User:Poetree101/Sam Pierstorff

Sam Pierstorff is the current Poet Laureate of Modesto, CA. At 28 years old, he was the youngest Poet Laureate ever appointed, and he is the first male poet to hold the position in Modesto, California. He is also the only Muslim ever to hold the title. Sam Pierstorff was born in 1975 to a Syrian mother and an American father. His bicultural identity and his parents' divorce left indelible marks on his identity, both of which are frequently explored in his writings.

Sam Pierstorff grew up in Riverside, CA, a very hot and very low-income suburb of Los Angeles. Eager to escape the suppressive heat and dead-end paths he witnessed there, he commuted an hour and a half each way to attend college in Costa Mesa, CA at Orange Coast College. He later transferred and moved to Long Beach to attend California State University, Long Beach where he graduated valedictorian of the College of Liberal Arts in 1997 and went on to earn his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing.

In 2000, Sam Pierstorff moved to Modesto to begin his teaching career at Modesto Junior College, CA where he also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Quercus Review, a journal of poetry, fiction and art. Seeing a need for more poetry and venues for free expression, in 2002, he founded and continues to host Slam On Rye, a wildly popular monthly poetry slam, and in 2004, he founded the annual Ill List Poetry Slam Invitational, which is California's biggest and most prestigious Poetry Slam.

Sam Pierstorff is a widely published poet, appearing in more than 100 magazines and journals, and his first volume of poetry, The Albatross Lives (Chiron Review Press, KS), which also features poems by his father, Don Pierstorff, was a bestselling chapbook in 2002 and was nominated for two Pushcart Prizes.

As a performance poet, Sam Pierstorff has won or placed in dozens of poetry slams all over the state of California and Nevada. In 2004, he anchored Modesto's inaugural slam team and he was a Berkeley poetry slam finalist in 2007. He is married with two small children, yet he remains a frequent guest speaker at conferences and workshops across the country.