Rachel Richardson

Mia Ayumi Malhotra and Rachel Richardson

20 JULY 2025 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a poetry reading featuring Rachel Richardson, Smother, and Mia Ayumi Malhotra, Mothersalt, 2727 California Street, a Cooperative Art Gallery, Berkeley, refreshments, free, 3:00 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
Rachel Richardson's new poetry collection is Smother. Mathew Zapruder says, "How harrowing, how moving, how oddly comforting to read these casually masterful poems. No matter how great the fear, this poet finds the courage to make poetry within, and out of, the great perils of our time. Richardson keeps speaking, and breathing, in that necessary and singular record, poetry." Her previous collections include Copperhead and Hundred-Year Wave. Her poetry has appeared in The New York Times, American Poetry Review, Orion, Yale Review, on The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has been published in Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship Program at Stanford University, and Yaddo. She is a co-founder of the literary center Left Margin LIT, based in Berkeley.
Mia Ayumi Malhotra's new poetry collection is Mothersalt. Barbara Tomash says, "Mothersalt is an exquisitely tender book. Yet even its musicality reveals Malhotra's thinking as acute, precise, fierce, and finally, haunted. Childbearing and motherhood are not merely 'subject' or 'story'; an existential storm blasts through these pages tearing at the borders between body/world, self/other, memory/timelessness. Alive with the unresolvable, with shapeshifting, Mothersalt creates a space to hold opposing emotions and contradictory thoughts without hedging or hiding.…" Her previous collection is Isako Isako, a Northern California Book Award finalist, California Book Award finalist, and winner of the Alice James Award, Nautilus Gold Award for Poetry, National Indie Excellence Award, and Maine Literary Award. Her poetry has appeared in Indiana Review, The Greensboro Review, Best New Poets, DISMANTLE: An Anthology of Writing from VONA/Voices Writing Workshop, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman Fellow, and a founding member of The Ruby SF, a space for women and nonbinary artists. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.