Professional Bio:​

Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native. She is active with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon, curates Ekphrastic Writers, and is a reader for Common Ground Review. She is a winner of the Poet's Corner Ekphrastic Challenge for 2024, Honorable Mention for the Reuben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition 2024, a Pushcart Prize Nominee from Ekphrastic Review in 2023, Best of the Net Nominee by Flapper Press in 2022. Publication credits include: Lily Poetry Review, Pirene's Fountain, Cider Press Review, Mom Egg Review, Nixes Mate, Taos Journal of Poetry, Gone Lawn. Lily Poetry Salon has featured her. Laurel holds an MFA from Mills College. 

 

Beginnings & Core Values:​

Laurel's writing is influenced by the geographic, historic, and diverse cultural experiences of growing up in Richmond, California. She is the beneficiary of a culture-vulture mother who exposed her to the arts. She studied dance, art, and music, first instrument the piano, second the oboe. She and her brother invented a secret language, harassed their father, then wrote down his sarcasm. They made up songs on long car trips, and at campsites drummed the rhythm with sticks. Laurel has held various occupations, such as clerical temp worker, children's book buyer and seller, and community college teacher in Oakland, California, meeting with students not only from around the world, but also from local urban surroundings. ​

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Personal:

Laurel enjoys spending time with her husband, who she met on a camping trip through family friends. They have two cats, sister tabbies. When not writing, Laurel avails herself of the convection feature on her oven to bake fennel golden raison scones, along with gardening and walking the hills of her town.