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I'm a poet, musician, copywriter, performer, and jack of many trades.
Here's my current bio:
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Amélie Frank received her degree in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis from U.C. Irvine, where she studied poetry with Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Wright, fiction with Oakley Hall, and literature with Robert Peters. In 1994, she founded The Sacred Beverage Press with poet Matthew Niblock. Together, they produced the acclaimed literary journal Blue Satellite, and published books by FrancEyE, Erica Erdman, local legends The Carma Bums, Ellyn Maybe, Nelson Gary, Jeanette Marie Clough, Rick Lupert, Richard Osborn Hood, Elliott Baker, Douglas Richardson, and anthologies for the Valley Contemporary Poets. Under her publishing banner Cassowary Press, she published books by Rick Lupert, Carlye Archibeque, and Matthew Niblock.
Ms. Frank is the author of five poetry collections: A Resilient Heart and Other Visceral Comforts (1992), Flame and Loss of Breath (1996, Laguna Poets’ Series #13, Inevitable Press), Drink Me (co-authored with Matthew Niblock, 1997, VCP Press), Bird Interpretations (co-authored with Michael Paul, 1998, Cassowary Press), and Doing Time on Planet Billy Bob (1996, Laguna Poets’ Series #195(!), Inevitable Press). Her publication credits include: The Rag, Blue Arc West, poeticdiversity, Lummox Journal, ArtLife, the Tebot Bach anthology So Luminous the Wildflowers, Caffeine, Dance of the Iguana, Sicviceverse, Sabado Gigante, Red DanceFloor, fts, 51%, the anthology Scream When You Burn (Incommunicado Press), The Moment, and The New University.
She is the first person to have been featured twice in the same year (within a month, no less) on the Poetry Super Highway website and served as a judge for that site’s first annual poetry contest. She also served as a judge in the 1994 MTV Spoken Word competition to select the poet to represent Los Angeles at the Lollapalooza Festival. Her literary reviews have appeared in Sicviceverse and NEXT… magazines as well as her own reviews column, Amélie's Retro Hell. She occasionally participates in panels on small press, poetry publishing, and has run the Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop at Beyond Baroque.
Not only has Ms. Frank featured at most of the venues in Southern California, including Beyond Baroque, the Los Angeles County Museum, MOMA, the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, and the Los Angeles Library's Newer Poets Series, she has hosted three reading series of her own: Poetry at the Hot House, Poetry in Exile, and Killer Poetry (all three with poet Richard Modiano). She still hosts special events at Beyond Baroque. She has served as a Co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets, is a member of the Board of Trustees of Beyond Baroque, and was the Events and Marketing Coordinator for Red Hen Press. In 2002, she organized The Big Picture, the historic gathering of nearly 300 poets at Beyond Baroque for a documentary photograph. In 2003, she was awarded the Spirit of Venice Award for coordinating a reading at the Abbot Kinney Festival. In 2004, she served on the arts grants awards committee for the City of Ventura. In 2005, she took a long nap. This year, the Los Angeles City Council recognized her with a special Certificate of Appreciation for her contributions to the literary life of the city.
When not busy with her life in the Los Angeles Poetry Community, Ms. Frank is a trained lyric mezzo soprano, a terrifying cake decorator, a true crime buff, loves collecting toys and books from her surprisingly happy childhood, digs retro and L.A. history, prowls offbeat movie events, and runs the Web sites for roots blues rocker Michael R. Shipp( his Official Web site and his MySpace page ) as well as film actor Billy Bob Thornton's Official Web site , Newsgroup , and MySpace page . Her biography appears in Who’s Who of American Women and Who's Who in America.