annual. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019 and earned finalist status for the Steve Kowit
Poetry Prize (2018, 2019), the Knightville Poetry Prize (2019), the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award
(2020), and the Crab Creek Poetry Prize (2011). She recently moved from the Bay Area to San
Diego.
Steve Kowit Poetry Prize Coordinator
Ameerah Holliday
Ameerah Holliday is a dancer and self-proclaimed poetess from San Diego, California whose pronouns are she/her/hers. She received her Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from San Diego State University. Holliday is a former editorial assistant intern for Poetry International and associate agent with the Serendipity Literary Agency.
Editorial Director
Jane Muschenetz
Director of PartnershipsJane Muschenetz is an MIT and UCSD graduate and former Bain & Co. Management Consultant. Jane came to the US as a Jewish refugee from Soviet Ukraine at 10 yrs old. Winner of the 2025 National Press Women Communications Prize in Creative Verse, Jane’s additional honors include the 2025 War Poetry Postcard Prize, 2024 Poetry Collection of the Year from San Diego Writers Festival and the 2022 Honeybee Poetry Prize.
Alana Rodriguez
Social Media and Marketing CoordinatorAlana Rodriguez is an MFA poetry candidate at San Diego State University. She’s a submissions reader for The Los Angeles Review and a recipient of the Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Scholarship for Poetry. Her work has been featured in Zone 3, Acentos Review, and Harpur Palate, among others. Alana is passionate about encouraging young poets in both the Latinx and LGBTQ+ communities to pursue publication and share their work with the world.
Poetry that belongs to everyone needs people behind it.
Donate, attend a reading, submit work, or partner with SDEAG to help keep poetry free and accessible across the region.