Featured poets Alejandro Escude and Sholeh Wolpe

 

Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013 upon winning the 2012 Sacramento Poetry Center Award. He received a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and, among many other journals, his poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Hamilton Stone Review, Main Street Rag, New Verse News, Phoebe, Poet Lore, Rattle, Tuck Magazine, and his work has also appeared in various poetry anthologies. A newer manuscript of poems, What the Atheists Speak Of, was named a finalist for the 2016 Vachel Lindsay Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist for the 2016 Cleveland State University Poetry Open Book Contest. He is a fully credentialed English teacher and has worked in the private, Catholic, and public school systems at the secondary level for nearly fifteen years.

Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-born poet and writer. The inaugural 2018 Writer-in-Residence at UCLA, Wolpé is a recipient of the 2014 PEN/Heim,  2013 Midwest Book Award and 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation prize, Wolpé’s literary work includes four collections of poetry, two plays, three books of translations, and three anthologies. Her most recent publications include The Conference of the Birds (W.W. Norton & Co), Cómo escribir una canción de amor (Olifante Ediciones de Poesia, Spain), and Keeping Time With Blue Hyacinths (University of Arkansas Press.) Wolpé’s writings have been translated into eleven languages and included in numerous American and international anthologies and journals of poetry and fiction. She is a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).