Reaching For Air - Paperback

by Gayle Lauradunn (Author)

Reaching for Air, Gayle Lauradunn's debut poetry collection, tells the story of a childhood spent in a landscape full of beauty, hardship, and violence. In their restless yearning and relentless motion, these poems feel completely American. Interspersed with the voice of the child is that of the adult woman, as both an extension of the child and as a counterpoint to the child's experience. Each poem stands alone, yet is a piece of the whole. This is poetic storytelling at its finest. REACHING FOR AIR was named a Finalist for the Best First Book of Poetry by the Texas Institute of Letters for 2015.

Author Biography

Gayle Lauradunn reinvents herself about every five to seven years. Along the way she was co-organizer of the first National Women's Poetry Festival, a 6-day event held at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1974. While there she earned an Ed.D. For her dissertation she used 20th Century American poetry to create a curriculum to teach high school students about race, class, and gender. She learned about the crossover of race and class while living in the poor Black ghetto in Nashville, Tennessee. For five years she participated in the editorial collective that published Chomo-Uri: A Women's Literary and Arts Journal. After earning a B.A. in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, she became a feature writer for a weekly newspaper, and over the next 20 years worked as a free-lance journalist. Her anti-Vietnam War activism led her to becoming the Executive Director of the Veterans Education Project, a group of Vietnam, Korean, and Desert Storm veterans who spoke to high school students about the realities of war and military service. As a single parent, she travelled extensively with her son throughout the United States, camping, backpacking, white water rafting, exploring museums and historical sites. An avid traveller, she has been to all 50 states and more than 18 countries, Bhutan and Antarctica being her favorites to date. Her poems have been published in numerous journals, anthologies, and online. This is her first book. She is writing a book-length narrative poem about a historical figure. In 1998 she moved to New Mexico where she follows the changing light and shadows as the sun moves across the Sandia Mountains.