torrin a. greathouse (she/her or they/them) is a transgender cripple-punk poet from Southern California. Her debut collection, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed, 2020) won the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. Greathouse is the author of the chapbooks Therǝ is a Case That I Ɐm (Damaged Goods, 2017) and boy/girl/ghost (The Atlas Review/TAR Chapbook Series, 2018). An assistant editor at The Shallow Ends, their work has appeared in Poetry magazine, the New York Times, and Kenyon Review, among other outlets.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a first-generation Chicana born and raised in San Gabriel, CA. Her debut collection is Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). She is a former Steinbeck fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women grantee, and L.A. Library ALOUD newer poet. She is a cofounder and Executive Director of Women Who Submit, an organization dedicated to empowering women and non-binary authors to submit work for publication. Her work has appeared in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, [Pank], and American Poetry Review among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, L.A.
Victoria Chang's collections include OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America; Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon Press, 2017); The Boss (McSweeney's, 2013), winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award; Salvinia Molesta (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2008); Circle (Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2005). She edited the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation in 2004.
Teresa Mei Chuc and her family were granted political asylum in the U.S. as refugees of the war in Vietnam. Her poetry engages her family history as well as the wider subject of human trauma and healing. She is the author of three collections including Invisible Light (Many Voices Press, 2018). She was an Altadena Poet Laureate in 2018-2020 and is founder and editor-in-chief of Shabda Press.
Luivette Resto, born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx, is the author of three collections, Living On Islands Not Found On Maps (Flowersong Press, 2022), Ascension (Tia Chucha, 2013), and Unfinished Portrait: Poems (Tia Chucha, 2008). She is a fellow of the CantoMundo literary organization and the Macondo Writers Workshop and is on the board of Women Who Submit, a non-profit focused on women and nonbinary writers. Her work has appeared in Spillway, North American Review, The Mas Tequila Review, Dryland and in the anthologies, What Saves Us (Curbstone Books, 2019) and Gathering.
Michelle Bitting has authored five poetry collections, the latest being Nightmares & Miracles (Two Sylvias Press, 2022), winner of the 2020 Wilder Prize. Her collection, Broken Kingdom (RiskPress, 2018) won the Fischer Poetry Prize and was named to Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2018. Her collection, Good Friday Kiss (C&R, 2008), won the DeNovo First Book Award and her Notes to the Beloved (C&R, 2017) won the Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award. Bitting is Poet Laureate of Pacific Palisades (CA). She is a lecturer in poetry and creative writing at Loyola Marymount University (L.A.) and in Film Studies at University of Arizona Global.
Patricia Smith is the author of nine critically-acclaimed books of poetry, including Unshuttered (TriQuarterly Books, 2023), Incendiary Art (TriQuarterly Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (Coffee House Press, 2012), winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press, 2008), a National Book Award finalist. She began her career in the 1980s as a slam poet, becoming a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam.
Shonda Buchanan is a poet, memoirist, journalist, and educator whose work is strongly informed by her African American, American Indian, and European tri-raciality and tri-ethnic heritage She is author of the collections, Equipoise: Poems from Goddess Country (San Francisco Bay Press, 2017) and Who's Afraid of Black Indians? (Poetica Publishing, 2012), She edited Voices of Leimert Park: a poetry anthology (Tsehai Publishers, 2006) and Voices from Leimert Park Redux (Harriet Tubman Press, 2018).
Conney D. Williams is a poet, performer, and former artistic director of the World Stage Performance Gallery in Leimert Park. He has authored three collectionsThe Distance of Observation (World Stage Press, 2021), Blues Red Soul Falsetto (2012) and Leaves of Spilled Spirit from an Untamed Poet (2002),
Blas Falconer is the author of four poetry collections: Forgive the Body This Failure (Four Way Books, 2018), The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, 2012), A Question of Gravity and Light (Univ. of Arizona, 2007), and The Perfect Hour (Aequitas Books, 2006). He co-edited the anthologies, The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity (Univ. of Arizona, 2011) and Mentor and Muse - Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2010). A teacher in the San Diego State Univ. MFA program, his awards include a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, and the New Delta Review Eyster Prize for Poetry.
