VIRTUAL: Thea Matthews and Maw Shein Win / Unearth [The Flowers]

The Bindery hosts Thea Matthews for her first full-length book, Unearth [The Flowers], the first single-author title from local reading series and small press Red Light Lit. More to be announced soon, but please save the date and join us!

An electrifying letter to family, country, and self, Unearth [The Flowers] is an essential collection, relentless in its journey through stages of grief and healing while celebrating life. Each poem is an anthem for resiliency, a testament to survival, a triumph over the stigmatized terror that pervades the everyday. Thea Matthews’s first full-length collection of poetry details a mind, body, and flower at the intersection of the personal and the political.

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“Unearth [The Flowers] sees the pastoral tradition of poetry through a contemporary feminist lens that shows Thea Matthews as a writer of urgency and authentic concern. Or as Matthews herself says, ‘where there is land / there is blood.’ This is a book of catalogue, of taxonomy, of the need to name the earth and stand on it whole.” – Jericho Brown, author of The Tradition

​“Unearth [The Flowers] is a blooming battle cry, a feat of alchemy in which the personal and political merge in a brutal empathy. Rage and sorrow and the liberation of healing unfurl in a landscape of flowers—this is true literary witchcraft.” – Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir

“Unearth [The Flowers] is a refusal of silence and a testament to survival, speaking back to the damages with a gorgeous bouquet of poems. Thea Matthews conjures poetic magic for healing and bearing witness with vibrant, lyrically rich poems.” – Tiana Clark, author of I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood

“Thea Matthews is a poetic herbalist, using flowers to create healing. This work is egalitarian, touching on blooms of all sorts: indigenous, imported, bolted, and cultivated. You will feel these poems in the root of your jaw, in your foot arches. Matthews is an experienced poet with a deft hand and an honest heart. These words languidly stretch, snap like a lock blade, they drape and twine and reach. Read this work and be changed.” – Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet Laureate

“Thea Matthews is the voice and protector of our generation. Brave poems like a universe that has decided to go forward with a third testament. Thea Matthews is our sacred underground; the only host of our ascension.” – Tongo Eisen-Martin, author of Heaven Is All Goodbyes

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Born and raised in San Francisco, CA, Thea Matthews is a poet, scholar, and activist. She writes on the complexities of humanity, grief, and resiliency. She earned her BA at UC Berkeley where she studied and taught June Jordan’s program Poetry for the People. She has work published in the Atlanta Review, Tilde, Foglifter, The Rumpus, and others. She has work also featured in anthologies Still Here San Francisco (Foglifter Press 2019); and Love WITH Accountability: Uprooting the Roots on Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press 2019). Her first collection of poetry Unearth [The Flowers] is published by Red Light Lit Press.

** Please note **

> This is a free, all-ages event. The Bindery’s bar opens at 6:30pm; event starts at 7pm.

If you can’t attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Unearth [The Flowers], find more information here: https://www.booksmith.com/event/bindery-thea-matthews-unearth-flowers

> Accessibility is important to us! Please let us know in advance if you have any special needs and we will do our absolute best to accommodate you: events@booksmith.com.