Ramsay Breslin is an
art writer and academic editor. She holds a degree in
English from UC Berkeley, an MA in Writing and an MA in
Visual Criticism from California College of the Arts. A
former student of painting at the San Francisco Art
Institute, her self-portrait was featured on the cover
of Women's Studies; An Interdisciplinary
Journal. Her published writing includes
catalogue essays and introductions to artist's
books, including Squeak Carnwath: Lists,
Observations, and Counting (Chronicle
Books). Her art and book reviews have appeared in the Threepenny
Review, the San Francisco
Chronicle and the East Bay
Express. She is currently writing a
biography of the sculptor Stephen De Staebler. Her forthcoming
poems will appear in Five Fingers
Review and in Blink.
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.
Amber DiPietra is a
poet who lives and works as a member of the Bay Area
disability communinity. Her interests include tracking
the orthopedic body in real time, personal fossil
records, translating the phantom kinetic self, ¡accion mutante! politics, and
warm waters. By day, she proffers information about
talking books, tactile maps, and more at the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually
Impaired. Her work has apeared in Issue no. 3 of
Make, a Chicago Literary
Magazine, Mirage
Period[ical], and Tarpaulin
Sky. Visit her blog at adipietra.blogspot.com.
Tiff Dressen lives and
roams in the region where Berkeley and Oakland meet.
She is the author of a chapbook
Keeper (from Woodland
Editions) and two chapbooks books of poetry
As Deer in Aurora Borealis and
Fugue: for Alan Turing (from
Jaybird McQueen's, stealthy elf press). Some
of her poems, reviews & essays have appeared
or are forthcoming in 26,
Five Fingers Review,
Xanthippe, New American Writing &
Outside Voices Anthology. She is an
infrequent curator of the Canessa Park Poetry Series, travels to
the Cyclades as often as possible & is
currently engaged in a poetry/painting collaboration
with San Francisco artist, Léonie Guyer. During the
day Tiff works for a physical chemist in UC Berkeley's Institute for
Quantitative Biosciences. She was born the year Kelsey Street Press was
founded.
Rena Rosenwasser was
born in New York City. She earned an BA from Sarah
Lawrence College and an MA from Mills College. Her
poetry publications include Dittany (Taking
flight) (Mayacamas Press, 1993),
Unplace.Place (Leave Books,
1992), three collaborations with artist Kate Delos:
Isle (Kelsey
Street Press, 1992), Aviary
(Limestone Press, 1988), Simulacra
(Kelsey Street Press, 1986), and two early works, Elephants and
Angels (Kelsey Street Press, 1985) and
Desert Flats
(Kelsey Street Press, 1979). Rena co-founded Kelsey Street
Press in 1974 and in the mid-eighties initiated a series
of collaborations between writers and artists. She served
as Director of the Press for twenty years. A board member
of Small Press Distribution, she has
served on the Literary Panel for the California Arts Council. She resides
in Berkeley, California with her partner, Penny Cooper.
Together they actively support the work of contemporary
women artists.
Hazel White grew up on
farms in the southwest of England and
has written about landscape in newspaper columns, national
and international magazines, and many books. She holds undergraduate
degrees in philosophy and literature, and a masters degree
in writing from California College of the
Arts. In 2008, she was one of the winners (11:50 into the
recording) of Tony Labat's I Want You . . . monolog
competition at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Hazel's current writing projects include a second
book-length poetry manuscript (Peril as Architectural
Enrichment) and a book on the work and philosophy of
landscape architect Isabelle Greene. Her poems have
appeared in The Denver Quarterly,
Blink, and
Tarpaulin Sky. She lives
in San Francisco.
A native St. Louisan, Valerie Witte received her MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Eleven Eleven, Faultline, and Switchback, and can also be found in The Lone Mountain Anthology, published by Achiote Press. She is currently a part of the g.e. collective in San Francisco, and during her daytime hours, she edits computer books and videos in Berkeley. When she feels the urge, she hosts literary/art salons at her house in Cole Valley. Read more of her work at valeriewitte.squarespace.com.