Mariano Zaro has authored six poetry collections including Decoding Sparrows (What Books, 2019), Padre Tierra (Olifante Ediciones de Poesía, 2019), and Tres letras/Three Letters (Editorial Morsa, 2013). His work is included in the anthologies Monster Verse (Penguin Random House, 2015), Wide Awake (Beyond Baroque, 2015), The Coiled Serpent (Tía Chucha Press, 2016) as well as in magazines in Spain, Mexico and the U.S. He has translated into Spanish poetry by Philomene Long, Tony Barnstone and Sholeh Wolpé. Born in Spain, he earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Granada and is currently a professor of Spanish at Rio Hondo Community College. He hosted the Poetry.LA Interview Series from 2013 to 2022.
Lynne Thompson, L.A. Poet Laureate for 2021-22, is the author of Start with a Small Guitar (What Books Press, 2013) and Beg No Pardon (Perugia Press, 2007) winner of a Perugia Press First Book Award and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award. She received a 2015 Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.). Her poems have appeared in many journals including Poetry, Ploughshares, Salamander, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry International. A former practicing attorney, she is the reviews and essays editor for the literary journal, Spillway.
Samantha Tetangco is a Filipino-American poet, writer and teacher. Her poems, short stories, and creative nonfiction have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including The Sun, Tri-Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Zone 3, Gertrude, and Cimarron Review. She is the former editor-in-chief for Blue Mesa Review, was president of the Assoc. of Writers and Writing Program's LGBTQ Writer's Caucus, and is the Associate Director of Writing at the University of California Merced.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is a first-generation Chicana born and raised in San Gabriel, CA. Her debut collection is Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). She is a former Steinbeck fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange poetry winner, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund/Money for Women grantee, and L.A. Library ALOUD newer poet. She is a cofounder and Executive Director of Women Who Submit, an organization dedicated to empowering women and non-binary authors to submit work for publication. Her work has appeared in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, [Pank], and American Poetry Review among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, L.A.
Elena Karina Byrne is the author of five collections, most recently, If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn, 2021). A Pushcart Prize recipient, her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications. She was a Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America for 12 years and has been a Contributing Editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has been the Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books for 26 years and the Literary Programs Director for the historic Ruskin Art Club. She has curated programs for the GRI at the J. Paul Getty Center, MOCA, the Craft Contemporary, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, The Clark Library, and USC's Doheny Memorial Library, among others.
Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong, a bilingual Korean-American poet and translator, is the author of The War Still Within: Poems of the Korean Diaspora (KYSO Flash Press, 2019), Mother to Myself (Prunsasang Press, 2015); Yellow Flowers on a Rainy Day (Oma Books of the Pacific, 2003), Generation One Point Five (Esprit Books, 1993) and The War Still Within (KYSO Flash, 2019), which includes poems based on the experiences of the Korean "comfort women" of World War II. It received the Yun Doon-ju Korean-American Literature Award. She has been a Korea Daily columnist since 1998.
Alicia Partnoy was imprisoned in a detention camp during Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s. She came to the U.S. as a political refugee. Her first book was The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and Survival (Cleis Press, 1986). Her poetry collections include Flowering Fires (Settlement House, 2015), Little Low Flying (Red Hen Press, 2005) and Revenge of the Apple (Cleis Press, 1992).
torrin a. greathouse (she/her or they/them) is a transgender cripple-punk poet from Southern California. Her debut collection, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed, 2020) won the Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. Greathouse is the author of the chapbooks Therǝ is a Case That I Ɐm (Damaged Goods, 2017) and boy/girl/ghost (The Atlas Review/TAR Chapbook Series, 2018). An assistant editor at The Shallow Ends, their work has appeared in Poetry magazine, the New York Times, and Kenyon Review, among other outlets.
