Kim Dower, originally from New York City, received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she also taught creative writing. After moving to Los Angeles in the late ‘70s, Kim changed courses and left teaching to work in the publishing world and later started her own business doing publicity and media training for authors. Always longing to plunge herself back into poetry, Kim started writing again after her son left for college. Since that time, she has published three collections of poetry, all from Red Hen Press: Air Kissing on Mars, (2010) which was on the Poetry Foundation’s Contemporary Best Sellers list and described by the Los Angeles Times as “sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor and heartache,” Slice of Moon, (2013) called, “unexpected and sublime,” by “O” magazine, and Last Train to the Missing Planet, (2016), “full of worldly, humorous insights into life as it is,” says Janet Fitch. Her fourth collection, Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave, “By turns exuberant, sexy and sobering, Kim Dower’s remarkable poems are known for their extraordinary range. This fourth collection finds her at the top of her game,” Chris Kraus (I Love Dick), will be published in the Spring of 2019. Teaching her Poetry Workshops at Antioch is one of Kim’s greatest pleasures. She loves to share the joy of poetry and help students mine the rich territories of talent and imagination she knows they all have. Having the honor of being City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood from October 2016 to October 2018 further increased Kim’s passion for teaching as she had the opportunity to work with many in the community and continues to teach Saturday writing workshops at the West Hollywood Library. Kim’s work has been nominated for two Pushcarts and has been featured in the Academy of American Poets, Poem-A-Day, Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” as well as in Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Rattle and Eclipse. Her poems are included in several anthologies, including, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque Books/Pacific Coast Poetry Series, 2015) and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles, (Tia Chucha Press. She looks forward to continuing to inspire and awaken Antioch students to the rich world of poetry and to help them discover  – no matter what a student’s concentration – how reading and writing poetry brings comfort as it helps clarify and understand our difficult world.