The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal celebrates National Poetry Month with a poetry reading featuring some of San Francisco's finest bards. Readers include Nicole Henares, Karen Melander-Magoon, Phyllis Klein, Cesar Love, Ed Mycue, Antoinette Vella Payne, Rafael Pineda, Dan Richman, Alice Elizabeth Rogoff, John Rowe, Eva Helene Stern and Nellie Wong.

The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal was created by Cliff McIntire and Indigo Joanne Hotchkiss in 1979 to publish creative writers in the neighborhood. Over the years HALJ’s mission expanded to include writers from San Francisco and beyond. Cliff was formerly incarcerated, and today’s HALJ proudly participates in the PEN America Prison Program. HALJ also participates in the annual Watershed Poetry and Environmental Festival.

HALJ publishes well-written poetry and fiction. HALJ’s voices are often of people who have been marginalized, oppressed or abused. HALJ strives to bring literary arts to the public, to the San Francisco community of writers, to the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, and to people of varying ages, genders, ethnicities and sexual preferences. HALJ is produced as a tabloid, with black-and-white artwork, to maintain an accessible price for low-income people.