Student Poem

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First Impressions – Inner Expressions
Poem #2

by Octavia, age 15, Garfield High School

If art is healing then sickness is not being able
to express yourself.
If sickness is not being able to express yourself,
funk is the cure…
Curing your heartbreaks, curing your loss,
curing your loneliness, curing the cause.

Funk sounds like laughter louder than their whispers.
Funk feels like healing…
healing the pain that caused so many tears.

Healing feels like you getting over a struggle…
a rash spreading rapidly that has weakened your body
and taken over your soul with no way out.
Screaming is pointless because you’re the only one that hears.

My mother’s tears, from her eyes, to her cheeks, to her ears
…she was the strongest through it all…
smiling through her pain is when she’s the prettiest to me.

Funk is music.
A generation of self-expression and fun
…my grandparents with high afros and high shoes.
Funk is the cure of a sickness no one can control.
A healing process that makes all troubles disappear
and all the tears fade away… all the memories grow faint.

Funk makes life easier…
easier to drown out the hate, easier to ignore the doubt.
You can’t be mad, can’t be sad. You just let funk take over.

Funk is when you’re you.
It’s when you’re smiling to destroy the ones that like to see you cry.
It’s when you’re standing tall, upsetting the ones that like to see you fall.
And, when you are being yourself,
no one can take that away.

The Northwest African American Museum (NAAM) Youth Curators is a community outreach program that introduces local teens to the Museum world and encourages their creativity and expression through themed projects. The 2012 project, First Impressions – Inner Expressions, was co-facilitated by Daemond Arrindell who led the students in a process to write and speak their opinions. They became familiar with navigating rhythms, owning their expression and connecting to the power of words. Much of the inspiration for the spoken word was derived from the current NAAM exhibition Xenobia Bailey: The Aesthetics of Funk.

 Octavia will present her poem along with other student poets on Saturday, April 7, 2012, 1:00 – 3:00 at the Northwest African American Museum to celebrate the exhibition opening and the 2012 Dr. Carver Gayton Youth Curator Program.

 

Katrina Roberts

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MIDWAY ATOLL

— after Message from the Gyre, Chris Jordan

I flip through a stack of photographs, one more colorful than the next – the belly of each albatross chick a beautiful jumble: turquoise and yellow shards, the bright white of bottle caps, fluorescent magenta of someone’s discarded toothbrush, peach of a tampon tube, royal blue lighter — nested within cages of shattered rib, twisted yards of knotted green string, shreds of translucent plastic sheeting, all so far from any land I’ve walked (2000 miles from the nearest continent out in the middle of the North Pacific), yet evidence in waste of my human presence; when I leave my children hungry for attention and drive myself to the ER a random Wednesday evening because I can’t take a full breath for pains in my chest – I picture this: blown open bodies, crevices of unexpected debris, feathers splayed and matted, the elegant curve of bill, silent and still against pebbly sand… and can’t even say it to myself: I was trying in my frenzy to feed you; please forgive me and remember my love.

“Midway Atoll” is from Underdog, University of Washington Press, 2011.

 

Katrina Roberts is the Mina Schwabacher Professor in English and the Humanities  at Whitman College. She is author of Friendly Fire, Winner of the Idaho Prize in Poetry; How Late Desire Looks, which won the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize; and The Quick, an early volume in the Pacific Northwest Series. Her most recent collection is Underdog (University of Washington Press, 2011). Her work appears in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best American Poetry, and The Bread Loaf Anthology of New American Poets, among other anthologies. She and her husband, Jeremy Barker, an artist and distiller native to Walla Walla, are the proprietors of and winemakers for Tytonidae Cellars, which they started in 2003, as well as founders of the Walla Walla Distilling Company. They can generally find their three small children playing with barn cats in the good dirt somewhere not far from the vineyard.

Sheila Bender

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Folding

 

You are folding the clothes of a child
and thinking about this afternoon and the month after next
when the ghost of your husband carries the ghost of your girl,
“She’s fallen 6 feet from the porch rail to the sidewalk,”
and the child sleeps in his arms breath shallow as at birth.

