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Poetry Flash Reading Series
Mary Mackey and Susan Kelly-DeWitt
5/18, Berkeley
more info
Dan Alter, Judy Halebsky, Maw Shein Win
5/29, Berkeley
more info
Susan Browne and Jeanne Wagner
6/12, Berkeley
more info


Jan Beatty. Photo by Beth Kukucka.

Jan Beatty, Peter Kline, C. Dale Young

11 NOVEMBER 2021 — thursday

Poetry Flash presents a virtual reading by poets Jan Beatty, American Bastard: A Memoir and The Body Wars: Poems, Peter Kline, Mirrorforms, and C. Dale Young, Prometeo, online via Zoom, free, 7:00 pm PST (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)


Please join us for a Poetry Flash virtual reading on Thursday, November 11 at 7:00 pm PST! We are excited to bring you this rare gathering of three compelling poets via Zoom. To register for this reading, please click on the link in the calendar listing above. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the event. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series during these unprecedented times.

This reading is co-sponsored by Moe's Books in Berkeley; the featured books are available at bookshop.org/lists/poetry-flash-readings.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Jan Beatty's new book is American Bastard, winner of the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award 2021. A lyrical inquiry into the experience of being a bastard in America, it travels across literal continents—and continents of desire—as Beatty finds her birthfather, a Canadian hockey player who's won three Stanley Cups, and her birthmother, a working-class woman from Pittsburgh. Issues of class and struggle run throughout the memoir. Her sixth book is The Body Wars: Poems, University of Pittsburgh Press. Naomi Shihab Nye said in The New York Times: "Jan Beatty's new poems…shimmer with luminous connection, travel a big life and grand map of encounters." Beatty's previous books include Jackknife: New and Collected Poems, winner of the Paterson Prize. Maria Mazziotti Gillan said, "Jackknife is a book that secures Jan's place in American literature as one of the fiercest and bravest poets writing today." Her work has appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Poetry, BuzzFeed, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere.

Peter Kline's Mirrorforms is a daring, experimental collection of poems in which language reaches its most pressurized state. Kline has invented a new poetic form, the mirrorform, which he uses with musical verve to essentialize thought and intensify feeling. Bruce Snider says, "…Risky and formally inventive, playful yet rigorous, these poems work like mirrors facing one another; they give a sense of the infinite—the endless joys, losses, and mysteries that make our world." A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Peter Klein has also received residency fellowships from the Amy Clampitt House, James Merrill House, Artsmith Orcas Island, and more. His previous book is Deviants; his poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Tin House, and many other journals, as well as Best New Poets, Verse Daily website, and the Random House anthology of metrical poetry, Measure for Measure. He teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and in Stanford University's Master of Liberal Arts Program.

C. Dale Young's new book is Prometeo, from Four Way Books. Ilya Kaminsky says, "Heartbreaking and beautiful is Prometeo, a book so eloquent the heart stops but refuses to stop reading. These are glorious poems in memoriam for friends, family members, patients. 'I have written too many elegies,' the poet says, 'the living have become jealous of the amount I have written for the dead.' Indeed, fellow poets must be jealous of this book's fearless spirit, of its music." C. Dale Young practices medicine full-time. He is also the author of a novel in stories, The Affliction, and four previous collections of poetry. He is a recipient of fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and more. His poetry and short fiction have appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Best American Poetry, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, American Poetry Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Poetry.






Daily Listings

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8 MAY 2025 — thursday

  • Nonfiction author Sarah Schulman reads from her book, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity, in which Schulman challenges the traditional notion of solidarity as a simple union of equals, arguing that in today's world of globalized power structures, true solidarity requires the collaboration of bystanders and conflicted perpetrators with the excluded and oppressed, both onsite and online, see website for Zoom registration, City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/sarah-schulman)

9 MAY 2025 — friday

  • The Tritone Poetry series features poets Melissa Mack, Dana Swensen, and Wren Farrell, Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 6:00-8:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: tamarackoakland.com)

10 MAY 2025 — saturday

  • Carol Moldaw, So Late, So Soon: New and Selected Poems, reads from her latest collection, Go Figure, with National Book Award-winning poet Arthur Sze, The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems reading from his newest collection, Into the Hush, Dance Palace, 503 B Street, Point Reyes Station, 4:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: ptreyesbooks.com/event/2025-05-10/arthur-sze-carol-moldaw)
  • Book launch and party for Miss Experience White, "an illustrated, surrealistic political poem cycle about destroying the demon of white supremacy and dealing with white privilege" by writer and multidisciplinary artist Milo Starr Johnson, with illustrator John Seabury; the celebration includes a reading by Milo Starr Johnson, and brief readings by Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet Laureate Emerita, Pick a Garnet to Sleep In; Kimi Sugioka, Alameda Poet Laureate, Wile & Wing; poet Debby Segal, Fool's Apprentice; a Q&A with Milo Starr Johnson and John Seabury follows, hosted by Richard Loranger, free admission, books available for purchase, Clarion Performing Arts Center, 2 Waverly Place, San Francisco, 3:00 pm-5:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.theclarionsf.org)

