Performance: Kim Shuck's Poem Jam Celebrates HERstory

San Francisco Poet Laureate emerita Kim Shuck invites HERstory poets Kitty Costello, Susan Dambroff, Natasha Dennerstein, devorah major and Maw Shein Win to this monthly poetry reading.

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Kitty Costello is a San Francisco-based poet, therapist and editor with the publisher Freedom Voices. 

Susan Dambroff is a poet, performer and teacher drawn to the detailed placement of words and the alchemy of timing and sequence. Her book Conversations with Trees was published in 2018 by Finishing Line Press.

Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne, Australia. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University. Dennerstein has had poetry published in many journals internationally. Her collections Anatomize (2015), Triptych Caliform (2016) and her novella-in-verse About a Girl (2017) were published by Norfolk Press in San Francisco. Her trans chapbook Seahorse (2017) was published by Nomadic Press in Oakland. She lives in Oakland, California, where she is an editor at Nomadic Press and works at St James Infirmary, a clinic for sex-workers in San Francisco. She was a 2018 Fellow of the Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat.

devorah major is a poet, novelist and short story writer, who served as San Francisco’s Third Poet Laureate (2002–2006). She was born and raised in California. Her novels An Open Weave and Brown Glass Windows have been called both science fiction and magic realism. She has published science fiction short stories in magazines and anthologies, including Stories for Chip and So Long Been Dreaming. A Willow Press Editor’s Choice awardee, her seventh book of poetry, califia’s daughter, was published by Aquarius Books/Willow Press in July 2020.

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Kim Shuck was San Francisco’s seventh Poet Laureate. Her poetry draws on her multiethnic background which includes Polish and Cherokee heritage, and her experiences as a lifelong resident of San Francisco. Her most recent book of poetry, Exile Heart, was published in 2021 by That Painted Horse Press. In her term as Poet Laureate, she hosted scores of free poetry and art workshops for all ages at neighborhood libraries and schools and worked closely with San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Arts Commission to launch major citywide initiatives to honor Native American Indigenous People’s heritage.

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Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016–2018). Her full-length poetry collection is Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020), longlisted for the 2021 PEN America Open Book Award, nominated for a Northern California Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians and other writers and was a Spring 2021 ARC Poetry Fellow at UC Berkeley.

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