KQED, Aug. 4, 2021: “Remembering Janice Mirikitani, GLIDE Co-Founder and Former San Francisco Poet Laureate”

KQED, Aug. 4, 2021 — Karen Hanrahan, president and CEO of GLIDE Foundation, today honored Janice Mirikitani, a beloved local icon who was San Francisco’s second poet laureate and a co-founder of GLIDE, who died last week at the age of 80.

“Known equally for her poetry and her fierce advocacy on behalf of San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents, Mirikitani played a pivotal role in shaping the community and work of GLIDE Foundation, alongside her husband Cecil Williams,” Karen shares. “She believed in caring dangerously, saying in a talk at GLIDE in 2014 that “caring dangerously means that you dare to take the risk to open yourself up to somebody else.”

As a poet, Janice blended her art and activism, publishing four books, including Shedding Silence and We, The Dangerous.

In this podcast hosted by Alexis Madrigal, Karen and other mourners reflect on the life and legacy of Janice Mirikitani.