The Booksmith
1727 Haight St, San Francisco, CA 94117
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Booksmith is thrilled to host the launch for Monarch by Heather Bourbeau, poet, local muse and author most recently of Some Days the Bird (with the poet Anne Casey). She'll be joined by humble superhero and San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus, Kim Shuck, and we'll start off the evening with some early California sea chanteys by the one and only Salty Walt. Treat yourself and join us!
Please note:
Exploring histories forgotten or often overlooked, Heather Bourbeau's Monarch is a powerful poetic memoir of the American West. Focused on the people and events that shaped California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, Bourbeau crafts a regional history that counteracts the simple narratives we are told and taught. Epic, personal, and compelling, Monarch impacts how we see each other and how we see our shared environment.
“Heather Bourbeau chronicles the flotsam of human effort—both destructive and reparative—over the West Coast of the North American continent. She’s convinced me there’s no better way to get history than poetry. I feel close to these figures (both human and nonhuman) that time, greed, hypocrisy, and desperation have stolen from us. Monarch leaves you splashed with feeling and leavened with learning.” – Lulu Miller, author of Why Fish Don’t Exist and Co-Host of Radiolab
“Such a record, a history of us distilled to a raw violence that comes through the record keeping done by a poet, an artist. . . . It’s such a book of loud screams and silent introspection. Bourbeau has shared with us something of incredible power.” – Chiwan Choi, author of my name is wolf
“A stunning poetry collection. . . . a dazzling guide to the past that thrums like a beating heart. . . . This book is necessary and important, and should be taught in schools.” – Devi S. Laskar, author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues and Circa
Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have appeared in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and SWWIM. She is the winner of La Piccioletta Barca’s inaugural competition and the Chapman Magazine Flash Fiction winner, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was a contributing writer to Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond with Don Cheadle and John Prendergast, and has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her collection Some Days The Bird is a poetry conversation with the Irish-Australian poet Anne Casey (Beltway Editions, 2022). Her latest collection Monarch is a poetic memoir of overlooked histories from the US West she was raised in (Cornerstone Press, 2023).
Kim Shuck embraces the fool and jester qualities of being a modern poet and artist. She is a devotee of San Francisco, whose hills she wanders nearly always on foot. Her maternal grandparents met at the Polish Hall on Shotwell and she spent many hours with her mother and grandmother wandering the Mission St. Miracle Mile, taking books out of the Mission Branch library and watching aquarium fish on the ground floor of what used to be Hale's. She firmly believes in carrying a bubble wand, keys, pen and notebook and cats cradle string at all times. Shuck is widely published in journals, anthologies and a couple of solo books. She enjoys volunteering in SFUSD elementary school classrooms to share her loves of origami, poetry and basket making... in other words, math of various kinds. In 2019 Shuck was awarded an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and a PEN Oakland Censorship Award.
"Salty Walt" Walter has traveled the US and Europe performing and educating at museums and festivals as well as supporting a broad array of historical and cultural activities here in the Bay area. Back when there was an SF Bay Guardian he was awarded the title San Francisco's Favorite Sea Chantey Band. From sailing Tall Ships to working with the SF Maritime Museum, he's always quick to offer up a song or explain how systems of power are not always what they seem.
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In the event of cancellation, you will be refunded the price of your ticket within 4 business days.