Jump to Content

Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Coleman (Wanda) papers
LSC.2282  
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Collection Overview
 
Table of contents What's This?
Description
Wanda Coleman was born on November 13, 1946 and grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. Coleman's poetry is widely anthologized and published, and her poetry collection Bathwater Wine received the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. In addition to her poetic career, Coleman was also successful across genres. She had a well-known column in the Los Angeles Times and won an Emmy for her writing on Days of Our Lives. The collection contains work produced by Coleman between 1960 and 2013, including manuscripts and drafts of her published poetry and prose, journalism, writing for film and television, and spoken word recordings, as well as many unpublished writings. In addition, there is a wealth of correspondence with major literary figures and institutions, activist materials, and ephemera relating to Coleman's professional and personal life.
Background
Wanda Coleman was born on November 13, 1946 in Watts and raised in South Central Los Angeles. When she was eighteen, she married her first husband, Jerry Coleman, with whom she had two children, Anthony and Luanda Tunisia. Coleman retained custody of the children when she and Jerry divorced in 1969, and struggled to survive and write as a single mother. She worked as an editor for Players, a conscious Black gentleman's magazine, from 1972-1974, and in the mid 1970s, she moved to Hollywood, where she became an active participant in the spoken word and poetry communities, penning works for Studio Watts and becoming a fixture at Beyond Baroque in Venice. In 1977, she published a chapbook, Art in the Court of the Blue Fag, followed by a full-length collection of poems, Mad Dog Black Lady (1979) with Black Sparrow Press, beginning a publishing relationship that would last for over thirty years and produce twelve books in various genres. Her third child, Ian, with her second husband Stephen Grant, was born in 1978. Coleman was also an acclaimed performance artist known for her impactful readings. In the 1980s, her presence in the LA spoken word scene led her to collaborate with seminal punk figures such as Exene Cervenka (X) and Lydia Lunch, and she worked with New Alliance records to release a number of solo and split recordings. Coleman attended Valley Junior College and Cal State L.A., and went on to teach at UCLA extension, Cal State Long Beach, Naropa, and Loyola Marymount University, where she held the Fletcher Jones chair in literature and writing. Prolific across genres, Coleman wrote poetry, short stories, novels, nonfiction, and plays, as well as scripts for film and television, winning an Emmy for her work on on Days of Our Lives in 1976 and working as a featured columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Coleman is one of the most widely anthologized and published poets of her generation, appearing in prestigious collections such as Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. Her poetry collection Bathwater Wine received the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her honors include a Guggenheim, an NEA fellowship, and the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award. With her husband of thirty years, poet and visual artist Austin Straus, she hosted "The Poetry Connexion" on KPFK from 1981-1994. She died November 22, 2013. In November of 2015, the Ascot branch of the Los Angeles public library in Watts, where Coleman spent many of her formative years reading and writing, was renamed the Wanda Coleman Branch in her honor.
Extent
75.2 Linear Feet (182 boxes, 2 record cartons, and 1 flat box)
Restrictions
Property rights to the physical objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Availability
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.