Terry Wolverton
Terry Wolverton is the author of six books. Of her most recent, the poetry collection Shadow and Praise (Main Street Rag 2007), poet Gerald Locklin wrote, “These poems vibrate with controlled breathing, like American mantras infused with Eastern scriptural spirituality. I have the highest admiration for this achievement by a poet and human being who has spent a lifetime in preparation for such a crowning achievement.” Embers (Red Hen 2003) is a novel-in-poems about which poet Anne Waldman has said, “This book is a commitment to the beauties and scintillating particulars of a generous language. This is a tremendous weave of site and humanity.” Embers was a finalist for the PEN USA Litfest Poetry Award and the Lambda Book Award. Insurgent Muse: Life and Art at the Woman’s Building, a memoir published in 2002 by City Lights Books, was named one of the Best Books of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times, and was the winner of the 2003 Publisher’s Triangle Judy Grahn Award, and a finalist for the Lambda Book Award. Her novel, Bailey’s Beads, was a finalist in the American Library Association’s Gay and Lesbian Book Awards for 1997; Kirkus Reviews said of it, “Her ambitious debut features a stark but melodious prose style, confident style, and affecting characters.” She has also published two other collections of poetry: Black Slip (Clothespin Fever Press 1992), a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 1993, and Mystery Bruise (Red Hen 1999). Spinsters Ink will publish her new novel, The Labrys Reunion, in 2009 and Stealing Angel in 2010. Her fiction, poetry, essays, and drama have been published in periodicals internationally, including Crab Orchard Review, Prairie Schooner, Glimmer Train Stories, The Stinging Fly, and Zyzzyva, and widely anthologized.
She has also edited several successful compilations, including Harbinger: Poetry and Fiction by Los Angeles Writers; Indivisible: Short Fiction by West Coast Gay and Lesbian Writers; Blood Whispers: L.A. Writers on AIDS, Volumes 1 and 2; the Lambda Literary Award-winning His: Brilliant New Fiction by Gay Men and Hers: Brilliant New Fiction by Lesbians, volumes 1, 2, and 3; the series Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium and Gay Fiction at the Millennium; and the poetry anthology, Mischief, Caprice, and Other Poetic Strategies. Most recently, she co-edited, with Sondra Hale, the anthology From Site to Vision: The Woman’s Building in Contemporary Culture, published on the internet at www.womansbuilding.org/fromsittovision.
In 2000, she began collaborating as a writer with choreographer Heidi Duckler and Collage Dance Theater on the site-specific performances subVersions, Under Eden, After Eden, and Cover Story. She is currently collaborating with composer David Ornette Cherry on adapting Embers as a jazz opera.
Terry has taught creative writing for over twenty-five years. In 1997, she founded Writers at Work, a center for creative writing in Los Angeles, where she offers several weekly workshops in fiction and poetry. She is currently an associate faculty mentor for the MFA writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She spent thirteen years at the Woman’s Building, a public center for women’s culture, eventually serving as its executive director. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards for her artistic and community contributions, most recently, a California Arts Council Artist Fellowship for Poetry and a COLA Fellowship from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
She is also a certified instructor of Kundalini Yoga.
