Cathy Colman
About Me
Cathy Colman began her education at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969 where she was active in the anti-Vietnam war movement. After getting tear-gassed, and ultimately shutting down the school, she transferred to San Francisco State University where she studied with poet, Stan Rice and received her M.F.A. in English and Creative Writing.
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She moved back to Los Angeles and taught at UCLA Extension and then began her tenure teaching fiction and poetry privately to over 3,000 students, some of whom when on to become celebrated writers. Colman also worked as a script doctor for screenwriters such as Callie Khouri, Scott Frank, and Ed Solomon, among others.
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Ms. Colman’s first book Borrowed Dress won the Felix Pollak Prize for Poetry from The University of Wisconsin Press and was on The Los Angeles Times bestseller list the first week of its release. Her second collection, Beauty’s Tattoo, was published by Tebot Bach Publications. Her third collection, Time Crunch has just been published by What Books Press.
Her poetry has appeared in many publications including The Colorado Review, Ploughshares, The Huffington Post, Gettysburg Review, Prairie Schooner, The Journal, The Southern Poetry Review, Barrow Street, The Los Angeles Review, Quarterly West, Pool, Chance of a Ghost Anthology (Putnam/Tarcher), Writers on Writing (Putnam), LE Poetry, Pratik and in many other publications. She has won The Browning Award for Poetry, The Ascher Montandon Award, judged by Campbell McGrath, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize eight times.
She has been a free-lance reviewer for The New York Times Book Review. Her poems have been set to music by composer Robert Johnson and performed at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Her poem “The Last Time I Saw Virginia Woolf” was the only poem chosen by Susanne Slavick, Director of Carnegia Mellon Art Institute to be included in a traveling anti-gun art show called “Unloaded” (2017- present)
She has been a free-lance lecturer/reader at Cambridge University, UK, The University of Southern California, The Oakland College of Arts and Crafts, The Oakland Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Getty Museum and many other venues. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Croatian and Russian.