Shelley Savren holds an M.F.A. from Antioch University Los Angeles and has taught poetry writing workshops at a maximum security men’s prison, juvenile detention centers, a homeless shelter, a school for emotionally disturbed adolescents and numerous other facilities and at every grade level through the California Poets in the Schools. She lives in Ventura, California and is a full-time English Professor at Oxnard College. The Midwest Book Review writes: “THE COMMON FIRE showcases this remarkable talent and will aptly serve to introduce a whole new audience of readers to a storytelling poetry.” Marge Piercy writes: "Shelley Savren’s poems in THE COMMON FIRE are warm and direct, full of the stuff of daily life, family life, joy and pleasure and grief and pain we can all identify with in poems that carry a strong emotional weight.” Li-Young Lee writes: “These are poems of earnest storytelling and fond description. Nostalgia for gone worlds and affection for the evanescing present are the subjects and inspirations for this volume. A pleasure to read.”

The Common Fire (Red Hen Press, 2004), The Common Fire (Red Hen Press, 2004)

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