Touch her skin and you feel it collapse like a parachute.
Watch her eyes flicker open, they are murky, do not reflect
even the clouds up there waiting to come together,
and now the future waits,
all of you suddenly pinched behind the neck.

In the next minutes she will respond to her name.
You can see in her waking
there are clouds in her eyes
and you remember her saying this morning
her friends believed god lived in the sky
but she knew she would have seen him up there
riding the clouds and anyway she’d heard on television
that god had a purple head.

The hours in intensive care you will watch
clouds sheet the sky like hospital linen
and hear the chirp of heart monitors like crickets
out of place in the night.

This night you are a stage mother pushing
your child to perform for neurologists and nurses
in the reciting of names, her own, her brother’s, her dog’s,
in the telling of how many fingers
and the matching of her finger to theirs.

After this only waiting is left.
Hours unfold out of themselves like a telescope
and you watch the sky turn the lightest shade of purple.

Then you pray to her god and to all
the grape popsicles in the freezer, to her purple crayon,
to the foxglove and alyssum in the yard,
to all purple things that they may keep their color,
retrieve it from her bruised forehead, ear, stem of her brain.

 

“Folding” is from Behind Us The Way Grows Wider, due out in a month or two from Pixelita Press, Port Townsend, WA, and first appeared in Poetry Northwest and then in Love From the Coastal Route.

Sheila Bender is a nationally known author, poet, writing instructor and mentor. She has published six books on writing and numerous books of poetry. Sheila is the founder of Writing it Real, a very successful writing instructional program, and her latest venture is working with Pixelita Press for an eBook series for iPad that includes instruction via interactive writing prompts using photography. Discover more of Sheila’s work at Writing it Real.

Karen Finneyfrock

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Like You Said it Would

 

The kids at school claim fevers,
hand their laughs to spring, new
and generous, dropping its pollinated
water all over me, sweating pink
salt into my eyes. Go ahead,
spring, pee on my grass.

Let boys come to school without deodorant.
Let boiler rooms cook painted windows
into brick. Let me go to bed cozy and wake up freezing,
spring, do these things. Let men fill my boxes with mail.
Let them pineapple after me. Let them circle my building
in the evening humming throaty come out of your house
tonight, Karen songs. Let them offer beds of tulips, draw
close with toothbrushes tapping at my fire escape.
Let each pull a hair from his head and hold it
between his fingers. Let us see which one
the wind carries in.

 

Karen Finneyfrock is a poet, novelist and teaching artist in Seattle, WA. Her second book of poems, Ceremony for the Choking Ghost, was released on Write Bloody press in 2010. Her young adult novel, The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door, is due from Viking Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Group USA in 2012. She is a former Writer-in-Residence at Richard Hugo House in Seattle and teaches for Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers-in-the-Schools program. In 2010, Karen traveled to Nepal as a Cultural Envoy through the US Department of State to perform and teach poetry and in 2011, she did a reading tour in Germany sponsored by the US Embassy.

Announcements

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Haiku in the Woods–FREE  WORKSHOP! 
Saturday, April 14, 2012, 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (free)
Beaver Lake Lodge, 25201 SE 24th St, Sammamish, WA 98075

Celebrate National Poetry Month by learning to write & appreciate
haiku poetry with Michael Dylan Welch, vice president of the
Haiku Society of America. Please join us on April 14, 2012,
for this free presentation and guided nature walk to learn haiku
poetry. PowerPoint presentation, handouts, writing exercises,
and more — learn about kigo (season words), kireji (dividing the
poem into two juxtaposed parts), and shasei (images from the
five senses). Adults and families welcome, including teachers
interested in teaching haiku in their classrooms. Event
sponsored by the Sammamish Arts Commission and
Sammamish Walks. Please bring a sack lunch, notebook,
pen/pencil, and clothing for any weather (rain or shine). Free,
but reservations requested.

 

Thursday, April 19 at 6:30 p.m.
Edmonds Bookshop, 111 Fifth Avenue South, Edmonds, Five poets read:
Victoria Ford,  Holly Hughes, Jack McCarthy,  Joannie Stangeland, and Joan Swift.

Wednesday, May 30 at 7 p.m.
Room 202, Good Shepherd Center, 4649, Sunnyside Avenue North, Seattle,
Five poets read: Sharon Hashimoto, Donald Kentop, Belle Randall, Michael Spence, and Richard Wakefield.
Contact David D. Horowitz, rosealleypress@juno.com.

 

Seattle Poetry Slam Presents:The 2012 GRAND SLAM
The Seattle Poetry Slam will hold its annual Grand Slam competition (an all ages event) at Town Hall on Friday, April 27that 7:30 pm.The Grand Slam will feature Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist Airea “Dee” Matthews.

The Seattle Poetry Slam’s 2012 Grand Slam is the culmination of a year of weekly  competitions at Re-bar in Downtown Seattle. The night’s winners will be awarded
spots on the 2012 Seattle National Poetry Slam Team: the four poets that will represent Seattle at the National Poetry Slam in Charlotte, NC against over 80 other teams from
across the nation and Canada. Seattle has a history of being one of the most well-respected teams having regularly ranked in the top sixteen in previous years taking the 2nd
place trophy in 2009 in the Group Perfomance competition .Featured Poet We are THRILLED to present our feature this year – Airea “Dee” Matthews. Dee is a two-time
Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist, a former Detroit Grand Slam Champion and a popular performance poet on the national touring scene. Named one of Detroit’s Best
Poets by CBS, she is pursuing her MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan where she was recently awarded a Helen Zell Fellowship and the Michael R. Gutterman Prize
in Poetry.
WHERE:Town Hall 1119 8th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101 206-324-8000
COST:$10-$15 Tix available at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/230515
Note: This is an all ages event.
MORE INFORMATION: www.seattlepoetryslam.org, info@seattlepoetryslam.org,
(360) 818-4000

 

Seattle Rock Orchestra: Poetry Apocalypse 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012, 8:00 – 10:00pm
Town Hall Great Hall; enter on 8th Avenue.

Seattle’s coolest orchestra and the city’s most beloved poets join forces for an epic evening of collaborative mayhem: First, poets Roberto Ascalon, Derrick Brown, Elaina M. Ellis, Karen Finneyfrock, Tara Hardy, Soulchilde/Okanomode, and Buddy Wakefield explore the heartaches and hopes of an uncertain world with an uncertain future, backed by an original orchestral score. Then, the Seattle Rock Orchestra performs an apocalypse-themed song-cycle based on the poets’ collective libretto, featuring soprano Annie Jantzer and tenor Soulchilde/Okanomode. Presented Seattle Rock Orchestra and TumbleMe Productions.
Advance tickets are $10-$18 at Brown Paper Tickets/$12-$18 at the door beginning at 7:30 pm. Call             206/427-3237       for more information.
LEARN MORE:  tumbleme.org   seattlerockorchestra.org

 

Carolyne Wright announces Miracles for Breakfast: Writing like Elizabeth Bishop

A six-session course in which we read and discuss examples of one form per meeting, generate new work in that form and share initial drafts in class; then rework these at home and bring revisions for discussion to the next session.  Class starts on Sunday, 04/01/2012, meets 10:00am – 12:00pm.   For full information and/or to register online, please see:  http://hugohouse.org/class/miracles-breakfast-writing-elizabeth-bishop

 

A Face to Meet the Faces book launch,
Richard Hugo House, April 4th, at 7PM
Bellingham’s Village Books on April 5th, at 7PM
Readers include: Carol Guess; Elizabeth Austen; Elizabeth J. Colen; Jeremy Halinen; Kathleen Flenniken; Peter Ludwin; Matthew Nienow; Luke Johnson; Jeannine Gailey; Martha Silano; Susan Rich; Peter Pereira 

 

HOPE IN HARD TIMES—TACOMA POETS RESPOND TO ADVERSITY
Washington State History Museum Talk, Exhibit Walk & Poetry Reading April 29

