KELSEY STREET PRESS MEMBERS

Descended from ocean dwellers, Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems (Arktoi Books/Red Hen Press, 2009) and recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry winner) as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing (speCt! Books) and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 1st edition; AK Press, 2nd edition) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press). They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center, EmergeNYC and Intercultural Leadership Institute as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. A community organizer, they have worked in Asian American communities in San Francisco, Oakland, Riverside, Boston, Milwaukee, Houston and Seattle and are currently a core member of the Massage Parlor Outreach Project. They collaborate with Cassie Mira on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation and environmental justice. www.chinginchen.com

Patricia Dienstfrey's publications include The Woman Without Experiences (Kelsey Street, 1995), winner of the America Award for Fiction; Love and Illustration (a+bend press, 2000); and The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood (Wesleyan, 2003), which she co-edited with Brenda Hillman. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies including Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women, edited by Mary Margaret Sloan (Talisman House, 1997) and The Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley's Poetry Walk, edited by Robert Hass and Jessica Fisher (Heyday Books, 2004). A co-founder of Kelsey Street Press, she lives with her husband, Ted, in Berkeley, California.

Born in Subic Bay, Philippines, Emgee Dufresne is the author of Anemal Uter Meck (Black Radish Books, 2017) and not so, sea (Durga Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets, Dusie, Web Conjunctions, and the eco poetic anthologies Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene and Poetics for the More-than-Human World: An Anthology of Poetry & Commentary. She is currently co-editing Responses, New Writing, Flesh with Ronaldo Wilson and Tonya Foster, an anthology on the urgency of avant-garde writing written for and by writers of color (forthcoming from Nightboat Books). She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her three daughters and geologist husband, where she makes functional ceramics and sculptural vessels.

Carla Hall is a native Californian--born in Banning, CA near the edge of the SoCal desert. After receiving her BA in English Literature and Creative Writing at UC Riverside, and then teaching writing and English as a Second Language for many years, she moved to San Francisco in 1997, and received her MFAW in Poetry at the University of San Francisco in 2001. She continued her study of poetry through collaborations and teaching community classes in the Bay Area. Her meanwhile vocation is Assistant Director of Program Resources at The Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at USF where she has worked for 18 years. In that world, she is an administrator of curriculum, program logistics, and is devoted to intergenerational and interdepartmental collaboration and outreach. She mindfully and gratefully serves active older adult students in their pursuit of lifelong learning. She has published a book review, an annotated bibliography, and poetry in Jacket, Switchback, and the Electronic Poetry Review.

Rena Rosenwasser co-founded Kelsey Street Press in 1974. Between 1987 and 2006 she initiated and produced a series of collaborations between poets and artists that further established Kelsey Street Press as the premiere and longest lived independent publisher of literature for women. She continues to work for the Press as press member and mentor. Rosenwasser’s poetry publications include Elevators (Kelsey Street Press, 2011); Taking Flight (Mayacamas Press, 1993); Unplace.Place (Leave Books, 1992); and three collaborations with artist Kate Delos: Isle (Kelsey Street Press, 1992); Aviary (Limestone Press, 1988); and Simulacra (Kelsey Street Press, 1986). Her first volume of poetry, Desert Flats, was published by Kelsey Street Press in 1979. Rosenwasser was born in New York City where she cultivated her passion for literature and the visual arts. After graduating Sarah Lawrence College in 1971, she moved to California to pursue graduate studies at Mills College where she earned her MA in literature in 1976. Currently she serves on the board of Small Press Distribution. Together with her spouse, Penny Cooper, they support and collect the work of women artists.

Erin Wilson's writing has appeared in the journals Denver Quarterly, Word for Word, Bird Dog, and Boog City, and the books hinge (Crack Press, 2002), Building is a Process/Light is an Element (P-Queue/Queue Books, 2008), and Kindergarde (Black Radish, 2015). Her chapbooks include The Ominous, Beautiful Bay: The Newest Ginnie Blake Novel (HmH Services) and 140 Books I Read in the Last 2.5 Years and Really Liked (Recent/Relevant). She was an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts from 2013 to 2016, and she lives in rural New York state. erincwilson.com