Gayle Lauradunn writes poetry, historical fiction, short memoir, essays, and for 15 years worked as a free-lance newspaper journalist in California and Massachusetts. She spent the summer of 1975 in residency at Cummington Community of the Arts, which included a children’s program in which her five-year-old son participated. In the 1990s she was awarded three residences at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She also attended a week-long poetry workshop at the Community of Writers in Olympic Valley.

She received her BA in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. For her Ph.D. she created a curriculum using 20th century U.S. poetry to teach high school students about gender, race, and class. A number of articles and workshops based on this curriculum have been published or presented. While at UMass, she taught some of the first women’s courses, before there was a Women’s Department on campus. She also taught politics through the arts in classes in the Honors College, the Education Department and the English Department.

Gayle was co-organizer of the first National Women’s Multicultural Poetry Festival, a week-long event held at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in March 1974. Between readings by both prestigious and little known poets lively discussions were held in a variety of workshops.

From 1985-1992, she served as Executive Director of the VETERANS EDUCATION PROJECT, an organization of Vietnam, Korean, and Desert Storm veterans who spoke to high school students about the realities of war and military service.

Gayle has been writing since she was nine years old. Her first poems were published in 1968 by Robert Hayden when he was poetry editor of World Order, a journal of the Baha’i faith, and her neighbor at Fisk University. Many poems have been published in print journals, online, and in national and international anthologies. Some poems were adapted and performed on stage, while others have been included in art exhibitions. Three poems are in the exhibit “Dirt? Scientists, Artists, and Poets Reflect on Soil and Our Environment” held at the University of Puget Sound, then at Evergreen State College. She has been invited to participate in several of the Vivo Contemporary Gallery (Santa Fe) exhibitions where the poet is paired with one of the artists and the subsequent poem is displayed beside the artwork.

From 2015-2017, she served as Chair of the Albuquerque Chapter of the New Mexico State Poetry Society. Over the years, she has given several hundred individual poetry readings in Massachusetts, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York City, and throughout New Mexico.

In Albuquerque, Gayle had a taste of film making as a co-writer of a play for the New Mexico 48 Hour Film Project. A fascinating experience with a talented group of people.

From 1974-1979, she was a member of the editorial collective which created Chomo-Uri, a women’s poetry and art journal.