TACOMA—In honor of National Poetry Month, join 2010-11 Tacoma Poet Laureate Tammy Robacker and writer Maria Gudaitis with special guest poets, Tacoma Poet Laureate Josie Emmons Turner, Allen Braden, Elijah Muied and Hans Ostrom, as they read poems in response to “Hope in Hard Times: Washington During the Great Depression”—an exhibit at the Washington State History Museum. The event takes place Sunday, April 29, from 2 – 4 p.m.
Admission to the event is $6 per person. At 2 p.m., the public will be invited to enjoy an exhibition briefing, a gallery walk through of the show, a break with refreshments provided by Anthem Coffee and Tea, and admission to the special poetry reading at 3 p.m. in the Auditorium. All proceeds go to the Washington State History Museum, a non-profit organization located at 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 98402; 253.272.3500. Guests are also invited to join the poets at a post-event poetry party from 4 – 6 p.m. at Anthem Coffee and Tea (right next door to the Museum).

 

RAVEN CHRONICLES PRESENTS:
“Matters of the Spirit” A LIVING MAGAZINE FORMAT
Reading & CD release party: APRIL 20TH, FRIDAY, 7 P.M.
JACK STRAW STUDIO, 4261 Roosevelt Way N.E.
(Corner of Roosevelt & 43rd) 
Contact Info: 206.941.2955
Readers include, among others:
CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY/BEYOND BORDERS
Anna Balint: discussing/reading the work of poet, visual artist, social justice and environmental activist Rafael Jesus Gonzalez.
Jean Musser: poetry
ODES TO PERSONS, PLACES & THINGS
Esther Altshul Helfgott (along with participants in her “Poeming the Silence” class): Essay, Memorial to poet Crysta Casey
M. Anne Sweet: poetry
MATTERS OF THE SPIRIT
Elizabeth Alexander: non-fiction, Ginny Banks: artist/essay, Jennifer Berney: non-fiction, Anita Feng: poetry, Thomas Hubbard: poetry, Carol Levin: poetry, Michael Magee: poetry, Tim Sherry: poetry, Ruth Whitney: poetry

 


826 Adult Writing Workshops

These adult writing workshops offer instruction, practice, and feedback in a variety of genres, plus some tips on the business of writing (pitching, publishing, and promoting your work) and feature local literary luminaries (Robert Horton, Jen Graves, Jonathan Evison, Elizabeth Austen)–as well as those on tour (Ruth Ozeki, Davy Rothbart, among others)–and all the profits go to support the youth programming at 826 Seattle.

Jane Alynn Readings:

April 4, 6:30-8:30pm – Match Coffee and Wine Bar, 15705 Main Street NE, Duvall, WA.
April 5, 7pm – Café Zippy’s, 2811 Wetmore Avenue, Everett, WA.

 

Kathleen Flenniken and Martha Collins:  April 2, 7:00 at Elliott Bay Book Store, Seattle.

 

Cal Kinnear

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IT IS THE EMERALD DRAGONFLY CHANCE I want to talk about
here, the moth-eaten holes

things come and go through passing
from dream. This world of mud and morning light

and oat bread is dense and sweet.
I would be content to stand for ages aerial and ponderous

as a great redwood with unblinking eyes. I would need
nothing, if

there were not fox with her red brush marking the crossings,
here to there and back. Watchful, silent.

Here-and-there name my border
where she knows none.

Red and night are the same
pigment. Tireless

and keep and smoke
name her.

If there were not fox, where
would I die to?

