After more than thirty years as a journalist, then a television and screen writer, Los Angeles resident Richard Beban turned to poetry as his primary means of creative writing in late 1993.   In December 2001, he began work on an MFA in Creative Writing at Antioch University, Los Angeles.   In his first semester, the faculty nominated him as the Antioch representative for the $15,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship.

His poetry or essays have appeared since 1994 in the periodicals 51% (two editions); Athena; two editions of Blue Satellite; Bolsa Chica Anthology; Caffeine; Cider Press Review; Clay Palm Review; Coastal; 1995 Coos Bay Anthology; Crania; Crimson Crane; two editions of Disquieting Muses; Feeling Trees; Fish Dance; Foreshock; Fourth Street; FTS; the Los Angeles Times; Mediphors; Melic Review; Neon Quarterly; two editions of On Target; Perihelion; Psychological Perspectives; Quantum Tao; Rattle; rivertalk '99, '00, '01 & 02; Snakeskin; Solo #3 and #5; three editions of Spillway; Urban Spaghetti; three editions of Vol. No.; and in The Writing Self.   His poems can also be found on-line at various literary Websites.

Two of his poems placed, second and honorable mention, respectively, in the 1997 Poetry Contest of the Morris Center for Healing, while his poem "To My Best Friend, Who Has Seen Miracles," received a 1996 Soul-Making Literary Prize.  He also won a $150 First Place in the Poetry In The Windows III contest (1999) sponsored by the Arroyo Arts Collective, and a $100 Honorable Mention in the 2001 contest.  His full-length manuscript, What the Heart Weighs, was a finalist for the Ohio State University's 2000 Journal Award in Poetry; a chapbook was among the finalists in the 1999 Sheila-Na-Gig Chapbook Contest; and the editors of Beyond the Valley of the Contemporary Poets—2000 nominated him for a Pushcart Prize.

His poems also appear in the national anthologies Animal Blessings and Bedside Prayers (both Harper SanFrancisco); Beyond the Valley of the Contemporary Poets—2000 (Sacred Beverage Press); Bless the Day (Kodansha America); GRRRRR (Arctos Press); Knowing Stones: Poems of Exotic Places (Burke Publishing); Scream When You Burn (Incommunicado Press); The Art of Pilgrimage (Conari Press); Heal Your Soul, Heal the World (Andrews McMeel); What Have You Lost (Greenwillow, edited by Naomi Shihab Nye); Tree Stories (SunShine Press) and Will Work for Peace (Zeropanik Press).  They will appear this year in Fresh Water: Poems of the Rivers, Lakes, and Streams (Pudding House).

His third chapbook of twelve poems, one of the Pudding House Press Greatest Hits series, is due momentarily.   His second chapbook, I Burn for You, which features love poems, was published by The Inevitable Press in 1999.  Venice's Canned Spaghetti Press published his now out-of-print first chapbook, Fried Eggs With Lace:  A Family Poem, in 1996. 

From 1997 to early 2000, Beban helped organize and run the free Wednesday night poetry reading series that brought nationally known (and the best of the Los Angeles area) poets to Venice’s Rose Café, along with poets Jeanette Clough, Kaaren Kitchell, Jim Natal, and Jan Wesley under the nom de poetique Hyperpoets.  The Hyperpoets also organized a series of eight readings at two Westside Barnes & Noble stores for National Poetry Month in April 1998, and continued the Barnes & Noble series in Santa Monica monthly, with occasional readings at local art galleries.  With Clough, Beban was a director of the Midnight Special Bookstore Poetry Center from 1994-96, and the two were editors of the sold-out 1996 anthology, Foreshock:  Poems from the Midnight Special Bookstore.

Beban has been a featured reader at these Southern California venues:  Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Beyond Baroque; Barnsdall Art Park; Valley Contemporary Poets; Deanna Miller Art Gallery; Hyperdisc; Hothouse; Small World Books; Biscotti and Books; Library Café; L.A. the Bookstore; Borders in Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Pasadena; Laguna Poets reading series; Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica, Marina del Rey, Westwood, Encino, Orange and Huntington Beach; Rose Café; North Hollywood, Sierra Madre, Sunland-Tujunga & Venice Public Libraries; UCLA; the 1996, 1997 & 1998 Writers Harvest readings; the 1998 Long Beach Poetry Festival; Carrillo Recreation Center in Santa Barbara; and at Midnight Special. 

In Northern California, he has been featured at the 1998 Petaluma Poetry Walk; Copperfield's Café in Petaluma; Dr. Insomnia's in Novato; Oliver's Books in San Anselmo; Open Secret Books in San Rafael; the San Rafael Public Library, Cody's Books in Berkeley; Keane's 3300 Club in San Francisco—and at Shakespeare & Company, Paris.

He and the novelist Kaaren Kitchell are collaborating on a non-fiction book and a workshop series about incorporating myth into your everyday life, Living Mythically.  They have taught the workshop at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, and at the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz.

Poet, visual artist, educator, and community worker, Imani Tolliver is a graduate of Howard University where she studied English Literature and African-American Studies. During her studies, she was awarded a Lannon Literary Fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the John J. Wright Literary Award and is currently a fellow at Cave Canem African-American Writer’s Workshop and Retreat. She has served as a consultant to community organizations, museums, educators, and The Office of the President of the United States. Presently, she is the Program Director of a non-profit youth center in Hollywood, California. She has been a featured poet across the country, including the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, the Smithsonian Institution, Beyond Baroque, the World Stage Performance Gallery, and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. Find her published poetry in several anthologies and journals, including Cave Canem II, IV, and V, Jones Juke Joint Magic, The Flow: New Black Poetry in Motion, Ghettoes are not Beautiful, Black Love, The Drumming Between Us – A Poetry Journal, Drum Voices Review, Step Into A World- A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, and the upcoming Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam.