Pirate's Ink

Dana Teen Lomax works with poetry and film to explore deeply personal as well as collective issues. A poet, filmmaker, educator, and activist, Dana is the author of several poetry books and the director of both narrative and documentary short films. Her recent films, +Care and Bye and Bye, have screened internationally at colleges and Film Festivals. About her recent editorial project, THE BEAUTIFUL: Poets Reimagine a Nation (Gualala Arts), Juan Felipe Herrera writes, “Every author here, every photographer here, every moment here can change your life.” Her last project, Kindergarde: Avant-garde Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children (Black Radish Books), was awarded a San Francisco Creative Work Fund Grant and won the 2014 John Hopkins University Press Lion and Unicorn Prize for Excellence in North American Poetry. With Jennifer Firestone, she edited Letters to Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics, and Community (Saturnalia), which Cornel West calls a “courageous and visionary book.” Dana's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, published and anthologized internationally, recognized as among the Guerilla Girls’ favorite books, and received awards from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Intersection for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the California Arts Council, the Marin Arts Council, and others. She collaborates with artists from all over the country, teaches writing in libraries, schools, prisons, and universities (including San Francisco State University, where she taught for nearly 20 years in the English and Creative Writing Departments), served as the interim Director at Small Press Traffic and the Human Rights and Equity Chair for her teachers’ union. Dana lives near Los Angeles, and her work can be found at danateenlomax.com.