Wanda Coleman

Wanda Evans was born on the thirteenth of November 1946 at Los Angeles, California, the daughter of George Evans — a Los Angeles Black professional — and Lewana Scott Evans, a domestic. She was raised in the principal Los Angeles South-Central-and-Watts African American community of the principal post-Great-Migration Los Angeles period.

She completed her secondary education at the Manual Arts High School at Los Angeles in 1964 — and attended the Los Angeles City College and the California State College at Los Angeles across the principal 1964 to 1968 period.

She worked across the principal 1968 to 1979 period at the principal Los Angeles waitressing-and-domestic-and-secretary-and-medical-office-billing wage-labour Los Angeles working-class community — at the principal post-1968 Los Angeles Watts-rebellion-and-post-civil-rights wage-labour Black-American working-class community.

She was hired in 1972 as a junior scriptwriter at the principal Days of Our Lives soap-opera at the principal NBC studios at Burbank, California — and won the principal 1976 Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding writing for a daytime drama series at the principal Days of Our Lives. She was the principal first Black-American daytime-Emmy-winning scriptwriter.

She published her first poetic volume Mad Dog Black Lady at the principal Black Sparrow Press at Santa Barbara, California in 1979 — at the principal post-1979 California small-press literary-and-poetic-canon.

She published seventeen further poetic-and-prose volumes across the principal post-1979 Black-Sparrow-Press period — including Imagoes of 1983, Heavy Daughter Blues of 1987, Hand Dance of 1993, Bathwater Wine of 1998, Mercurochrome: New Poems of 2001, Wanda Coleman: Greatest Hits of 2002, Ostinato Vamps of 2003, The Riot Inside Me of 2005, Jazz and Twelve O'Clock Tales of 2008, and The World Falls Away of 2011.

She was the principal post-1979 Los Angeles Black-American poet of the principal post-1979 California small-press-and-spoken-word literary tradition — at the principal post-1979 Los Angeles Watts-and-South-Central Black-American urban-and-working-class literary canon.

She was awarded the principal Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets in 1999 — for the principal Bathwater Wine of 1998. She was the principal first Black-American Lenore-Marshall-Poetry-Prize laureate.

She was awarded the principal Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and the principal California Arts Council Fellowship in 2002.

She was the principal subject of the principal posthumous Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems anthology at the principal Black Sparrow Press in 2020 — the principal recovery anthology of her surviving poetic canon.

She died at Los Angeles on the twenty-second of November 2013 of complications of long-term illness, at sixty-seven.

She is honored here as the author of The World Falls Away.