11 MAY 2025 — sunday

  • Poetry reading by Stephen Ratcliffe, w i n d o w, author of more than twenty-five books of poetry, and Norman Fischer, poet, essayist, and Soto Zen Buddhist priest, at a private home in the north Berkeley hills, seating is limited, there is an admission, 5:00 pm PDT (For more information, including the location, email the event host at: Harry@fullplatemedia.com)

12 MAY 2025 — monday

  • Poet, translator, and teacher Arthur Sze celebrates two new books, Into the Hush and The White Orchard: Selected Interviews, Essays, and Poems, with lyric poet Carol Moldaw, Go Figure, both onsite and online, see website for Zoom registration, City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/arthur-sze-with-carol-moldaw)

13 MAY 2025 — tuesday

14 MAY 2025 — wednesday

  • The Blue Whale Reading Series presents a poetry reading by Mary Kay Rummel, Little River of Amazements, former Poet Laureate of Ventura County, and poet and fiction writer Susan Chiavelli, open mic follows, second Wednesday of each month, Unity of Santa Barbara Chapel, 227 East Arrellaga Street, Santa Barbara, free, 5:30 pm PST (For more information, visit: www.facebook.com/groups/sbpoetrymonth)

15 MAY 2025 — thursday

  • San Francisco Poet Laureate emerita Kim Shuck celebrates non-English poetry by inviting Clara Hsu, Preeti Vangani, Keana Aguila Labra and special guests to read at SFPL's monthly poetry reading, the Main Library's Poem Jam poetry reading series takes place on the second Thursday of each month. unless otherwise noted, San Francisco Public Library, Latino/Hispanic Room, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, free, 6:00 pm PDT (415/557-4400, on.sfpl.org/05-15-25)

16 MAY 2025 — friday

  • The Tritone Poetry Series features poets Juliana Spahr, Violet Spurlock, and Norma Cole, Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 6:00-8:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: tamarackoakland.com)

17 MAY 2025 — saturday

18 MAY 2025 — sunday

  • Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading featuring Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Frangible Operas, and Mary Mackey, In This Burning World: Poems of Love and Apocalypse, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

19 MAY 2025 — monday

20 MAY 2025 — tuesday

  • Oakland Poetry Slam, monthly on the third Tuesday, Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 6:30-10:30 pm PDT (For more information, visit: tamarackoakland.com)
  • Shelby Van Pelt discussed her debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures, which traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus, with novelist and short story writer Karen Joy Fowler, We are all completely beside ourselves, Kepler's Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/shelby-van-pelt)

21 MAY 2025 — wednesday

  • Ron Chernow, whose novel Alexander Hamilton was adapted into the Broadway play Hamilton, will discuss his book, Mark Twain, in conversation with Jonathan Bass, Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco, $80, 7:30 pm PDT (For more information, visit: www.cityarts.net/event/ron-chernow)
  • The ZYZZYVA Issue 129 Celebration and 40th Anniversary Kick-off, Issue 129 contributors reading include Katherine Franco, writer and futurist Dominica Phetteplace, fiction novelist Marian Palaia, and poet D.A. Powell, emceed by ZYZZYVA Editor Oscar Villalon, limited seating, Kerouac Alley, between City Lights Bookstore and Vesuvio Cafe, 257 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 6:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/zyzzyva-issue-129-celebration-40th-anniversary-kick-off)

22 MAY 2025 — thursday

23 MAY 2025 — friday

  • The Tritone Poetry Series features poets José Vadi, Chipped: Writing From a Skateboarder's Lens, Hector Son Of Hector, and Christine No, Whatever Love Means, Tamarack, 1501 Harrison Street, Oakland, 6:00-8:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: tamarackoakland.com)

24 MAY 2025 — saturday

25 MAY 2025 — sunday

  • Michelle Tea celebrates the release of Witch: Anthology, which she edited, with readings and rituals featuring Lily Burana, Kathe Izzo, Molly Larkey, Shelley Marlow, Brooke Palmieri, Mia Tsang, and Sarah Yanni, limited seating; Secret location will be emailed to you after registration, San Francisco, 6:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/michelle-tea-and-friends)

26 MAY 2025 — monday

27 MAY 2025 — tuesday

  • Director, actor, essayist, playwright and screenwriter Ralph Remington reads from his book, Penetrating Whiteness: What Racism Really Is and What We Can Do About It, both onsite and online, see website for Zoom registration, City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/ralph-remington)

28 MAY 2025 — wednesday

  • Nonfiction author Sophie Lewis reads from her book, Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation, both onsite and online, see website for Zoom registration, City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, 7:00 pm PDT (For more information, visit: citylights.com/events/sophie-lewis)

29 MAY 2025 — thursday

  • Poetry Flash presents a book launch for Dan Alter, who will read from his new collection Hills Full of Holes; he'll be joined in the celebration by Judy Halebsky, Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), and Maw Shein Win, Percussing the Thinking Jar, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

30 MAY 2025 — friday

31 MAY 2025 — saturday

  • Sixteen Rivers Press presents a poetry reading with Rosa Lane, Called Back, and Camille Norton, A Folio for the Dark: Poems, Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, Berkeley, 3:00-5:00 pm PDT (sixteenrivers.org)

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