John Harris co-founded (with the late Joseph Hansen) the long-running Wednesday night poetry workshop at the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice and ran the Papa Bach bookstore.
Bill Duke: With a wide range of credits and awards to his name in almost every film and TV discipline, including directing, producing, acting and writing, Bill Duke is also a spoken word advocate whose own poetry can be found on www.officialbillduke.com/media.
Pegarty Long: photographer, painter, and filmmaker whose filmic trilogy Incision stars her sister, the late, legendary Venice poet Philomene Long.
Herbert T. Schmidt, Jr. is co-founder of The Star-Spangled Banner Of Your Mind, a surrealist tragic-comedy urban ensemble with a predilection to skewering the media in its refracted orthicon heart. He has published poetry and prose and pop-culture essays in tabloids and periodicals everywhere, including Coast Magazine and the LA Free Press. As a utility infielder with a 255 BA, he’s always been a sucker for a breaking ball up around the ears.
Doug Knott has been writing and performing poetry in Southern California for more than twenty years. He is the author of one collection, Small Dogs Bark Cartoons, and many chapbooks. He has been published in local and national poetry magazines ranging from Caffeine and Pearl to Chiron Review. His work has been included in several anthologies such as Grand Passion: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond and The Outlaw Poetry Bible.
Besides literary work, he has performed his poetry in hundreds of different venues on the West Coast, ranging from coffeehouses to the LA County Museum, and has hosted several poetry reading series. He created and produced a seminal L.A. underground variety show at the Lhasa club, had his own nightclub and produced readings at Club Lingerie, Highland Grounds, and the Ice House in Pasadena. He has performed extensively in local bookstores and TV, and had his own poetry cable-access show.
With several other poets, he wrote and performed more than 100 shows under the group names “Lost Tribe” and “Carma Bums.” The group won the late 80’s network-TV “Gong Show” and performed at many venues in Denver, Albuquerque, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Ashland, Portland Vancouver, and many other cities. The tours, performances and antics of the Carma Bums were the subject of a 1996 book, Twisted Cadillac.
Additionally, he has written and/or produced and/or directed six poetry videos, four of which have one national awards. His video “Psychic Defense Training for Ex-Lovers” was a “poetry spot” on W-NYC in New York, and “Wings” (with L.A. Bogen) won national awards and played on PBS TV in Chicago. He taught a class in poetry video at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA.
Jerry Garcia is a native of Los Angeles, California who is too old to have been named after The Grateful Dead guitar hero. Besides, his parents weren’t that hip. He spent his childhood fearing “the bomb” and was a teenager during the “Summer of Love.” He studied Communication Arts at Loyola Marymount University during the Watergate Era and became a film editor the year Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture. He has produced and edited television commercials, documentaries and industrial films. His interest in poetry resurfaced in the 1990’s when he attended classes in the Writer’s Program at UCLA. Jerry lives by the motto “need something done, ask a busy person” and a philosophy of “don’t run when you can walk, don’t walk when you can stand and don’t stand when you can sit.” He has been published in various journals and 'zines including Lit Rap Anthology, The November 3rd Club Journal, Lily: Literary Review. He has been featured reader at several Los Angeles Poetry venues including Beyond Baroque, Rhapsodomancy, Literati Cocktail and 2nd Fridays in Eagle Rock.
Sarah Maclay’s poems, reviews and essays have appeared or are due to appear in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, FIELD, Hotel Amerika, The Writer’s Chronicle, Solo, Pool, ZZYZYVA, lyric, Ninth Letter, The Laurel Review, Swink, The Journal and numerous other publications including Poetry International, where she serves as book review editor. Her debut full-length, Whore, won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry, and she has received an Albert and Elaine Borchard Fellowship and several Pushcart nominations. She was also a winner of the dA Center for the Arts Poetry Contest, a finalist for the Blue Lynx Prize and a semi-finalist for the Kenyon Review Poetry Prize, the Cleveland State University Poetry Prize and the Tupelo Press First Book Prize. The author of three limited edition chapbooks, Ice from the Belly (Farstarfire), Shadow of Light (Inevitable) and Weeding the Duchess (Black Stone), she holds degrees from Oberlin College and Vermont College, and has most recently been teaching in Los Angeles at LMU, USC and FIDM, as well as conducting workshops both privately and, periodically, at Beyond Baroque. At Loyola Marymount, she teachings creative writing, contemporary poetry, introductory poetry courses and college writing. She is currently completing The White Bride, a manuscript of prose poems.
