Dear Friends of Poetry,
On Thursday, February 5, 2026 Poetry Night will feature the poets Grant Faulkner and Maw Shein Win. We meet at 7 p.m. inside the welcoming John Natsoulas Gallery at 521 1st Street in Davis, and we hope you can join us!
Our first poet for February 5 will be Maw Shein Win.
Maw Shein Win is a Burmese American poet who lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. She served as the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito, California from 2016 to 2018. Her works include the full-length poetry collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn, 2024) which was shortlisted for the Northern California Book Award. Her previous full-length collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020) was longlisted for the PEN America 2021 Open Book Award, nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Poetry, and shortlisted for the Golden Poppy Award for Poetry.
Maw Shein Win is the 2025 Berkeley Poetry Festival Lifetime Achievement Awardee and a 2025 Recipient of the Nomadic/San Francisco Foundation Literary Award. Win’s previous collections include Invisible Gifts (Manic D Press, 2018), and two chapbooks, Score and Bone (Black Lawrence Press/Nomadic Press, 2016) and Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects, 2013). Her work has recently been published in Alta, JMWW, The American Poetry Review, The Margins, The Bangalore Review, and other journals. Along with Adrian de la Peña, she is co-publisher of Literary Cherry, a collaborative project and editor of the Process Note Series. Along with Dawn Angelicca Barcelona and Mary Volmer, she is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse.
She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco and in the Low Residency MFA Program at Dominican University of California.
Reading with Win will be Grant Faulkner.
Grant Faulkner is the co-founder of 100 Word Story, the co-host of the Write-minded podcast, and an executive producer on America’s Next Great Author.
Faulkner’s latest (2026) book is something out there in the distance. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s Flash Fiction America; New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction; and in several editions of the annual Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies.
His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project Writers Council, the LitNet Steering Committee, Litquake’s board of directors, and the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Words’ Creative Council. He also publishes the weekly newsletter, Intimations: A Writer’s Discourse.
Doors and open-mic signups open at 6:30 p.m.; the featured reader begins at 7 p.m.; open mic starts at 8 p.m. Open mic performers will be asked to limit what they share to two items or four minutes, whichever is shorter. The open mic list is typically full by 6:45 p.m. People who show up early to help set up chairs will always earn a spot on the open mic list. We expect open mic favorites Michael Gallowglas, Mercedes Ibañez, Joe Bacchus, and Allegra Silberstein to perform.
Find out more about the Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis, California by visiting https://www.poetryindavis.com. Encourage your friends to sign up for the mailing list. To learn more about Dr. Andy’s tiny media fiefdom, see some of his recent essays on Substack: https://andyjones.substack.com/. One post lists the almost 400 poets who have ever featured at the Poetry Night Reading Series.
In 2026, Poetry Night will welcome the poets listed below as well as Kelli Russell Agodon, Katie Peterson, Wendy Silk, Tamer Mostafa, Dianna Henning (in July), Terry Moore, Lenore Meyers, and others.
Please plan to join us on every first and third Thursday of the month at 7 p.m. at the John Natsoulas Gallery for the Poetry Night Reading Series.
Our Poetry Night Schedule for 2026:
February 19 — Susan Wolbarst and Matt Mitchell
March 5 — Connie Johnstone and Bob Stanley
March 19 — Spring break
April 2 — Mercedes Ibañez, the Poet Laureate of Davis
April 16 — Escritores del Nuevo Sol or Writers of the New Sun
May 21 — Molly Fisk and Kirsten Casey
June 4 — Bill O’Daly and Christopher Yohmei Blasdel
