Patrice Vecchione & Diane Grunes

Throughout the month of October 2009, the Downtown Association and many collaborators, including Bookshop Santa Cruz, will be presenting a series of events and exhibits that look back twenty years to the day the earth shook. In commemoration of the 20 year anniversary of the earthquake, Bookshop will be hosting a poetry event that reflects back and looks forward.

Following the Loma Prieta Earthquake on October 17, 1989, poet Patrice Vecchione's young students at Gault Elementary School did what they knew to do, they wrote poems about what the quake was like. These poems and their illustrations became a book, Fault Lines, which was launched six months later at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Using the poems as inspiration, artist Diane Grunes then created an art installation that beautified some of the cyclone fencing surrounding the fallen buildings.

Patrice, Diane, and the now grown-up poets, will gather to read the poems from Fault Lines, look back at their experiences of the quake and discuss how it influenced their lives. Some of Diane’s original art installations will also be shown. In addition, there are only ten copies of Fault Lines left in print, all of which will go on sale that night with full proceeds going to the Santa Cruz Beach Flats Community Center.