Wednesday

Known for her take-no-prisoners readings, Wanda Coleman is a contributor to HARRIET (poetryfoundation.org) and drgodine.blogspot. She has been featured in Writing Los Angeles (Library of America), Poet’s Market (2003), Quercus Review VI, The Los Angeles Review, the Burnside Review and online at MS. A seminal figure of L.A.’s poetry underground, she has shared the stage with such cultural icons as Timothy Leary, Alice Coltrane, Allen Ginsberg, and Richard (Louie Louie) Barry. She has been an Emmy-winning scriptwriter, and columnist for Los Angeles Times magazine; a nominee for poet laureate of California, and for the USA artists fellowship. Coleman’s books include Bathwater Wine, winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize—the first African-American woman to receive the award, and  Mercurochrome (poems), bronze-medal finalist, National Book Awards 2001. Her honors include  fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. Her most recent books include Ostinato Vamps (Pitt Poetry Series), The Riot Inside Me: Trials & Tremors (nonfiction, Godine/Black Sparrow),  WANDA COLEMAN: Poems Seismic in Scene (de la chienne) – Mise en page et calligraphies/layout and illumination by Jean-Jacques Tachdjian, and new collection of stories, and Jazz & Twelve O’clock Tales.

CAConrad is the recipient of the 2009 Gil Ott Book Award for The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010).  He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock, The City Real & Imagined (Factory School, 2010).  He is a co-founder of PACE (Poet Activist Community Extension).  The son of white trash asphyxiation, his childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift.  Visit him online at CAConrad.blogspot.com, or with his friends at PhillySound.blogspot.com