Gail Wronsky was born in Harrisburg PA and grew up in small towns in eastern Pennsylvania and suburban Detroit. After attending Kalamazoo College she transferred to the University of Virginia where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Wagenheim Scholarship for Creative Writing, receiving a BA in English. She returned to UVA as a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Poetry Writing, finishing her MFA degree while working at UVA Hospital. Her chapbook, Dogland, was published by Alderman Press (UVA, 1981).
After teaching English at the Foxcroft School in Virginia. She entered the Ph.D. program in English at the University of Utah in 1982, studying with Mark Strand, Larry Levis, Karen Lawrence, Barry Weller, Henry Staten, and David Kranes. Her play “Wave's Home for Hurtin' Tammies” was developed and directed by Julie Taymor at the 1982 Sundance Institute Playwriting Conference. The play was produced the following year by the Salt Lake Acting Company, directed by David Chambers. Her "Gothic Hats" was produced by a dance company in affiliation with Repertory Dance Theater, Salt Lake City. After completing her Ph.D. in 1986, Wronsky married Chuck Rosenthal, and moved with him to Los Angeles where both began teaching at Loyola Marymount University. Their daughter, Marlena, was born in 1987.
L. K. Thayer also known as Lisa Thayer is an actor, singer/songwriter, designer and poet. She was born In Fargo, North Dakota. Her mother Gini moved her 3 children to live just outside of Mpls., Minn. where she fell in love with the theatre at 15. Lisa was invited out to Los Angeles at 20, by her former acting teacher and mentor Claude Woolman who, before he lost his life to AIDS, inspired her to continue acting. She became a member of The Actor’s Studio, one of it’s youngest members ever, at the age of 22, with Lee Strasberg accepting her on her first audition. Lisa went on to do many plays in LA and NYC winning her first DramaLogue Award for the Russian farce, “The Suicide” playing “Serafima” an 80 yr. old mother-in-law directed by Florinel Fatulescu, who at the time didn’t speak a word of English except for “vodka and please, again!” She won her 2nd DramaLogue Award for her second production of “Balm in Gilead” in the role of “Ann” a prostitute, directed by Sal Romeo. L. K. is currently studying ‘Method Writing’ with Jack Grapes in Los Angeles, her poem “Ticker Tape Charade” will appear in the poetry edition of ONTHEBUS, published by Bomb Shelter Press. She has read her poetry at Beyond Baroque in Santa Monica and The Hotel Cafe in Hollywood with Tongue & Groove. L.K. has 5 ‘Chapbooks’ of poetry, Cat’s Cradle, Melancholy Stew, Rapture & Rust, On The Edge Of Anywhere and Praises From A Tenor Sax. She wrote and sang on the CD Mouth2Mouth with Brian BecVar and has performed at Ghengis Cohen and the famous Canter’s Kibbitz Room.
Stephen J. Kalinich was raised in Binghamton, New York and moved to Los Angeles in order to pursue a career in the film industry. He was quickly sidetracked by a budding poetry career, which in turn led him to a highly successful career as a lyricist working with such notable talents as Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys, P.F. Sloan, Art Munson, Kenny Hirsch, Jobete Music, Irving Almo Music, Randy Crawford, Mary Wilson of the Supremes, Odyssey, Clifton Davis, Diana Ross, among others. In addition to writing lyrics, Stephen is an accomplished musician. Stephen’s talents weren’t limited to the creative side of the business and he soon found himself an executive manager and producers of videos, books, and various other projects, including an American TV special, "Steve Kalinich on America," for Storer Cable Network. Stephen’s collaboration with Rupert Hitzig, "The Ooglebees" an animated children’s project, brought him full circle as he comes back to the multimedia and film industry which first called to him so many years ago. Stephen has also donated his time and energy to the Make-a-Wish Foundation and the Weingart Center in Los Angeles.
S.A. Griffin is a Los Angeles-based poet, DJ for killradio.org and co-editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, awarded The Firecracker Award as best in alternative press, and named Best Performance Poet by Wanda Coleman for the LA Weekly in 1989. Griffin has traveled extensively throughout the Western United States and Canada with Los Angeles based poetry/performance ensemble, The Carma Bums. He is currently touring with his project, Poetry Bomb.
