Short biographies of Vancouver and Utah poets

Team Vancouver

Brad Cran (b. 1972). 
He is a writer, accountant and social entrepreneur. Cran served as Poet Laureate for the City of Vancouver from April of 2009 until October of 2011.

He published his first book, The Good Life, in 2001 and his most recent book, Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (with Gillian Jerome,) won the City of Vancouver Book Award,  and has raised over $50,000 for marginalized people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Source: bradcran.com

Chris Hutchinson (b. 1972) was born in Montreal, grew up in Victoria (British Columbia : Vancouver Island), has since pursued various livelihoods (cooking in restaurants, working in offices, and occasionally teaching creative writing at high schools, colleges, and universities), and has made his home in such places as Vancouver, Dawson City, Kelowna, New York City, and, most recently, Houston, Texas. He is the author of three books of poetry, and the novel, Jonas in Frames: An Epic. He won the Earle Birney Prize for his poem "Disclosure". Sources: http://chrishutchinsonblog.blogspot.se/ and Wikipedia

Evelyn Lau (b. 1971). An award-winning student, Evelyn Lau's first work was published when she was in her early teens. Parental objections to her choice of pursuing a career as a writer led her to run away at age 14. She spent 2 years on the streets of Vancouver, during which time she twice attempted suicide and became involved in prostitution and drug abuse. At 17, Lau recorded her experiences in her first book, the bestselling Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid (1989), later made into a CBC movie called The Diary of Evelyn Lau. Similar territory is covered in her first collection of poetry, You Are Not Who You Claim (1990), recipient of the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award. In 1992, Lau became the youngest poet ever to receive a Governor General's Award nomination, for Oedipal Dreams. She has been Poet Laureate of Vancouver since 2011, but her term ends in October 2014. Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia

Lisa Robertson (b. 1961) was born in Toronto in 1961. She lived for many years in Vancouver, where she studied at Simon Fraser University, ran an independent bookstore, and was a collective member of the Kootenay School of Writing, a writer-run center for writing, publishing, and scholarship. While in Vancouver, Robertson was also involved in Artspeak Gallery, an alternative gallery that connects the visual arts and writing; she is an honorary member of their board of directors. Her books of poetry include XEclogue (1993); Debbie: An Epic (1997), nominated for a Governor General’s Award; The Weather (2001); The Men (2006); and R’s Boat (2010). Source: The Poetry Foundation

***

Team Utah

Katharine Coles was born in Salt Lake City.

Poet Laureate of Utah (2006-2011) and a finalist in Narrative’s Second Annual Poetry Contest, is the author of five poetry collections, including The Flight (2013). She has published two novels, The Measurable World and Fire Season. She received degrees from the universities of Washington, Houston, and Utah. Coles lives in Salt Lake City, where she is on the faculty of the University of Utah. She was also director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute in Chicago between 2009-2010. Her awards for her work include a 2012-13 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, both an Individual Writers Fellowship and a New Forms Project Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and awards from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Sources: http://wordstockfestival2013.sched.org/ and Narrative Magazine

Lance Larsen (b. 1961). He grew up in Idaho and Colorado.

Lance Larsen’s fourth collection of poems, Genius Loci, was recently published by University of Tampa Press.  His earlier collections include Backyard Alchemy (2009), In All Their Animal Brilliance (2005), and Erasable Walls (1998).  He holds a PhD from the University of Houston. In 2012, he was named to a five-year term as Utah Poet Laureate. Source: Utah Department of Heritage and Arts

Larry Levis (1946-1996) was born in Fresno, California. His father was a grape grower, and in his youth Levis drove a tractor, pruned vines, and picked grapes in Selma, California.

His first book of poems, Wrecking Crew (1972), won the United States Award from the International Poetry Forum. His second book, The Afterlife (1976), was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The American Academy of Poets. In 1981, The Dollmaker’s Ghost was a winner of the Open Competition of the National Poetry Series. Among his honors were a YM-YWHA Discovery Award, three fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

His last collection, Elegy, edited by Philip Levine, was published posthumously in 1997. Source: Academy of American Poets

Sam Hamill (b. 1943) was adopted from foster care at the age of three and grew up on a farm in Utah. Early experiences with violence, theft, jail time, and boot camp were offset by Hamill’s growing interest in poetry, particularly Beat poetry.

As a UCSB student, Hamill won a $500 award for producing the best university literary magazine in the country. Influenced by Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Rexroth, Denise Levertov, and Hayden Carruth, Hamill “presents a model of honest, consistent, undisguised political engagement: he articulates not only a vision of peace with justice, not only his relish for work to achieve that vision, but his sense of the role that poetry can play”. Hamill has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Mellon Fund. Source: The Poetry Foundation