11/04/2012
LILLIAN-YVONNE BERTRAM - Deyo on Parchment Raised in Buffalo, Bertram has been a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference work-study scholar, a writer-in-residence at the Montana Artists’ Refuge, and is a Cave Canem alumna. Her poetry has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Callaloo, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, Narrative Magazine, Subtropics, and other journals. She received first place in the 2011 Summer Literary Seminars poetry contest and has won the Gulf Coast Magazine Donald Barthelme Prize for Sh ort Prose. Bertram is a graduate of the writing programs at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a 2009-2011 Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow at Williams College where she taught creative writing and literature. Her first book, But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise, won the Red Hen Press 2010 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, judged by Claudia Rankine. She is pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Utah where she is a Vice-Presidential Fellow, Assistant Managing Editor of Quarterly West, and reads and writes poems with the residents of the Parklane senior living community.
PAM WARD - California Pigment Pam's first novel entitled, Want Some, Get Some, was written during the '92 Los Angeles riots. Her second novel, Bad Girls Burn Slow, is a wicked gaunt through the funeral business based on her life near Los Angeles’ oldest crematorium at Rosedale cemetery. Her work has been published in Scream When you Burn, Calyx, Catch the Fire, Voices of Leimert Park, along with two poetry chapbooks, entitled Jacked-Up and Brutal Mood. Her short stories have appeared in The Best American Erotica 2002, Men We Cherish, and Gynomite, as well as the forthcoming collectors edition of X. Pam has served on the board of directors for Beyond Baroque Literary Foundation and was an artist in resident for the cities of Manhattan Beach, Venice and Los Angeles.
ERIC SCHWARTZ - Composed Calligraphy Eric Schwartz's razor sharp wit and exceptional musicality have been demonstrated on Comedy Central (Sit’n Spin) and at The Improv and The Ice House. He’s lit the airwaves as a feature on Howard Stern 100, Air America and NPR's All Things Considered. He composed the theme song for Harrison On The Edge and his song Clinton Got A Bl***ob recently won first prize in the Comedy / Novelty Category in the 2009 International Songwriting Competition. Redder Than Ever, Eric’s CD, just won Best Novelty Album of the Year in Nashville at the Just Plain Folks awards ceremony.
GERDA GOVINE ITUARTE rep IBWLA - Ink Spot Gerda is a poet, curator, and journalist. Born in the Virgin Islands, she writes “As We Speak” a column for the Pasadena San Gabriel Valley Journal. Her poetry has been published in the Altadena Library anthology, Poetry and Cookies, The San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly and Frontera Esquina magazine. Her first collection Oh, Where is My Candle Hat? will be released next month.
MONA JEAN CEDAR - Fine Resin Mona combines sign language, poetry and dance to create a new art form. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Deaf Studies from California State University where she choreographed with ASL, Japanese, Russian, German, Italian and Dutch Sign Language. This experience is backed by an Associates degrees in dance and American Sign Language (ASL) Interpreting. Cedar earned scholarships for the Julliard seminar on Theatrical Interpreting for Broadway and The National Theater of the Deaf. She has performed ballet, tap and jazz shows in Rudy Perez’s Collage Dance Theater company Avaz in the US and abroad. A resident interpreter for the Coupe du Monde (International World Poetry Slam) in Paris, France, she has actively performed slam style poetry.
