Join us at Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore on Saturday, 11/22, at 4pm for an evening of poetry, music and storytelling from system-impacted writers and a community-rooted poet laureate. Together, they explore the dreams and nightmares born of struggle and survival, revealing how writing opens pathways to freedom and art becomes medicine.

Antonio López is San Mateo County’s 2025-2027 Poet Laureate. López is a poetician at the intersections of the arts, policy, and social change. He is the son of immigrants from Michoacán, México who moved to East Palo Alto in the 1980s. The first in his family to graduate from college, he holds degrees from Duke University, Rutgers-Newark, and the University of Oxford as a 2018 Marshall Scholar. His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous publications, anthologies and podcasts including Poetry Foundation, Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, The Slowdown, Poetry Daily, among others. His first book of poetry, Gentefication, was selected by Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Gregory Pardlo for the 2019 Levis Prize in Poetry published by Four Way Books. His second book, The Right to Remain Violets, is forthcoming from the University of Arizona Press. Antonio served his hometown as a councilmember and mayor for the City of East Palo Alto. From 2021-2023, he worked as field representative for the California State Senate. He serves on the board of several nonprofits, including El Concilio of San Mateo County, Mannakin Dance Theater, the Catalino Tapia Scholarship Fund, among others. He is currently finishing his PhD in the Modern Thought and Literature program at Stanford University. Antonio also serves as the Associate Director for Research and Advocacy for the coast side organization Ayudando Latinos a Soñar (ALAS).

Brian Shepperd, co-creator and co-host of the podcast The Th3rd Bridge, lives a life that embodies resilience, transformation, and leadership born from lived experience. Brian spent nearly 30 years in most of California’s worst prisons. Once immersed in gangs and survival culture, he made the decision to turn his focus inward, transforming those same hard-edged lessons into tools for growth, accountability, and healing. Today, Brian, who uses the pen name b.anthony.shepperd, is the published poet behind the book Confessions of a Compassionate Felon, a community builder, and an advocate. He leads with empathy and credibility, speaking from the place of someone who has lived the realities of incarceration and emerged determined to uplift others.

Pharaoh Elisha Brooks, @Pharaoh_Elisha on Instagram and @PharaohElisha on YouTube, is the Substance Use Disorder Treatment Program Director for Kingdom Builders Transitional Program. He was fortunate enough to be found suitable from the parole board after being incarcerated for 17 and a half years. Today, Pharaoh is a writer, author, musician, producer, poet, actor, counselor, rapper, and singer. His EP, Building 18: The Hip Hop Poetry Project, is available on Spotify and Apple Music and he is working on his first novel. He feels fortunate to share his story to help uplift the same type of communities he once tore down.

Trey Xavier Watkins is a jack of many trades. A musician, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, motivational speaker, and mentor, he finds balance in the breadth of his pursuits. He has published eight novels, including his crowning work The Creation, Death, and Resurrection of Theodore C. Andrews III. Drawing from a past that includes life as a bank robber, drug addiction, and 27 years behind bars, Trey offers audiences a unique perspective on politics, relationships, and the justice system. He came to realize later in life that everything he endured had a purpose: it was his to write about.