Shelley Savren

Bio

Shelley Savren’s book, The Common Fire, was published by Red Hen Press in Fall, 2004. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines including: Solo, Rattle, Santa Clara Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, The Lucid Stone, Buckle &, Urban Spaghetti, and Poet Magazine. Her awards include first place in the 1994 John David Johnson Memorial Poetry Award, third place in the Rainer Marie Rilke International Poetry Competition, nine California Arts Council Artist in Residence grants, two National Endowment for the Arts regional grants, three artist fellowships from the City of Ventura, and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize. She has taught poetry writing workshops at a maximum security men’s prison, juvenile detention centers, a homeless shelter, a school for emotionally disturbed adolescents, a women’s center and numerous other facilities and at every grade level through the California Poets in the Schools Program. Ms. Savren holds a B.A. in English from Ohio State University and an M.A. in English, Creative Writing from Central Michigan University, and is currently enrolled in the M.FA creative program in poetry at Antioch University Los Angeles. She lives near the ocean in Ventura, California with her husband, Elijah Imlay, and is a full-time faculty member of the English Department at Oxnard College.

The Midwest Book Review writes: “THE COMMON FIRE showcases this remarkable talent and will aptly serve to introduce a whole new audience of readers to a storytelling poetry.” Marge Piercy writes: “Shelley Savren’s poems in THE COMMON FIRE are warm and direct, full of the stuff of daily life, family life, joy and pleasure and grief and pain we can all identify with in poems that carry a strong emotional weight.” Li-Young Lee writes: “These are poems of earnest storytelling and fond description. Nostalgia for gone worlds and affection for the evanescing present are the subjects and inspirations for this volume. A pleasure to read.”