Kirsten Ogden

 

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Kirsten Ogden (EatThePaper.Com) grew up in Honolulu, rural Louisiana, and the Bay Area. She earned a BA in Drama Therapy at San Francisco State University, the MFA in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, and the PhD in Theatre from Louisiana State University. She has been teaching writing and performance for almost 15  years to aspiring artists in grades K-12, at the College and University levels, and to adults outside of academia. Her plays and performance pieces have been staged at community & university theaters, and she has read and performed her work at the UCLA/Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, Kenyon College, and at many other community and university venues. She has taken workshops from some of the most outstanding writers and artists working today, including Nancy Zafris, Robert Pinsky, Denise Uyehara, Dan Kwong, David Baker, Rebecca McClanahan, Terry Wolverton, and Jack Grapes. She completed performance workshops at the American Conservatory Theatre Academy in San Francisco, and a 2-year professional screenwriting program with the Writer’s Bootcamp Think Tank program in Santa Monica.

Kirsten’s poems, reviews & essays have been published in various publication literary journals, and her screenplays and plays have placed in numerous contests. Ms. Ogden is an outspoken advocate for arts education; she is a Teach for America Alumni and continues to work with the California Poets in the Schools program and the Kenyon Review Young Writers workshops in Gambier, Ohio, where she is a village Poet Laureate. She recently judged for the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Prize, and is a former Peter Taylor Fellow in Poetry. Her website, Eat The Paper, is home to the Super Secret Writing Squad, a band of guerilla writers changing the world, one word at a time.