YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana, where he was raised during the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. He is the author of many poetry collections, including: Dedications & Other Darkhorses (1977); Lost in the Bonewheel Factory (1979); Copacetic (1984); I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head (1986), winner of the San Francisco Poetry Center Award; Dien Cai Dau (1988), winner of The Dark Room Poetry Prize; Magic City (1992); Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989 (1994), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Thieves of Paradise (1998), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Talking Dirty to the Gods (2000); Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999 (2001); Taboo: The Wishbone Trilogy, Part 1; Warhorses (2008); and The Chameleon Couch (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Komunyakaa is the recipient of the 2011 Wallace Stevens Award. His other honors include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the William Faulkner Prize from the Université de Rennes, the Thomas Forcade Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Louisiana Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at University of New Orleans, Indiana University, as a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. He lives in New York City where he is currently Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University’s graduate creative writing program.
LAURA YES YES is a Callaloo and Cave Canem fellow, and associate editor of Muzzle magazine. She has competed with her poetry on a national level many times, notably as a finalist in 2010′s Women of the World Poetry Slam. Laura performs and leads workshops at venues all over the world. Her poems have appeared in deComP, The Legendary, and kill author. Write Bloody Publishing recently released her first collection of poems, How to Seduce a White Boy in Ten Easy Steps, which was nominated for a National Book Award. She is currently an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College.
(Photo by Emily Rose)
This is the final pairing of the 2012-2013 Season of Page Meets Stage. Our 2013-2014 will begin the third Wednesday of September with Taylor Mali and Faith Shearin!









