GV6 Poet's Bios - Page 4 of 4

Steve Goldman is the founder/MC of The Venice Poetry Readings in The New Library, successor/continuation of The Venice Poetry Readings in the Old Jail, after a short 20-year hiatus.

His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Solo, Verve, Glue,The Venice Beachhead, The Santa Monica Bay News, Abalone Moon, poeticdiversity and The Walt Whitman Pioneer, the last his junior high school literary magazine in 1951. In that publication, the last two lines of his debut poem were cut off via Goldman’s failure to include his whole text on just one side of a page, as required. Additionally, he appears in Abalone Moon, of which he is an Associate Editor. Goldman fervently denies conflict of interest thereabout; if Editor-in-Chief Velene Campbell is silly enough to publish Goldman’s poems, he disclaims responsibility. His long awaited (by himself at any rate) collection The Canon of the Lone Ranger has been published by Sybaritic Press (nominated this year for a Pushcart Prize, for the poem "The Birth of the Lone Ranger") after a short interlude of 35 years in preparation. His chapbook Rachmunas has been approved for publication by Casa de Poesia Press. Goldman teaches fencing, the sport based on sword fighting, not the art of receiving stolen goods. Inasmuch as Goldman is also the king, he has recently awarded himself an MFA. Following Octavio Paz, who said “Poetry is important, the poet is not.” – Goldman abominates the Yupoet phenomenon. (PoeticDiversity.org) elkingo.steve@gmail.com

In the summer of 2002 she wrote the lyrics for a children's musical production of Twelfth Night produced in Beverly Hills and La Jolla by the ETC Theater Company. Her own two plays, October 22, 4004 B.C., Saturday and Night Owls, were produced in Washington State and Houston, Texas, as well at The Cast Theater, Los Angeles. The late Drama-Logue honored the Los Angeles productions with Playwriting awards in 1987 and 1989. Suzanne Lummis has led the beginning through master class workshops in poetry at the UCLA Extension since 1991. She received their Outstanding Teacher Award in 1996. She studied with Philip Levine at Fresno State University, where she completed her M.A. in English/Creative Writing.

Victoria Chang’s first book of poetry, Circle, won the Crab Orchard Review Award Series in Poetry, published by Southern Illinois University Press (Click here to purchase) and was a Finalist for the 2005 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award and a Finalist for the 2005 PEN Center USA Literary Award. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in journals such as The Paris Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Republic, Threepenny Review, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Triquarterly, and Best American Poetry 2005. She is the editor of an anthology titled: Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, published by The University of Illinois Press (Click here to purchase). She has degrees from the University of Michigan, Harvard, and Stanford. She received a Holden Minority Scholarship from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. She has received a BreadLoaf Fellowship, a Taylor Fellowship from the Kenyon Writer's Workshop, a Sewanee Fellowship, and a Hopwood Award. She resides in Los Angeles and is attending the Ph.D. program in Literature and Creative Writing at USC.

Wanda Coleman was born in 1946 and is the author of Bathwater Wine (Black Sparrow Press, 1998), winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. A former medical secretary, magazine editor, journalist and scriptwriter, Coleman has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation for her poetry. Her other books of poetry include Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Tremors (1996); Hand Dance (1993); African Sleeping Sickness (1990); A War of Eyes & Other Stories (1988); Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968-1986 (1988); Imagoes (1983); and Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001). She has also written Mambo Hips & Make Believe: A Novel, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1999. (Poets.org)

Suzanne Lummis - In Danger, her most recent collection, was selected for the California Poetry Series, Roundhouse Press/Heyday Books.She is the present and founding Director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival (LAPF), which now produces a festival every second year, and literary coordinator of the Arroyo Arts Collective project “Poetry in the Windows” in Highland Park, CA. She was principal editor of Grand Passion: The Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond – a publication of the LAPF organization.