Author, poet, television series host and winner of the 2008 Orion Book Award, Diane Ackerman will host a lecture and Q&A session. Her recent New York Times Bestseller The Zookeeper's Wife is a non-fiction account of one couple's bravery in sheltering 300 Jews and Polish resistors in a zoo during the Nazi Holocaust — "a true story—of human empathy and its opposite—that is simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playful." (Washington Post Book World)
Known for her take-no-prisoners readings, Wanda Coleman is a recent contributor to HARRIET (poetryfoundation.org) and drgodine.blogspot. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Zyzzyva, Obsidian and Best American Poetry. 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, Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos and Richard (Louie Louie) Barry. Coleman 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. She has published 18 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. 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 Jazz & Twelve O’clock Tales—new stories. The World Falls Away, new poems, will appear in fall 2011 (Pitt Poetry Series).
Author Diane Ackerman