Renee Gladman, born in Atlanta in 1971, now lives in San Francisco. She edits Clamour, a magazine of innovative writing emphasizing the work of women of color. She is establishing a vibrant new publishing resource for her contemporaries, in the name of LEROY books. Her own writing has appeared in publications around the U.S., most recently the Anthology of New (American) Poets (Talisman House), Tinfish, and Proliferation. She is the author of Arlem (Idiom Books, 1996), Not Right Now (Second Story Books, 1998) and Four, forthcoming from Kelsey St. Press. Not content with being one of the Bay Area's most innovative poets, she has added another string to her bow and has recently become one of its finest prose writers too.

March 26, 1999

 

Originally from Atlanta, Renee Gladman is among the most talented young writers in San Francisco. Her writing, like the voice of Elizabeth Schwartzkopf (or Jessye Norman, also from Atlanta), makes you believe in magic. Its sultry unfolding of perception, sexuality, and the trembling margins deliver what feels like a blow to the solar plexus, it's so visceral; and yet it's contained, marvelously by the intricate forms that she chooses to use. She has published her work in Mass Ave., Mirage, No Roses, Prosodia, and Open 24 Hours. She is currently a graduate student in the New College Poetics Program.

November 2, 1996