Gail Wronsky, praised by David St. John as being "among the most distinguished poets of her generation," has authored ten books of poetry, prose, and translations, including So Quick Bright Things (What Books), Poems for Infidels (Red Hen Press), and Dying for Beauty (Copper Canyon Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in anthologies and many journals, including Poetry, Colorado Review, Antioch Review, Boston Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review.
Steven Reigns, West Hollywood's first poet laureate in 2015-16, is the author of three collections, A Quilt for David (City Lights, 2021), Inheritance (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2011), and Your Dead Body is My Welcome Mat (Burning Page Press, 2004), along with over a dozen chapbooks. He has received 14 Artist in Residency Grants from the L.A. County Dept. of Cultural Affairs and a 2019-20 Individual Artist Fellowship grant from City of Los Angeles (COLA).
Judith Pacht is the author of two collections, Infirmary for a Private Soul (Tebot Bach, 2019) and Summer Hunger (Tebot Bach, 2010), winner of the 2011 PEN Southwest Book Award for Poetry. She has published four chapbooks, including A Cumulus Fiction (Finishing Line Press, 2019). She was the winner of the Georgia Poetry Society's Edgar Bowers competition. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Runes, Cider Press Review and Foreign Literature (Russia), among other journals.
Victoria Chang's collections include OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America; Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon Press, 2017); The Boss (McSweeney's, 2013), winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award; Salvinia Molesta (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2008); Circle (Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2005). She edited the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation in 2004.
Nikola Madzirov is a Macedonian poet whose work has been translated into over 30 languages. He won the Hubert Burda Prize for young East European poets for his collection Relocated Stone (2007), and has received several international awards and fellowships, including the International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa (2008) and Literarisches Tandem in Berlin (2009). A selection of his poetry, Remnants of Another Age, was published by BOA Editions in 2011 with a foreword by Carolyn Forché. He is one of the coordinators of Lyrikline, an international poetry network.
Hiram Sims is a poet, essayist, and founder of the Sims Library of Poetry, which hosts workshops and readings in South L.A.. He also founded the Community Literature Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching writers of color how to publish books. He authored Photõetry: Poetry and Photography from South Central L.A. (Figueroa Press, 2013), a collection of his poems paired with the work of L.A. photographers. Other work includes his 2007 collection, Poems of a Young, Troubled Mind (published by ProQuest in 2014), and the anthology, Write or Die (LA Bookshelf Publishing Group, 2008).
Jack Grapes is a poet, playwright, actor and teacher. In 1989, he founded the internationally noted literary journal, ONTHEBUS. His book, Method Writing (Bombshelter Press), is in its 11th edition. He has authored over a dozen collections including The Naked Eye: New and Selected Poems, 1987-2012. In 2017, he published Wide Road to the Edge of the World - 301 Haiku and One Long Essay. He has won numerous publishing grants and fellowships from the NEA and nine Artist-in- Residence grants from the California Arts Council.
Sesshu Foster is a poet, novelist, teacher, and community activist who grew up in East L.A. He has authored the collections City of the Future (Kaya Press, 2018), World Ball Notebook (City Lights Publishers, 2009), winner of an American Book Award and an Asian American Literary Award for Poetry, American Loneliness: Selected Poems (Beyond Baroque, 2006), and City Terrace Field Manual (Kaya Press, 1996). He co-edited the anthology Invocation L.A.: Urban Multicultural Poetry (1989). His work appears in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry (2000).
Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-born poet, writer, editor, and literary translator, based in L.A., whose work has been lauded by Billy Collins, Alicia Ostriker, and Chris Abani. She has authored three collections, Keeping Time With Blue Hyacinths (Univ. of Arkansas, 2013), Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press, 2008), and The Scar Saloon (Red Hen Press, 2004). Her translation of iconic Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad's selected work, Sin (Univ. of Arkansas Press), won the Lois Roth Persian Translation Award in 2010.
