Dan Alter
Photo: A. Mathiowetz

Dan Alter, Judy Halebsky, Maw Shein Win

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).


Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series. The featured books 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

Dan Alter's new poetry collection is Hills Full of Holes. Judy Halebsky says, "These immersive poems open interior and exterior worlds and diminish dichotomies of plant and human, nature and industry, history and now. Tender and vivid, they ask the reader to change perspectives and see the world anew." Dan Alter's previous collection is My Little Book of Exiles, winner of the Poetry Prize for the 2022 Cowan Writer's Awards. A volume of translations, Take a Breath, You're Getting Excited, was published in 2024. He has published poems in journals including Field, Fourteen Hills, Pank, and ZYZZYVA. He was a fellow of the Arad Arts Project and a finalist for the Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience. He is a member of the Community of Writers at Olympic Valley, and holds an MFA from Saint Mary's College of California. The Learning and Engagement Coordinator at the Magnes Museum, he lives in Berkeley.

Judy Halebsky has three full-length books, most recently Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged), winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Katy Peterson says, "Under the spell of Basho's haiku, but written in a voice entirely its own, Judy Halebsky's Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged) is the first book of poetry I've read in years that makes civilization look good. It makes me want to make dinner, make love, and make noise. Only a poet this generous, this wise, and this rich in language could have made this splendid thing. Read this book and you will wish you were her neighbor." Her previous collections are Sky = Empty, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize, Tree Line, and Space/Gap/Interval/Distance, a chapbook. Originally from Nova Scotia, she moved to the Bay Area to study poetry at Mills College, then spent five years in Japan on fellowships from the Japanese Ministry of Culture. She directs the low-residency MFA at Dominican University of California, and lives in Oakland.

Maw Shein Win's new book of poems is Percussing the Thinking Jar. Lee Herrick says, "Percussing the Thinking Jar is a marvel of lyric invention. The 'thought logs' make stream of consciousness feel new. Stroke log, vertigo log, anxiety meditations, wild ideas: no idea or language is out of Win's reach." Her previous collections include Storage Unit for the Spirit House, nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award, and shortlisted for CALIBA's Golden Poppy Award for Poetry; Invisible Gifts: New and Selected Poems; and two chapbooks, Ruins of a glittering palace and Score and Bone. A Burmese-American poet who teaches poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco, she served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of El Cerrito, California 2016-2018.