Sean Mclain Brown, Lucille Lang Day, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Claire Ortalda, Andrena Zawinski

3 MAY 2026 — sunday

Poetry Flash presents a book launch for Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War, a new anthology, with readings by contributors Sean Mclain Brown, Lucille Lang Day, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Claire Ortalda, and Andrena Zawinski, Art House Gallery & Cultural Center, 2905 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, two blocks north of Ashby BART, refreshments, free, 3:00 pm (poetryflash.org).


The featured anthology will be available 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. Thank you for continuing to support Poetry Flash and our reading series.

MORE ABOUT THE READERS

Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War offers a groundbreaking perspective on war's destruction of the natural world—the creatures, plants, soil, water, and atmosphere of Earth. In poems and contextual comments, sixty-one contemporary poets focus on military damages to the ecosystems on six continents and the moon. Framed by an introduction and a pair of forewords, one on the poetry and the other on global consequences, the poems are accompanied by a tally of ecological costs and a set of thought-provoking discussion and writing prompts for teens and adults. This compelling anthology alerts readers to the environmental degradation of our planet while affirming nature's resilience and regeneration. The anthology covers almost two millennia, beginning with the Marcomannic Wars (167-180 CE) and ending with the twenty-first century wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The conflicts and concomitant environmental damage addressed by the poems are international in scope. Convergence includes ninety poems, each paired with an Author's Note, by U.S. and international poets, including John Balaban, Gillian Clarke, Camille T. Dungy, Ferida Durakovic, W.D. Ehrhart, William Heyen, Cynthia Hogue, Denise Low, Craig Santos Perez, Vivian Faith Prescott, Eric Paul Shaffer, Jillian Sullivan, Brian Turner, Pamela Uschuk, and Mai Der Vang." Convergence was edited by Anne Coray, J.C. Todd, and Teresa Mei Chuc.


Sean Mclain Brown is a combat disabled Marine Corps veteran. His writing is heavily influenced by his experience in combat and living with consequences of war. He taught writing at De Anza College and Western Connecticut State University. His poetry and fiction have appeared in more than fifty journals, such as San Francisco Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Fourteen Hills, and Indiana Review. His work is featured in 100 Best American Prose Poems and Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.

Lucille Lang Day is the founder and publisher of Scarlet Tanager Books, and a contributor to and the publisher of Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War. Her new collection is The Cosmos and Me: New and Selected Poems. Previously, she is the author of seven full-length poetry collections, four poetry chapbooks, two children's books, and a memoir. She edited the anthology Poetry and Science, and coedited Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California.

Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a poet and visual artist, author of Frangible Operas; Gatherer's Alphabet, California Poets Prize-winner; Gravitational Tug; Spider Season; The Fortunate Islands; and other collections. Her honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and the Chicago Literary Award, from Another Chicago Magazine. Her work has appeared in anthologies, including The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry and In Whatever Houses We May Visit: An Anthology of Poems That Have Inspired Physicians. She is a contributing editor for Poetry Flash, a reviewer for Library Journal, and a blogger for Coal Hill Review.

Claire Ortalda, winner of a Georgia State University Fiction Prize, a Hackney Fiction Prize, and an award from Fugue, has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. The co-editor of the anthology Fightin' Words, published by Heyday, 2014, her mystery writing has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and in the Anne Perry-edited anthology Odd Partners, from Ballantine Books, 2019.

Andrena Zawinski a veteran teacher of writing, is the recipient of a Kenneth Patchen Prize in Poetry, PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, Pittsburgh Magazine Schwalb Award as One to Watch in Literature, among others. She has four full-length collections of poetry, most recently Born Under the Influence, and a debut book of flash fiction, Plumes & Other Flights of Fancy. She writes and publishes extensively on class, gender, women's and immigrants' rights, as well as other issues of social concern.