Matthew Cuban Hernandez is a poet, three-time Southern Fried Poetry slam champion, and author of the collection, 3032 (Not A Cult, 2020). He has performed and taught widely in the U.S. and internationally, including at youth detention centers across L.A. County. He coached the award-winning Get Lit youth slam team that performed at the Obama White House and the Hollywood Bowl. He has opened for artists such as Wu-Tang and performed on many high profile platforms including BuzzFeed and NPR.
Ramón García has authored two collections, The Chronicles (Red Hen Press, 2015), a finalist for the Latino International Book Award for Best Poetry Book in English in 2016, and Other Countries (What Books Press, 2010), and a monograph on photographer and mixed-media artist Ricardo Valverde (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2013). His poems, fiction, and scholarly pieces have appeared in many journals, anthologies and museum catalogs, including The Best American Poetry, The Floating Borderlands: Twenty-Five Years of US-Hispanic Literature, The American Journal of Poetry, and Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas.
Aleida Rodríguez, a bilingual poet, essayist, and translator since the 1970s, is the author of Garden of Exile (1999), which recieved a Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize from Sarabande Books and the PEN Center USA Literary Award. Rodríguez was the first woman, Latina, and lesbian to found and publish a literary magazine and press in L.A.: rara avis/Books of a Feather. She has received numerous honors including a 2018-19 City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Fellowship in Literature.
Ellyn Maybe has authored several poetry collections and performed her work at venues across the U.S. and Europe, including poetry slams and readings in Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Stuttgart. She opened the MTV Spoken Word Tour in LA and often performs with the The Ellyn Maybe Band which recently released the CD Rodeo for the Sheepish and performed at the Glastonbury Music Festival. Writer's Digest named her one of ten poets to watch in the new millennium.
Karen Kevorkian, a Texas native now teaching at UCLA, has authored three poetry collections: Quivira (Three: A Taos Press, 2020), Lizard Dream (What Books Press, 2009) and White Stucco Black Wing (Red Hen Press, 2004). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including Antioch Review, Fiction International, 5 Fingers Review, Hambone, Virginia Quarterly Review, Rio Grande Review, River City, Shenandoah, and VOLT.
Larry Colker (1947-2018) is the author of Amnesia and Wings (Tebot Bach, 2013), Girl with Tattooed Heart, Boy Standing (2008), What the Lizard Knows: New and Selected Poems (2003), and At the Curb, Car Waiting, Boy Standing (1997). With Jim Doane, he co-hosted the Redondo Poets reading series at Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach. Winner of the 2006 California Writers Exchange poetry contest sponsored by Poets & Writers, his work has appeared in many print and online journals.
Marci Vogel authored Death and Other Holidays (Melville House, 2018), winner of the Miami Book Fair/de Groot Prize, and At the Border of Wilshire & Nobody (Howling Bird Press, 2015) winner of the Howling Bird Press Poetry Prize. She has received a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and a Hillary Gravendyk Memorial Scholarship from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and residencies at CAMAC Art Center in Marnay, France.
Holly Prado's (1938-2019) books include, "From One to the Next" (2008),"These Mirrors Prove It" (2006) and "Esperanza: Poems for Orpheus" (1998) from Cahuenga Press. Her work has appeared in a hundred publications and a dozen anthologies, both national and international.
David Starkey has authored eight poetry collections including Like a Soprano (Serving House Books, 2014), Circus Maximus (Biblioasis, 2013), A Few Things You Should Know about the Weasel (Biblioasis, 2010), and Adventures of the Minor Poet (Artamo Press, 2007). He has had over 400 poems published in literary journals and is the publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press, a Santa Barbara-based press specializing in poetry. He was Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, 2009 to 2011.
A two-time national poetry slam champion and professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Javon Johnson, combines lyricism, comedy, and occasional rap rhymes with an incisive cultural critique. The Los Angeles Times observed, "It's hard not to have a good time while watching him have a good time on stage." His Button Poetry video, 'cuz he's black, went viral with over 1.5-million YouTube views. He has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam and co-wrote the Showtime documentary Crossover.
