Wanda Coleman

Wanda Coleman (November 13, 1946 – November 22, 2013) was an American poet. She was known as "the L.A. Blueswoman" and "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles".

Biography Wanda Evans was born in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where she grew up during the 1950s and 1960s. She is the eldest of four children. Her parents were George and Lewana (Scott) Evans, who were introduced to one another at church by his aunt. In 1931, her father had relocated to Los Angeles from Little Rock, Arkansas, after the lynching of a young man who was hung from a church steeple. He was an ex-boxer and long-time friend and sparring partner of Light Heavyweight Champion Archie Moore. In Los Angeles, he ran a sign shop during the day and worked the graveyard shift as a janitor at RCA Victor Records. Her mother worked as a seamstress and as a housekeeper for Ronald Reagan, among other celebrities.

According to the Poetry Foundation, Coleman wrote her first poems at age 5 and had her first ones published in a local newspaper at age 13.

After graduating from John C. Fremont High School in Los Angeles, Wanda Evans enrolled at Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys, California. She transferred to California State University at Los Angeles, but did not complete a degree. She wrote for a number of men's magazines under the pseudonym Andrew L. Tate.

She and Straus hosted a radio show, Pacifica Radio's "Poetry Connexion", from 1981 to 1996. On the show they interviewed both local and internationally known writers. In a 2020 New Yorker article, author Dan Chiasson refers to an interview Coleman did with the Poetry Society of America where she describes herself as a “Usually Het Interracially Married Los Angeles-based African American Womonist Matrilinear Working Class Poor Pink/White Collar College Drop-out Baby Boomer Earth Mother and Closet Smoker Unmolested-by-her-father.”

Within her writing, whether it be fiction, essays, or poetry, Coleman introduces and develops characters whose lives bring to light social inequalities.

Coleman received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the California Arts Council (in fiction and in poetry). She was the first C.O.L.A. Literary Fellow (Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, 2003). Her honors included an Emmy in Daytime Drama writing (the first African American woman to receive such an honor), the 1999 Lenore Marshall Prize (for Bathwater Wine), and a finalist for the 2001 National Book Awards (for Mercurochrome). She was a finalist for California poet laureate (2005).

Coleman died on November 22, 2013, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She had been ill for a while. The Los Angeles Times described Coleman as "a force on the Los Angeles poetry scene" and the city's unofficial poet laureate. Lizzy LeRud wrote: "Today, Coleman's significance is unquestioned.... In Wicked Enchantment, Coleman's fans, new and old, will find some of her most vital challenges to American racism and its market-driven culture, rendered in her uniquely unsettling lyric voice. Her work pushes us to confront injustice with as much candor as she did—and with as much care."

As of 2022, Wanda Coleman has published fifteen poetry books and chapbooks, two mixed-genre books (poetry and fiction), two book of short stories, one novel, and two books of nonfiction.

Controversy While critically acclaimed for her creative writing, Coleman's brush with notoriety came as a result of an unfavorable review she wrote in the April 14, 2002, issue of the Los Angeles Times Book Review of Maya Angelou's book A Song Flung Up to Heaven. Coleman found the book to be "small and inauthentic, without ideas wisdom or vision". Coleman's review provoked positive and negative responses, including the cancellation of events and the rescinding of invitations. Her account of this incident appears in the September 16, 2002, edition of The Nation.

Books Heart First Into This Ruin: The Complete American Sonnets. Black Sparrow Press. 2022.

The Love Project. (with Austin Straus). Red Hen Press. 2014

Ostinato Vamps. Pitt Poetry Series, 2003–2004. (National Book Awards finalist)

Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories 1968-1986 Black Sparrow Press. 1987. Imagoes. Black Sparrow Press. 1983.

Chapbooks and limited editions Moon Cherries. Sore Dove Press. 2005. Wanda Coleman: Greatest Hits 1966-2003. Pudding House Publications. 2004. American Sonnets. Woodland Pattern. 1994. The Dicksboro Hotel & Other Travels. Ambrosia Press. 1989. Art in the Court of the Blue Fag. Black Sparrow Press. 1977.