About our founder
Los Angeles native Linda Ravenswood is a Storykeeper, Poet, Performance Artist, Teacher, and Arts Advocate. In 2018, she founded The Los Angeles Press with a grant from Duda Holdings, USC, and The Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Symposium — to address the critical need for access in publishing opportunities for all. Her strategic plan includes 1. continuing to place art and literature in unexpected places, 2. to delight and inspire the public, 3. to widen the circle of empathy and inclusion for artists, writers, and storytellers from all walks of life, 4. to continue partnering with local, regional, and national organizations to create free, accessible, diverse, meaningful arts and literature programming, 5. to publish art and literature of exceptional merit, and 6. to address critical needs for arts advocacy for the constituents of Los Angeles and The West. Since 2018, The LAPress has produced local and national readings, and literary events, promoting the work of over 500 local and international artists and writers. She has published the work of 425 artists and writers in 10 anthology collections, and 10 solo collections. After nearly a decade of trying to move local government, she partnered with Mayor Ardashes Kassakhian, who helped her found The Poet Laureate Program in Glendale, California (2022).
Winner of an Oxford Prize in Poetry (2023), the Edwin Markham Prize in Poetry (2023) from Reed Magazine, the oldest literary magazine in California (selected by Poet Laureate of The United States, Juan Felipe Herrera), Linda has been published in nearly 100 books, anthologies, journals, online periodicals, and collaborative manifestos. She is on the Board of Directors of California Poetry in the Schools, is a Co founding member of Melrose Poetry Bureau, is a founding member of Project 1521, is winner of The California Writer’s Grant (2019), A Gloucestershire Prize in Poetry (2023), The Arthur Smith Prize in Poetry (2023), and is a 4 time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her frequent collaborators include Asylum Arts / the neighbourhood, Red Light Lit, The Poetry Society of New York, Housing Works (Soho), and The City of West Hollywood.
Her recent books include The Stan Poems (Pedestrian Press, 2021), Cantadora — Letters from California (Eyewear London / Black Spring Press Group, 2023), a poem is a house (Madville Press, 2024), and the forthcoming collections — girls in the desert — first finalist for the AWP Donald Hall Prize 2024 (FlowerSong Press, 2027), and The 500 (Alternating Currents Press, 2028).
https://blackspringpressgroup.com/products/cantadora-letters-from-california
She has an old personal website (web designer needed:)) at https://lindaravenswood.wixsite.com/lindaravenswood/about
Find her @thelosangelespress and @bespokepoets on Instagram
Associate Poetry Editor
Chelsea Rector was born and raised in Southern California. She has presented her poetry at venues such as The Poetic Research Bureau and Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles. She is an associate Poetry editor for the Los Angeles Press. In 2019 she co-edited and contributed to Cry List, published by Rebel Hands Press (RHP). Her forthcoming book On Being Mean will be published by Rebel Hands Press in the fall of 2022. In 2020 her work was included in the Hinchas Press anthology, X LA Poets. She is the co-founder of P/Sicho Street Theater Company whose critically acclaimed radio play series Beglitched is in its second season.In 2021, Chelsea moved to Owensboro, KY, where she lives & works as a faculty member in the Department of Art at Brescia University.
LINKS
Chelsea Rector: Poems / Rebel Hands Press: Cry List / Hinchas Press: X LA Poets
