About Me
 | Jannie Dresser San Francisco Bay Area Member since: Apr, 2009 Last login: 10/07/2009 Last update : 10/07/2009 Contact Me |
My Redroom URL
| Birthday | 06/28/1953 |
| Hometown | Fresno |
| Nickname | Spinning Jannie |
| Ethnicity | White/Caucasian |
| Nationality | United States |
About Me
A mid-range boomer with a career working in the book trade, as editor, publisher, writer, typographer, bookseller, librarian, and as a publications manager. Also have taught English, creative writing, and mostly poetry writing in community centers, colleges, and private workshops.
Relationship Status
- Yes, for many years, to theater actor and director Julian Lopez-Morillas
Family
Husband, three cats, two pear trees, and the occasional smell of the Pacific Ocean wafting through the Golden Gate Bridge
Interests & Hobbies
- Besides writing, I do Artist Trading Cards and am learning to draw; love to be in nature, whether it's gardening or taking a walk at a local nursery or park or a hike in the Sierra; love most kinds of music, play guitar badly and banjo much worse; reading is my Number 1 passion for which there is far too little time.
Favorite Books
- The Bible The Tao te Ching Novels: "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison; "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky; everything by Willa Cather; "Sister Carrie" by Theodore Dreiser; "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje. Mostly literature written before 1950. Non-fiction: some of my favorite writers are non-fiction writers such as John McPhee, Robert Kaplan, Annie Dillaird ("Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"), Virginia Woolf (essays), Thoreau and Emerson.
Favorite Authors
- Shakespeare, John Clare, John McPhee, Willa Cather, Ralph Ellison, Rilke, Robert Kaplan, Rosario Castellanos, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edmond Jabes, Paul Celan
What I'm Reading
- Biography of John Clare by Jonathan Bate, "Everyday Holiness" by Alan Moriniss (again), writings by Edmond Jabes, history books; "Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins" by Steve Olson.
WORK
- Writer
Web Links
EDUCATION
| Graduate College/University | Mills College, MFA 1991; California State University Fresno, BA, English, 1976, class of 1991 |
| Graduate Area of Study | English (American literature and creative writing) |
| Undergraduate College/University | California State University Fresno, class of 1976 |
| Undergraduate Area of Study | English |
| High School | Roosevelt, class of 1971 |
| Academic Credentials | M.F.A. |
UPCOMING WORK
- "Workers' Compensation: Poems of the Working Life" (Poetry) "Backward Ho: A White Girl Untangles Her Puritan Pioneer Roots" (Nonfiction: Historical)
INFLUENCES
- Henry Louis Gates, Susan Griffin, Mary Karr, Rosario Castellanos, Theodore Roethke the last truly amazing poem I read was Allen Tate's meditation on a Confederate graveyard
CAUSES I SUPPORT
- good ones
