MAW SHEIN WIN & HEATHER BOURBEAU at Books Inc. Alameda

Books Inc. Alameda is thrilled to welcome Maw Shein Win, and Heather Bourbeau featured this month with The Book of Light Poetry Series.

Maw returns to the series to read from her new book of poetry, Percussing the Thinking Jar. And Heather Bourbeau sharing her new fictions with Hungry Gods: And Other Matters of Conscious.

In Percussing the Thinking Jar, her third full-length poetry collection, Maw Shein Win reveals how a mind can log thoughts and observations. Through deft braiding of the pleasures, pains, and anxieties of living in a human body, Win has developed new forms which carry the reader to realms that are both deeply personal and universal. These poems are rendered with dreamlike imagery and surprising humor. This generous collection includes 16 Sumi ink drawings by artist Mark Dutcher. Interwoven through the poems, his drawings highlight juxtapositions and counterpoint rhythms inspired by the poems. Reflecting on our strange times, Percussing the Thinking Jar is a hypnotic book that invites readers into conversation with their own vulnerability and resilience.

Heather Bourbeau’s new collection, Hungry Gods And Other Matters of Conscience.

In this bracing collection of fantastical fictions, a revolution is sparked by a slice of cake; an empath trains to avenge an ancestral genocide; a balloon buoys a wounded soul into a new life of liberation; a butcher’s cleaver can almost, but not quite, repair the damage that it has wrought.

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. This is original, gorgeous, engrossing poetry.

—Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate

Maw Shein Win’s most recent poetry collection is (Omnidawn) which was 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. She is the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, CA.

Win’s previous collections include and two chapbooks, Ruins of a glittering palace and . Win often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers and her Process Note Series features poets on their process. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a new literary community.

Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Her writings are part of the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin, and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her latest poetry collection, Monarch (Cornerstone Press, 2023) examines overlooked histories from the US West where she was raised.

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