Maw Shein Win – The Oakland Artists Project

Maw Shein Win is an artist of many types, including a poet, musician, video maker, interpretive dancer, performance artist, and a combination of those. She has been described as the place where poetry meets punk. Her works include collaboration, and she enjoys taking risks. She even once had a dream inspire a performance.

Her parents emigrated from Burma in the ‘60s. Maw was born in Massachusetts in 1964 and grew up in Massachusetts. Maw’s launch as a music artist can be traced back to being a drummer in a post-punk band Pearls Before Swine in the ‘80s. Music came into Maw’s life organically as she was introduced to it through her father’s love of music and by seeing bands and collecting records.

In undergrad, she learned more about music as well as performance art and poetry. At the time she was also inspired by Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit. She took performance art in undergrad in the ‘80s. She failed, but it’s okay. She does cool stuff to this day. One of her early performance art pieces was going to collaborate with friends for the heck of it even if the kids in the park would be the only audience.

Maw often visited the Bay Area, going to readings at a local bookstore. It was a dream of hers to move to the Bay as she was drawn to its rich literary history. In the ‘90s, she decided to make that dream come true and has been in the Bay Area since then. Over the years, she has seen the Bay Area changing with artists not being able to afford living in the area but is hopeful that artists will be able to stay. The arts community is still very much active: poetry readings and galleries still thrive.

She visited Burma where some of her family was and saw the spirit houses. She was an artist in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley in 2019. She is a member of the SF Writers Grotto. Maw currently hails from El Cerrito and is completing a book of poetry for Omnidawn.

The band that she played in: https://vimeo.com/100479906.

One of the experimental music duos that she collaborated with: http://www.outsound.org/summit/14/Pitta_of_the_Mind.html.

Haunts:

The BART. Oakland is a small place. It’s not uncommon to catch someone on BART or at one of the stations both inside and outside of Oakland, such as one of the many local artists, writers, and organizers. You never know, you may see Maw on your next train ride like any other local!

Nomadic Press, 111 Fairmount Ave, Oakland, CA 94611. In 2016, Maw published with Nomadic Press Score and Bone, a chapbook of poetry exploring film, perception, body, and memory. This small publisher is based out of the Oakland Peace Center at 111 Fairmount Ave. There are also workspace locations in Fruitvale and Uptown that work as a space for all kinds of arts.

Maw is also a board member of PEN Oakland, which is a branch of PEN that started in 1989. PEN is both a literary and human rights organization that works to protect the rights of writers as well as foster a community with each other. PEN Oakland sponsors the Josephine Miles Literary Award for multicultural literature to emerging and well-known local and international artists. Maw gets to help give input as to which local emerging or established artists may receive the award. The award reception is often in a local venue, such as the Rockridge Branch Library (5366 College Avenue, Oakland, CA 94618).