Found Poets! with Jaz Sufi
San Ramon's Poet Laureate Jaz Sufi filters her slam-honed intensity through queer Iranian-American identity to spin you with spellbinding storytelling.
Found Poets! is about the entertainment of the spirit through performance poetry. From our development program grads to nationally acclaimed headliners, Found Poets! is a challenging, committed poetry community dedicated to hosting a good night out.
Hosted by Josh Windmiller + Original Giotis!
HEADLINER
Jaz Sufi
she/hers
Jaz Sufi (she/hers) is a queer Iranian-American poet and arts educator. She is the author of Catalog of Shadows (Game Over Books). Her work has been published in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere.
She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA. She is the current Poet Laureate of San Ramon on occupied Ohlone land, where she lives with her dog, Apollo.
OPENERS
Grayson Thompson
he/him
Grayson Thompson [he/him], a Black, Jamaican-American, queer transgender poet and therapist, won Foglifter Press's 2024 Start A Riot! Chapbook Prize (June 2025) and Write Bloody Publishing's 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize (September 2025) for Sand Bodied Florida Boy.
Ernesto Garay
Ernesto M. Garay is the author of a poetry collection, Reverberating Voices (Flowersong Press, 2022). Garay was LA Revista Bilingüe: La Voz's Person of the Month in Sonoma County for March 2020, and a Sonoma County Discovered Award Recipient in Literary Arts. He is Ethnic Studies faculty at Sierra College.
Anika Snyder
Anika Snyder was born and raised in Northern California. She published her first book, Syllable Soccer, in 2025 and is soon to release her second. She has been published in Effable Press and performs her work regularly around Mendocino and Sonoma counties.
Gary Weiner
Gary Weiner moved to Sonoma County in 1973 and now resides in Sebastopol. A former working musician and lawyer, he released the full-length album Released at Last featuring Nina Gerber and exhibits photography in galleries across San Francisco and Sebastopol. He is a prolific writer featured by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts.