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Come join us for a reading to celebrate Purvi Shah, whose poem "In a womb – a new era – & Kali's tongue" was selected by Sharan Strange as the winner of the 2022 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. Writing Salon instructors Julie Bruck and Erin Rodoni will also read their own work as well as poems by Jane Underwood, the founder and former director of The Writing Salon. Writing Salon student Karen Llagas will also read.
The free event will take place at The Writing Salon's San Francisco location. To ensure a seat at the reading, please RSVP by 5pm on Friday, October 6.
The 2023 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize will be open to submissions from October 1 - December 1.
About The Writing Salon's In-Person Events
In-person event schedules are subject to sudden change or cancellation due to Covid. Masking, social distancing, and other Covid measures will be enforced in accordance with local guidelines. If you have any questions about our in-person events, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at hello@writingsalons.com.
Purvi Shah cultivates healing through anti-violence advocacy and creating art. Her recent book, Miracle Marks (Northwestern University Press, 2019), explores gender violence, racial inequity, and the possibilities of the sacred. Her debut prize-winning book, Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006), plumbs migration, lineages, and belonging.
During the 10th anniversary of 9/11, with Kundiman, she directed Together We Are New York, a community-based poetry project highlighting Asian American voices. She has led creative expression workshops with survivors of violence and enabled storytelling on surviving to thriving. She won a SONY South Asian Social Service Excellence Award for her leadership fighting violence against women.
With Anjali Deshmukh, she creates interactive public art at https://circlefor.com/. Their participatory project, Missed Fortunes, documented pandemic rituals to create poetry with visual art & a community archive for healing.
Purvi relishes sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice.
Julie Bruck’s four collections of poems are How To Avoid Huge Ships (2018), Monkey Ranch (2012), The End of Travel (1999), and The Woman Downstairs (1993). Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plume, The Walrus, The New Quarterly, The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, and The New Yorker. Her awards include two Gold Canadian National Magazine Awards, and the 2012 Governor General’s Award for Poetry (Canada’s equivalent of a National Book Award). She has taught at Canadian universities, and was a resident faculty member at The Robert Frost Place and a guest writer at Vanderbilt University. She has an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, The Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts, among others. A former Montrealer, Julie has lived in San Francisco since 1997.
Erin Rodoni is the author of two poetry collections: Body, in Good Light (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2017) and A Landscape for Loss (NFSPS Press, 2017), winner of the Stevens Award sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. Her third poetry collection won the 2020 Southern Indiana Review Michael Waters Poetry Prize and was published in fall 2021. Her poems, stories, and reviews have been published in such places as Best New Poets, Poetry Northwest, World Literature Today, and Sixfold, among others. She has been the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, a Ninth Letter Literary Award, and the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize. When not writing, she enjoys travel and spending time outdoors with her daughters.
Karen Llagas‘s new chapbook, All Of Us Are Cleaved, is recently published by Nomadic Press. Her first collection of poetry, Archipelago Dust, was published by Meritage Press in 2010. A recipient of a 2022 RHINO Founder’s Prize, Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize, an Elizabeth George Award and a Hedgebrook residency, her poems, translations, prose and reviews have also appeared in various journals and anthologies. Born and raised in the Philippines, Karen lectures at UC Berkeley and divides her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. More on her at http://www.karenllagas.com