 

 

Cal Kinnear is a third generation resident of Seattle recently retired to Vashon Island. In the course of his life he has been college teacher (University of Virginia and Wells College), owner of a book store in Olympia, Washington, modern dancer, waiter at The Thirteen Coins, sailor, hiker, carpenter, development director for the Church Council of Greater Seattle and Explorer West Middle School, and, until recent retirement, Director of Washington Lawyers for the Arts. He has had poems published in The Louisville Review, The Licking River Review, The Prose Poem: An International Journal, Birmingham Poetry Review, Chrysalis Reader, The Temple, Burning Cloud, and RE:AL, and locally in Crab Creek Review, Point No Point, Pontoon, Floating Bridge Review and Fine Madness. He was winner of Fine Madness’ Nelson Bentley prize in 2003. His book, A Walk in Bardo, was published in 2008 by Blue Begonia Press. A suite of 15 translations from the work of the German-Jewish poet Paul Celan was published by Longhouse Books of Vermont in April of 2009. Raven Chronicles published a suite of poems, Heart Range, on line in November of 2009.

Doug Nufer

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Lounge Acts

 

Doug New and the Fur
Rob Roy and the Nightcaps
Colt Fore and the Tee Fives
Gib Lee and the Frescas
Jim Beam and the Royal Crowns
Gar Nish and the Twists
Mick Surr and the Swizzle Sticks
Pop Off and the Grenadines
Red Dye and the Mariscinos
Dick Cull and the Jewel Lips
Miss Stir and the Boss Stun
Ray Near and the Shots
Black Jack and the Daniels
Barb Back and the Pour
Butch Mills and the Rocks
Dee Tease and the Squeezings

Honey Castro and the Bee Feeders
Dina Martina and the Stemware
Harvey Danger and the Wallbangers
Philip Glass and the Binge
Ivy Poison and the Coasters
Mack Jigger and the Riling Steins

Mark Curse and the Make
Al Roy and the Keyer
Ape Pee and the Eye
Key Turk and the Wild
Fire Salve and Bay Bomb
Tan Hat and the Man
Neat Teen and the Mar
Kane Rick and the Her

Moe Hee and the Tow
Ray Most and the Fizz
Jane Bee and the Bar Flies
Mal Beck and the Swill
Mess Gal and the Posh
Bart Thyme and the Stool
Mel Lure and the High Life
Scott Land and the Balvenie
Hy Ball and the Vat 69
Bound Sir and the 86ed
Seve Finn and the Seven
Graham Sport and the Six Grapes
Clare Rhett and the Five Crew Class A
Bea Girl and the Four Roses
Mack Way and the Triple Sec
Tzar Mash and the Doubles
Scott Shore and the Single Malts
Doe Zahg and the Brute Zero
Ry Plonk and the Well
Rod Gut and the Dive
Jay Surr and the Knock-backs
Mick Finn and the Pick-ups
Jen Mill and the Last Call

 

Doug Nufer writes fiction, poetry, and pieces for performance, favoring “formal constraints,” such as in his most recent novel Never Again, in which it is said that no word appears more than once. Other novels include On the Roast and Negativeland (both published in 2004 “although I finished them over a 15-year period”). He has also been published in the Washington Free Press, Art Access, The Stranger, American Book Review, and The Nation.

Doug Nufer will be part of “Lit Crawl” Friday, March 30.

 

Tiffany Midge

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After Viewing the Holocaust Museum’s Room of Shoes
and a Gallery of Plains’ Indian Moccasins: Washington, D.C.

 

The portrait is clear;
one is art the other
evidence. One is artifact
the other atrocity.
Each is interned
behind glass,
with diagrams
and panels,
a testament to miles
walked. Both
are worn,
each a pair,
one is cobbled
one is beaded.

At my tour’s end
can I buy a key-chain shoe?
Will I be assigned
the ID card
of one of the perished
at Wounded Knee?

The moccasins
are beautiful. Seed pearls
woven intricate as lace.
We don’t mourn
the elegant doe skins,
we admire the handicraft.
We don’t ask from whose soles
do these relics come from?
We don’t look for signs of resistance,
or evidence of blood.

Nor do we wonder
if he was old
and passed in his sleep,
or if this child
traded for a stick of candy
or a pinch of dried meat.
We do not make assumptions
of original ownership at all.

Their deaths were not curated,
not part of an installation. We
don’t absorb their violent
or harrowing ends under soft
lights or dramatic shadows.