Some poets contribute to the community by hosting a reading series or founding a small literary press or website, or curating literary events, or running workshops, or editing anthologies, or supporting emerging poets. Long Beach-based poet Sarah Thursday has done all those things while holding a full-time teaching job and producing a full-length collection, All the Tiny Anchors, (Sadie Girl Press, 2014), and three chapbooks.
Brendan Constantine's most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (Red Hen Press, 2016), Bouncy Bounce (Blue Horse Press, 2018), Calamity Joe (Red Hen Press, 2012), and Birthday Girl with Possum (Write Bloody Publishing, 2011). He has presented his work at venues throughout the U.S. and Europe, His work has appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly among other A-list journals.
Eric Morago is a poet, small press publisher and teacher. He is the author of two collections, Feasting on Sky (Paper Plane Pilot Publishing, 2016) and What We Ache For (Moon Tide Press, 2010). In 2017, he became editor-in-chief and publisher of Moon Tide Press, founded in 2006 by poet Michael Miller. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he hosts a monthly reading series at Half-Off Books in Fullerton and teaches writing workshops in the L.A. area.
Holly Prado's (1938-2019) books include, "From One to the Next" (2008),"These Mirrors Prove It" (2006) and "Esperanza: Poems for Orpheus" (1998) from Cahuenga Press. Her work has appeared in a hundred publications and a dozen anthologies, both national and international.
Marsha de la O is the author of Every Ravening Thing (Pitt Poetry Series, 2019), Antidote for Night (BOA Editions, 2015), winner of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Black Hope (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 1997), winner of the Small Press Editor's Choice Award. Her work is included in the anthologies Intimate Nature (Ballantine Books, 1998) and Beyond the Valley (Sacred Beverage Press, 1998). She and husband Phil Taggart run the annual Ventura Erotic Poetry reading.
Ben Trigg is the author of Kindness from a Dark God (Moon Tide Press, 2007), and is editor of several anthologies. In 2004, he founded the reading series, 2 Idiots Peddling Poetry which he co-hosts with Steve Ramirez at The Ugly Mug Caffé in Orange. In 2011, the pair edited the anthology Don't Blame the Ugly Mug: 10 Years of 2 Idiots Peddling Poetry, He is one of the organizers of the Orange County Poetry Festival.
Suzanne Lummis' most recent collections are Open 24 Hours (Lynx House Press, 2014), winner of the Blue Poetry Prize, and Danger (Roundhouse Press, 1999). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Hudson Review, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, New Ohio Review, Plume, and The American Journal of Poetry amond other publications. She edited the anthology Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque Books, 2015). With Sherman Pearl, she co-founded the annual Los Angeles Poetry Festival that ran from 1989 to 2011.
Douglas Kearney's poetry collections include Sho (Wave Books, 2021), Patter (2014), Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), The Black Automaton (2009), chosen for the National Poetry Series, and Fear, Some (2006). Named a Notable New American Poet by the Poetry Society of America, Kearney's honors also include a Whiting Writers' Award and commissions for new work from Minneapolis's Weisman Art Museum and New York's Studio Museum.
Poet and publisher Chiwan Choi, whose latest collection is The Yellow House (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2017), was born in Seoul, Korea. His family immigrated to Paraguay, then to the US when he was five. His work engages themes of community, racism, exile, and family, His other collections include The Flood (Tia Chucha Press, 2010) and Abductions (Writ Large Press, 2012). He is a co-founder of Writ Large Press and regulalrly organizes literary and cultural gatherings.
Charles Harper Webb, a former rock muscian and psychotherapist, has a national following as a poet. He has authored numerous collections, including Brain Camp (Pitt Poetry Series, 2015). Other titles include What Things Are Made Of, Shadow Ball, Liver, Hot Popsicles, and Amplified Dogs. His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Pushcart Prize, and Poets of the New Century anthologies. Webb is a professor of English at Cal State University, Long Beach.
