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Brian Komei Dempster

Brian Komei Dempster and Lee Herrick

14 MARCH 2021 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a virtual poetry reading by Brian Komei Dempster, Seize, and Lee Herrick, Scar and Flower, online via Zoom, free, 3:00 pm PDT (Register to attend: please click here; you will receive an email with a link to join the reading)


MORE ABOUT THE READERS
Please join us for a Poetry Flash virtual reading on Sunday, March 14 at 3:00 pm PDT! We are excited to bring you Brian Komei Dempster and Lee Herrick 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 meeting. 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.

Brian Komei Dempster's new book of poems is Seize. Patrick Phillips says, "Brian Komei Dempster's central subject—his son's epilepsy—could not be more freighted with risk, and yet Seize achieves a pitch-perfect harmony of lament and praise, suffering and solace.…This is a stunning, heartbreaker of a book." His first collection, Topaz, won the 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award in Poetry. Widely published in literary journals, his poems have also been anthologized in Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, and elsewhere. He is editor of From Our Side of the Fence: Growing up in Concentration Camps, which received a 2007 Nisei Voices Award from the National Japanese American Historical Society, and Making Home from War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement. As poet, workshop director, and editor, he's received grants from Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs and the Arts Foundation of Michigan, California State Library's California Civil Liberties Publication Education Program, Center for Cultural Innovation, and San Francisco Arts Commission.

Lee Herrick's latest book of poems is Scar and Flower, finalist for the 2020 Northern California Book Award. Juan Felipe Herrera says, "this is an incredible, luminous and most serious investigation, of being, of human suffering, of war and peace—of the factories of violence and the notebook of enlightenments.…Lee is concerned with the turning of beauty, the intimacy of death and the boundlessness of small moments, 'the broken body of a tiny bird,' fragments that can change a life." Herrick's previous poetry collections include Gardening Secrets of the Dead and This Many Miles from Desire. He is co-editor of the anthology The World I Leave You: Asian American Poets on Faith and Spirit. His poems appear widely in literary magazines, textbooks, and anthologies such as HERE: Poems for the Planet, with an introduction by the Dalai Lama; Indivisible: Poems of Social Justice, with an introduction by Common; One for the Money: The Sentence as Poetic Form; and California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. His prose has appeared in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. He served as Fresno Poet Laureate from 2015-2017 and co-founded LitHop, Fresno's literary festival. He has traveled extensively throughout Latin America and Asia and has taught in China and in California State Prisons. He received the Bill F. Stewart Award for Excellence in Education in 2011. Born in Daejeon, Korea and adopted to the U.S. at ten months, he teaches at Fresno City College, where he co-founded the forthcoming Social Justice and Cultural Center, and in the Sierra Nevada University MFA program.




Daily Listings

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4 MAY 2026 — monday

5 MAY 2026 — tuesday

  • City Lights presents Cinco De Mayo with ZYZZYVA, the legendary literary journal, celebrating Issue 132, with essayist Sarah Matsui, a 2025-2026 Steinbeck Fellow, and story writer Anita Felicelli, How We Know Our Time Travelers, drinks, eats, and a short reading hosted by ZYZZYVA editor Oscar Villalon, in-store, City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, free, 7:00 pm (citylights.com/events/zyzzyva-issue-132-cinco-de-mayo-celebration)

6 MAY 2026 — wednesday

7 MAY 2026 — thursday

8 MAY 2026 — friday

9 MAY 2026 — saturday

10 MAY 2026 — sunday

11 MAY 2026 — monday

12 MAY 2026 — tuesday

13 MAY 2026 — wednesday

14 MAY 2026 — thursday

15 MAY 2026 — friday

16 MAY 2026 — saturday

17 MAY 2026 — sunday

  • Book Society presents "A Taste of the Land: Stories & Realities of Farming," an evening of conversation and farm fresh flavors with Jennifer Acker, Surrender, Andy Naja-Riese, CEO of the Agricultural Institute of Marin, and Tamara Hicks, Feast on the Farm, owner of Tomula Farms, Book Society, 2945 College Avenue, Berkeley, $45, members $30, 6:00-8:00 pm (www.booksociety.social/event-details/a-taste-of-the-land-stories-realities-of-farming)
  • Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading by Molly Fisk, Walking Wheel, a novel-in-verse, and poet and translator Francesca Bell, What Small Sound, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm PDT (poetryflash.org).

18 MAY 2026 — monday

19 MAY 2026 — tuesday

20 MAY 2026 — wednesday

21 MAY 2026 — thursday

22 MAY 2026 — friday

23 MAY 2026 — saturday

24 MAY 2026 — sunday

25 MAY 2026 — monday

26 MAY 2026 — tuesday

27 MAY 2026 — wednesday

28 MAY 2026 — thursday

29 MAY 2026 — friday

30 MAY 2026 — saturday

31 MAY 2026 — sunday


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