Jamie O'Halloran

Jamie O’Halloran was born on Long Island and raised there, in New Orleans and in Seattle where she received her M.A. in English from the University of Washington through its Creative Writing Program.

Her poems have appeared in more than 50 publications, including Prairie Schooner, The Cream City Review, Solo, Poetry Flash and Yankee, and the anthologies Mischief, Caprice and other Poetic Strategies, So Luminous the Wildflowers: An Anthology of California Poets, And What Rough Beast: Poems at the End of the Century, and Grand Passion: Poets from Los Angeles and Beyond. Her chapbooks include SWEET TO THE GRIT (The Inevitable Press, 1998) and THE LANDSCAPE FROM BEHIND, with Jim Natal, (VC Press, 1997.) She has won the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, received awards from Verve Magazine, Red Dancefloor Press and The Sacred Beverage Press, and her poems have been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. Her poem “Knock Wood” was published on 10,000 postcards and distributed throughout Los Angeles as part of the Sonnets at Work project. Jamie has read her work throughout Southern California, including the Writers in Focus series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, KPFK FM’s Inspiration House, and Poetry Connexion with Wanda Coleman and Austin Straus, and Poets’ Café.

From 1993 to 2001 Jamie curated a literary reading series for the Sunland-Tujunga Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library where she also founded the McGroarty Writer’s Circle in 1994. During her tenure as co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets she edited several chapbooks and the series annual anthology.  She is a former associate editor for the webzine poetrybay.com.

Jamie is a retired public school teacher. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.