Michael C. Ford: Born on the Illinois side of Lake Michigan, he migrated with parents to Southern California at the age of 3. About seven years later, witnessing post MVP season of Nellie Fox with the White Sox in a rare battle with the Cubbies in an exhibition game at Pasadena’s Brookside Park. An SST compilation CD included a track celebrating that occasion. As an audio journalist in 1986, he recorded his paean to the barnstorming ballplayers of the Pacific Coast League. The following year it was put on a Los Angeles radio play list by Bud “the steamer” Furillo on KMPC and by Cleve Hermann on KFWB. It was included on a compilation CD entitled Innings. In the summer of 2002 he was invited by the Baseball Reliquary to host an event at the Pasadena, California Central Library, to curate a verbal recognition of literature and baseball and to conjure a batting order of 9 poets who could take a few swings at the national pastime. The poets were videoed by May Rigler, later on edited by Lindsay Mofford then, wired for sound by the indispensable Tucker. An in-house audio copy was handed over to Hen House Studios, turned into a live-date production and eventually moving into the American marketplace. Included in his catalogue of stage plays is a 2-character pastiche which is a 1-act titled Termite Palace (paying homage to the demise of a wooden stadium in Pacific Coast League baseball history). His volume of selected work published by Amaranth Editions in 1998 attracted a Pulitzer Prize nomination. His latest spoken word recording is entitled 20th-Century Goodbye. The Marilyn Monroe Concerto (2 dollars) was published as a 6-pg pamphlet-length poem by Pitchfork Press in Chicago. To Kiss The Blood Off Our Hands (2007) went into a 2nd printing, the same year by Ion Drive Publishing, also responsible for publishing his 2008 print document The Demented Chauffeur & Other Mysteries.
Rex Weiner, (Co-Producer) a veteran of the entertainment industry, is notorious within “the business” as a journalist, screenwriter and media consultant. A member of the Writers Guild of America since 1982, Weiner’s produced screenwriting credits include The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, based on his original stories and directed by Renny Harlin for 20th Century Fox/Silver Pictures. He created, co-wrote and was associate producer of Forgotten Prisoners: The Amnesty Files, starring Ron Silver and Hector Elizondo, among the first of TNT’s original feature-length movies. As one of the first writers brought on board to launch the TV series Miami Vice, Weiner wrote the now classic 9th episode, “Glades.” He has written and directed for the stage, and studied with the Padua Hills Playwrights group. His acclaimed full length musical play, Be Bop A Lula, was produced by John Densmore and Adam Ant at Theater Theatre in Hollywood in 1992, starred Paul Hipp (original lead in Buddy on Broadway and the West End) and Donal Logue (TV’s Grounded For Life). He recently directed a revival of the play at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Weiner’s feature articles have appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, LA Times Sunday Magazine, the New Yorker and LA Weekly. He is one of the founding editors of High Times Magazine. He is also the co-author of The Woodstock Census (The Viking Press), one of the key texts analyzing the impact of the Sixties Generation on American society. He is currently Hollywood correspondent for Rolling Stone Italia. As a staff reporter at Variety from 1992 – 1997 Weiner reported on international film, film finance and entertainment technology. His column, Lost and Found, appeared weekly in the trade paper. A native New Yorker, Mr. Weiner has lived in Los Angeles since 1981 and in Baja California Sur, Mexico, where he owns a 160-year old hacienda in the historic village of Todos Santos and enjoys surfing with his 21-year old son.
Eve Brandstein (Co-Producer) has been a major studio executive, a producer, a director, writer/creator, casting director. She is an educator and workshop facilitator, who has led writing and performance groups. Her poetry appears in various publications and she is one of the organizers of landmark reading series in L.A. Poetry In Motion, and publishers of THE HOLLYWOOD REVIEW an anthology of L.A. poets as well as over a dozen chap books. She is also a journalist and author of THE ACTOR - A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO A PROFESSIONAL CAREER. As a journalist her articles have appeared in national publications and web sites, where she has been a columnist as well as feature contributor. Eve is also a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice and an accomplished artist whose work is shown at TAG Gallery at Bergamot Station.
------------WAITING FOR JACK: A Poetry In Motion Event-----------Prominent LA Poets reading the works of Beat Era Poets… an homage, an invocation of spirits, and a rousing night of live poetry. Catch it two nights only! Friday, November 16, and Friday, December 7 2012 at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA. Produced by Eve Brandstein, Michael C. Ford, and Rex Weiner, directed by Eve Brandstein and Rex Weiner, book by Michael C. Ford and Rex Weiner--------------
