Amber Flora Thomas and Sholeh Wolpé

10 NOVEMBER 2013 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Amber Flora Thomas, The Rabbits Could Sing, and Sholeh Wolpé, author of Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths, and editor of The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and its Exiles, wheelchair accessible, request ASL interpreters one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org, Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 3:00 (510/653-9965, dieselbookstore.com)

More about the readers
Amber Flora Thomas's new book of poems is The Rabbits Could Sing. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers says, "In this important second book, we see her ever-strengthening poetic voice, a gathering that moves beyond promise. We see a prophet of the earth. And we do more than read. We listen." Her first book of poems is Eye of Water: Poems, which won the Cave Canem Prize. Among her other honors are the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, the Richard Peterson Prize, and the Ann Stanford Prize.
Sholeh Wolpé's new book of poems is Keeping Time with Blue Hyacinths. Annie Finch says of it, "Like dreams peopled with healing clues, Wolpé's poems are rich with surrealism and harmony, telling deep truths of women across cultures and languages." Her previous book of poems is Rooftops of Tehran. Born in Iran and based in southern California, she is the editor of two recent anthologies, The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and Its Exiles and Breaking the Jaws of Silence: Sixty American Poets Speak to the World. Her translations include Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad and a Persian edition of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, which she co-translated.