We look right
through them,
more invisible
than the sighs
of ghosts.
And then we move
on to the next
viewing,

and the next,

and the next,

to another
collector’s trophy
lying
beneath a
veil of glass.

 

“After Viewing the Holocaust Museum’s Room of Shoes and a Gallery of Plains’ Indian Moccasins: Washington, D.C.” previously appeared in Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights and New Poets of the American West.

 

Tiffany Midge is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux, and a recent poetry MFA graduate from the University of Idaho. Her previous collection of poetry Outlaws, Renegades and Saints: Diary of Mixed-up Halfbreed won the Native Writers of the Americas First Book Award for poetry and was published by Greenfield Review Press in 1996. The chapbook, Guiding the Stars to their Campfire, Driving the Salmon to their Beds was published by Gazoobi Tales in ’05. She has published poetry and prose in, Growing Up Ethnic in America, Viking/Penguin; Reinventing the Enemy’s Language, W.W. Norton; Blue Dawn, Red Earth, New Native American Storytellers, Anchor Books; Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing about Learning to be American, Viking Penguin, as well as in poetry journals such as Shenandoah, North American Review, Poetry Northwest and most recently in The Raven Chronicles and Florida Review. She calls both Seattle and Moscow, Idaho home (among other places) and teaches part time with Northwest Indian College.

Michael G. Hickey

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The Cage Door
(for Stephanie Hallgren 5/21/11)

 

Know this:
for every phony from Catcher in the Rye
revered by applauding saguaros, player pianos,
& accolades standing in line,
there is an antidote in a long white dress with strawberry hair.

I know ballyhoo & people famous with a small “f”
whose peanut is more like a shell
or the two rodent parts per million
allowed in canned chili. I’m ashamed to admit
I sometimes beg them to tattoo my scars

with their approval. But it is a lucky sleep indeed
to dream of you, or at least the idea of you:
the leap second to correct atomic clocks,
blue mountains in love,
the whisper of hands praying in supplication.

On the day the world is scheduled to end,
the only revelation I see is a river running with hope.
Because haven’t you heard?
The eye of the storm is myopic.
The door of my cage has been lifted.

 

Michael G. Hickey is a tenured creative writing professor at South Seattle Community College. In addition to being an award-winning teacher, labor leader, and political activist, he has volunteered as a creative writing instructor for children at bereavement camps, prisoners at the Monroe Correctional Complex, and juveniles at King County Youth Detention. In 2009, Hickey was inaugurated as Seattle’s eighth “Poet Populist”. His community project was entitled “Seattle Writes” in which residents of Seattle and King County were encouraged to submit a poem on the theme of “Neighbors.” There are over 200 poems on the site to date including submissions from the kindergarten class of the New Discovery School as well as some of the finest poets in the region including Elizabeth Austen, Martha Clarkson, and Tatyana Mishel.

Kim-An Lieberman

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Harvest

 

My daughter is a collector of fragments:
single beads, stray buttons, broken twigs.
She trolls the garden, catching seedpods
and pebbles in her pocket. This is not to sing
a strange-eyed child, some oracular pure
who sees what we have lost. She is not knowing,
just doing. A small thing jealous of the world,
snatching her share from the groundfall.

After the first wave crested and cleared,
the beach was littered with golden fish
staring upward, still flapping as if to swim.
They say the children came running to gather,
filling skirts and shirtsleeves, crowing, gleeful,
brown feet flashing salt. Only then did the sky
open its sudden true hand, the second wave
reaching forward to sweep them all away.

 

“Harvest” first appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Kim-An Lieberman is an almost-lifelong Seattlelite. Her collection of poetry, Breaking the Map, won a first-book prize from Blue Begonia Press in 2008. Her work also appears in journals and anthologies including Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Lantern Review, CALYX, New Poets of the American West, and My Viet: Vietnamese American Literature in English. A recipient of awards from the Jack Straw Writers Program and the Mellon Foundation for the Humanities, Kim-An has been a featured reader at venues including the Skagit River Poetry Festival, the San Francisco International Poetry Festival, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and has spent many years in the classroom, teaching kindergarteners through college students.