Poetry Picnic pairs poetry readings with gelato

Peanut butter and jelly, Bert and Ernie, Rodgers and Hammerstein: Some combinations are just classic.

During its Poetry Picnic, the Spokane County Library District will add another to the list, pairing poetry readings with gelato.

Poetry Picnic, July 26 at the Moran Prairie Library, features four Pacific Northwest-based poets - José Angel Araguz, Laura Read, Sam Roxas-Chua and Nance Van Winckel - and free gelato from Ferrante’s Marketplace Cafe.

The four poets will read both new work and material from published collections.

Araguz has released seven chapbooks and three collections, “Everything We Think We Hear,” “Small Fires” and “Until We Are Level Again.”

Araguz runs The Friday Influence, a poetry blog, and teaches English and creative writing at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.

Read released her first collection of poems, “Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral,” in 2012. Her second collection, “Dresses from the Old Country,” will published in the fall.

Read teaches English at Spokane Falls Community College.

Roxas-Chua is a poet and artist from Eugene, Oregon whose publications include “Fawn Language,” “Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater” and “Echolalia in Script: A Collection of Asemic Writing.”

Roxas-Chua owns the Requatorist, a business dedicated to community writing workshops.

Van Winckel has written eight books of poetry, including “Our Foreigner,” which was released last year, and five books of fiction, including 2014’s “Ever Yrs.”

Van Winckel teaches in the MFA programs at Eastern Washington University and Vermont College of Fine Arts.