Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman is the most prolific Afro-American poet in the history of Western Literature. Born in the Los Angeles community of Watts, and raised in South Los Angeles, she is one of the last surviving members of Budd Schulberg’s Watts Writer’s Workshop.  Known as “the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles,” and “the L.A. Blues woman,” she occasionally teaches at university level or conducts writing workshops. A seminal figure of post-60s literary Los Angeles, she has shared the stage with such cultural icons as Timothy Leary, Alice Coltrane, Allen Ginsberg, Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos, and Exene Cervenka. She has been an Emmy-winning scriptwriter, and a former columnist for Los Angeles Times magazine. She was C.O.L.A.’s first literary fellow, Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, 2003-04, a nominee for poet laureate, California (2005 & 2012), and for the USA artists fellowship 2007. She was a Gaea fellow at the Sea Change Cottage, Province-town, October 2010. She has published 22 books of poetry and fiction which 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—both from legendary Black Sparrow Press which now continues as Black Sparrow Books with whom she has published two collections: The Riot Inside Me (2005) and Jazz and Twelve O’clock Tales (2008) . Also with University of Pittsburgh Press, her most recent books of poetry include Ostinato Vamps (2003) and The World Falls Away (2011). Her many honors include awards from the Woman’s Building, Write Girl, Beyond Baroque (most recently The George Drury Smith Award),  The Shelley Award from The Poetry Society of America, and Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. Coleman, known for her electrifying presentations, writes powerful poems about life and love in the American underclass.