Join Mia Ayumi Malhotra to celebrate the publication of Notes from the Birth Year, winner of the 2021/2022 Bateau Press BOOM Chapbook Contest. Part daybook, part diary of the dead, this collection unearths new forms of beauty and loss through tender observations of mothercare. Haunted by ghosts and ancestral presence, the poems interweave lyric and fragmentary prose, examining “the fight to become” in matters of birth and aesthetic lineage. This event will be virtual, but we will honor each other's presence with rituals of tea and storytelling. Featured artists will include Paul Sakai and Danny Lulu, as well as a powerful line-up of family storytellers. Please note that this will be a co-ed event.
* If you’d like to purchase a special book bundle for this event, select the add-on option when you complete your registration. Availability is limited, so order soon! Each bundle will include a personalized copy of Notes from the Birth Year, a package of single origin tea from Tekuno, and a custom-designed enamel pin from the talented folks at Everyday Olive. Orders must be placed by April 1st to allow time for shipping.
* From February 10th-March 10th, you can preorder Notes from the Birth Year from Bateau Press here and get a special presale discount. Each copy of this limited-edition chapbook is hand sewn with a letterpress cover.
Praise for Notes from the Birth Year:
"Newness, meet newness. Wonder, meet wonder. Horror, meet horror. Loss, meet loss. Confounding joy, meet confounding joy... Amid the endlessness of our earthly being-together—human, plant, animal, land, air; our ancestors and our children; the texts that precede and follow us—these poems make beauty in their asking and their going to find out."
—Éireann Lorsung, author of The Century
“Malhotra’s intimate and spellbinding poetry illuminates love as attention shared and attention transferred, while creating, in that illumination, space for the ghost and the ancestor to exist, in their differences, together....”
—Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the Wall
About the artists:
Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Isako Isako, winner of the Alice James Award, the Nautilus Gold Award for Poetry, a National Indie Excellence Award, a Maine Literary Award, and finalist for the California Book Award. This spring, she will be co-teaching the class The Field Between Us: Poetries of Correspondence and Connection at The Ruby with Jennifer S. Cheng.
Paul Sakai and Danny Lulu are a collaborative duo who combine music with stop motion animation for videos and performance. Paul (drums) and Danny (guitar and animations) are both fourth-generation Nikkei, and their work serves as an ongoing exploration into the complexities of Japanese American identity. They pull from their shared Nikkei heritage for imagery, music, history, and traditions, weaving together ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ motifs to express their own hybridity and investigate the multiplicity of culture, place, and history.
Mary Malhotra writes children’s books from her home in suburban Los Angeles. She currently has several picture book texts and a YA realistic contemporary novel looking for a publishing home. Her fiction appears in Sucker Literary Vol. III, (G+G Books, 2014). She has written more than thirty leveled texts for an educational app and reviewed children’s books for Hyphen Magazine, Good Reads With Ronna, and ALAN Picks online.
Elizabeth Chamberlain was, until this year, a writing professor in Arkansas. Now she is a sustainability and right to repair advocate for the San Luis Obispo-based company iFixit. Sometimes, in quiet moments, she writes poetry. Her poems have been published in Cicada, The Waggle, and Fearsome Critters.
Margery Nakamura wrote the story "Grandma's Journey" for a children's literature class back in fall 2017. Rather than focusing on historical facts or reflecting on everything that actually happened to her mother during World War II, she wanted this story to show what her mother, Shigeko Sakai, told her grandchildren about her experience.