William Archila immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1980 to escape the El Salvador civil war. His first poetry collection, "The Art of Exile" (Bilingual Press, 2009), reflecting on that experience, won the Emerging Writer Fellowship Award from the Writer's Center. His collection, The Gravedigger's Archaeology (2015), won the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. His work has been included in many anthologies.
Tony Barnstone's several collections include "Tongue of War" (BkMk Press, 2009) winner of the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by B.H. Fairchild, and "The Golem of Los Angeles" (Red Hen Press, 2007), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award." He has published several translations and textbooks on world literature. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award, the Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize, and the Cecil Hemley Award.
Luis J. Rodriguez, L.A.'s 2014 Poet Laureate, is a renowned figure in Chicano literature. As a young man in East L.A., he renounced street gang life and drug use to become a political activist, journalist, and poet. His memoir, Always Running (Curbstone Press, 1993; Open Road Media, 2012) is a perennial bestseller. As founding editor of Tia Chucha Press, he published poets such Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Alexander, and Patricia Smith early in their careers. He and his family founded Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural in Sylmar in 2001, a not-for-profit cultural arts center and bookstore.
Stephanie Brown has authored two collections, Domestic Interior (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2008) and Allegory of the Supermarket (Univ. of Georgia Press, 1999). Her poems have appeared in six editions of The Best American Poetry (Scribner's), and her poetry and essays have been anthologized in Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner's, 2003), The Grand Permission: New Writing about Motherhood and Poetics (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2003), and others.
Willis Barnstone, prolific poet, translator, scholar, and memoirist has authored, edited, or contributed to countless volumes over six decades. In this conversation with Mariano Zaro, he talks about his development as a poet and the work of some poets he has translated and admires.
Wanda Coleman (1946-2013) was called "the L.A. Blueswoman" and "unofficial poet laureate of L.A." In a New Yorker review, critic Dan Chiasson discribed her as "One of the greatest poets ever to come out of L.A., she shaped the city's literary scene like few before her." Her literary career spanned five decades, starting with her involvement in the Watts Writers Workshop of the 1960s. Her numerous collectons of poetry and fiction include The World Falls Apart (Pitt Poetry Series, 2011) and Jazz & Twelve O'clock Tales (Godine/Black Sparrow Books, 2008).
Amy Uyematsu is a third generation Japanese-Californian, active in the Yellow Power Movement of the 1960's-70's. She has authored five collections including Basic Vocabulary (Red Hen Press, 2016), The Yellow Door (Red Hen Press, 2015), and Stone Bow Prayer (Copper Canyon Press, 2005). In 1971, she co-editing the seminal anthology Roots: An Asian American Reader.
Timothy Green is the author of American Fractal (Red Hen Press, 2008) and editor of the poetry journal RATTLE. His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Connecticut Review, Fugue, Mid-American Review, and Nimrod International Journal.
B.H. Fairchild is one of SoCal's most nationally recognized poets. His poetry explores working class lives in the small towns in Texas and Kansas where he grew up. His collections include The Blue Buick: New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton, 2014), Usher: Poems (W.W. Norton, 2009), Local Knowledge (W.W. Norton, 2005), Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (W.W. Norton, 2003), and The Art of the Lathe (Univ. of Maine, 1998). Fairchild received the William Carlos Williams Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the Aiken Taylor Award, the Arthur Rense Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among many other honors.
Laurel Ann Bogen's poetry career was launched in the late 1960s when she won an Academy of American Poets' award as a college freshman. She went on to author ten collections, the most recent being Psychosis in the Produce Department - New and Selected Poems, 1975-2015 (Red Hen Press, 2015). In 2008, she won the Ourstanding Instructor of the Year award for her classes at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.
David St. John, a nationally noted poet, scholar, and mentor to many poets, has authored eleven collections including The Last Troubadour (Ecco, 2017) The Window (Arctos Press, 2014) and The Auroras: New Poems (Harper, 2012). With Cole Swenson, he co-edited American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (W.W. Norton, 2009). His honors include the Rome fellowship and the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
