Andrena Zawinski, born and raised in Pittsburgh, is a veteran teacher of writing who has made her home in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2000 where she has become a mainstay in the poetry community. Her latest poetry collection, Landings, (Kelsay Books, Hemet, CA) presents poems that embrace, in original ways and with deep-rooted emotional power, the worldwide condition of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside a reverence for the natural world. Her poetry reflects her working class background as the daughter and granddaughter of steel workers and coal miners and her longtime feminism. She has two previous award winning collections of poetry: Something About, (Blue Light Press, San Francisco, CA), a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award; and Traveling in Reflected Light, a Kenneth Patchen Prize in Poetry (Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, Ohio). She has also authored six chapbooks including the micro-chap Blood Moon and other Haibun (Origami Poems Project) and compiled and edited Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, Oakland, CA). Her widely anthologized poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She is also long time Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com and as founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon.