Jim NatalJim Natal's most recent poetry collection, 52 VIEWS: THE HAIBUN VARIATIONS, was published by Tebot Bach in April 2013. He is the author of three previous collections: Memory and Rain; Talking Back to the Rocks; and IN THE BEE TREES Archer Books, 2000), which was a finalist for the 2000 Pen Center USA and Publisher's Marketing Association Ben Franklin Awards. He also is the author of three chapbooks (Explaining Water With Water, Oil on Paper, and The Landscape from Behind) and two limited-edition chapbooks (A Collector of Infinity and Rain in L.A.). A multi-year Pushcart Prize nominee (including 2012), his poetry has been published or reviewed in Bellingham Review, Runes, Spillway, Pool, Reed, The Paterson Literary Review, Poetry International, and The Los Angeles Review among other print and online journals. Natal's work also has appeared in many anthologies, including New Poets of the American West; Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose About Alzheimer's Disease; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here; Mischief, Caprice and Other Poetic Strategies; and What Have You Lost? Natal has been a featured poet at dozens of colleges, bookstores, literary series, and festivals, including the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the Tucson Festival of Books, Long Island University, Washington College, the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Writers in Focus series, and the Santa Barbara, Long Beach, and San Luis Obispo Poetry Festivals. He is the founder and director of the Hassayampa Institute's The Literary Southwest series at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona. He curated and co-hosted the Poem.X and Rose Cafe poetry series in Santa Monica for more than 10 years and helped establish and coordinate Antioch University's multi-genre L.A. Writers Series. He also leads writing workshops, one of which, the long-running annual Plein Air Poetry outdoor writing workshop at Joshua Tree National Park, is coordinated through the Desert Institute. Natal was an executive for the National Football League's Creative Services Group in Los Angeles for 25 years. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2005. He taught writing at Yavapai College and Prescott College, as well as at New Roads School in Santa Monica. With his wife, graphic designer and book artist Tania Baban, Natal founded Conflux Press in 2003. He lives in Los Angeles. Read More Read Less