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American Poet

Biography

In order to be a poet Sharon Doubiago’s main home for many years has been her vehicles—an Ambassador station wagon named Roses, a Dodge van named Psyche, and a Ford conversion van named Valentine. A vagabond poet in the ancient tradition, her roads have been mainly of the West Coast, San Diego to Seattle (Baja to British Columbia)—most significantly the artist/poet towns of Mendocino, Port Townsend, Portland, Newport, and Ashland. Freed from the onerous burden of making rent, she’s written full time. Her memoir, My Father’s Love (Wild Ocean Press), was a finalist in the Northern California Book Awards in Creative Non-Fiction. Love on the Streets, Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press), received the Glenna Luschei Distinguished Poet Award and was a finalist in the Paterson New Jersey Poetry Prize. She has written two dozen other books of poetry and prose, most notably her first publication, the epic poem Hard Country (West End Press) and the book-length poem South America Mi Hija (University of Pittsburgh Press), nominated twice for the National Book Award. Her traditional poem collections are Psyche Drives the Coast (Empty Bowl Press), awarded the Hazel Hall Oregon Book Award for Poetry, and Body and Soul (Cedar Hill Publications), a PEN USA Poetry Book Award Finalist. Other book-length or chapbook-length poems include The Visit; The Husband Arcane The Arcane of O; Oedipus Drowned; Visions of a Daughter of Albion; Hymn To The Cosmic Clothesline; Chinatown; and most recently the chapbook of sequential poems, I, Poet. Her story collections are El Niño (Lost Roads Press) and The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (Graywolf Press) which was selected to the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission’s Literary Oregon, 100 Books, 1800-2000. She holds three Pushcart Prizes for Poetry and Fiction, and is a recipient of the California Arts Council Award. For three decades she has worked on Son, a memoir of raising a son and exploration of the mother-son relationship, published chapters of which have been awarded the Tom Robbins’ Literary-Journalism Award, First Place in the Sports News Reporting Literary Non-Daily Newspaper Competition, and two Oregon Institute of Literary Art Fellowships. She has published over a hundred essays—from the personal and creative to the scholarly. A board member of PENOakland she currently lives in San Francisco and Mendocino. Naked to the Earth was completed in mythic North Beach, home of many beloved poets.

Selected Works

Poetry:
Hard Country, South America mi Hija, Psyche Drives the Coast, Body and Soul, Love on the Streets,The Visit, Naked to the Earth
Prose:
The Book of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, El Nino, My Father's Love, Vol, I: Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl; My Father's Love, Vol. II: The Legacy, Portrait of the Poet as a Woman