Jan Beatty

Kim Addonizio, Jan Beatty, Brittany Perham

10 OCTOBER 2024 — thursday

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Jan Beatty, Dragstripping, Kim Addonizio, Exit Opera, and Brittany Perham, Double Portrait, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 7:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).


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Featured books for this reading will be available for signing at the event and at bookshop.org/shop/poetryflash. This event will be posted on the Poetry Flash YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UClwdR-uPFNz7XxbBbLcnoEA.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Jan Beatty's new book of poems is Dragstripping. Sandra Cisneros says, "Jan Beatty writes at full throttle, a plunge into the self without flinching. These poems are highways, the finish lines smoking with 'the truth that drags and bitters.' Stories stripped raw. Brave, honest, death-defying, Beatty's poetry roars." Her previous poetry collections include The Body Wars, Jackknife: New and Selected Poems, which won the Paterson Poetry Prize, and The Switching/Yard, among others. Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Prize. Jan Beatty has worked as a waitress, in abortion clinics, and in maximum-security prisons, and is professor emerita at Carlow University, where she directed the MFA and creative writing programs and the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops.

Kim Addonizio's new book of poems is Exit Opera. Booklist said of her work, "Addonizio's poems are like swallows of cold, grassy white wine. They go down easy and then, moments later, you feel the full weight of their impact.…A smoky-voiced chanteuse, she sings the blues of lost youth and past wildness, protesting the assaults of age, the void left by a grown child and a deceased father, and the sorrows of loved ones battling disease. High heels and hangovers, horror movies and empty hotel rooms, regrets and resignation, elements all in Addonizio's articulation of lust, the quest for oblivion, and the body's unrelenting archiving of every pleasure and pain.…" Her previous collections include Now We're Getting Somewhere, Tell Me, a finalist for the National Book Award, Mortal Trash, and Wild Nights. She has also published two novels, two story collections, two craft books on writing, The Poet's Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius, and a memoir, Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life. Her awards include fellowships from the NEA, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two Pushcart Prizes, among other honors. She teaches privately online, and at conferences and workshops internationally.

Brittany Perham's most recent collection, Double Portrait, was selected by Claudia Rankine for the Barnard Women Poets Prize and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Donna Masini says, "Doubling back or spiraling around, incantatory, off-kilter, more song than story, the gorgeously obsessive poems in Double Portrait reflect the ways in which we are sprung into, or thrown off, orbit by desire, grief, sex, love—or simply facing the puzzle of another…[A] smart, surprising, and compelling new collection." Her previous collections include The Curiosities, and a chapbook with Kim Addonizio, The Night Could Go in Either Direction. Her work has received support from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, James Merrill House Foundation, University of Kentucky Mill House Residency Program, Vermont Studio Center, Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program, and Yaddo. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University and lives in San Francisco.