Laurel Ann Bogen is the author of ten books of poetry and short fiction including Washing a Language; Fission; The Last Girl in the Land of the Butterflies; The Burning; Do Iguanas Dance, Under the Moonlight? and Rag Tag We Kiss. She was selected “Best Female Poet/Performer” by the L.A. Weekly in their Best of L.A. issue and a founding member of the acclaimed poetry performance troupe, Nearly Fatal Women. Bogen has read/performed in venues as diverse as Cornell University, The Savannah College of Art and Design, The Knitting Factory (NYC), The DA Center for the Arts, The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority, The Museum of Contemporary Art and LACE. The recipient of the Curtis Zahn Poetry Prize from the Pacificus Foundtion and two awards from the Academy of American Poets. http://laurelannbogen.com/
Amy Uyematsu’s new poetry collection, Basic Vocabulary, confronts today’s complex world of drone warfare and post 9/11 unease with boldness, curiosity, candor, and insight. She unites the political and spiritual and welcomes what she calls, “Elegant disorder / even my mind / leaping branch to branch”. Amy Uyematsu is a third-generation Japanese-American poet and teacher from Los Angeles. Uyematsu’s poems consider the intersection of politics, mathematics, spirituality, and the natural world. She is the author of several poetry collections including, 30 Miles from J-Town, Nights of Fire, Nights of Rain, and Stone Bow Prayer. Her first book was awarded the 1992 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Amy was a co-editor of the widely-used UCLA Asian American Studies anthology Roots: An Asian American Reader. Called “Southern California’s most inventive and accessible poet,” former rock musician and psychotherapist.
Charles Harper Webb is and acclaimed essayist, Professor of English at CSU, Long Beach, and the nation’s foremost proponent of Stand Up Poetry. He has published numerous books of poetry. His awards include the Morse Poetry Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Felix Pollock Prize, the Benjamin Saltman Prize, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review,Paris Review, Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poets of the New Century, Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize.
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