Kim Dower, who teaches workshops in our BA in Liberal Studies program, has been unanimously selected by the City of West Hollywood’s City Council as the City of West Hollywood’s next City Poet. Dower was selected through a nominations process and selection committee comprised of local residents and staff members from the West Hollywood Library, the Friends of the West Hollywood Library, and West Hollywood City Hall.
A resident of West Hollywood for more than 30 years, Dower was born and raised in New York, NY and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she also taught. She has published three highly praised collections of poetry; her poems are included in several anthologies and magazines. She has been featured several times on Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac.” She is also a literary publicist.
Dower will begin her two-year appointment as the City of West Hollywood’s City Poet in October 2016, taking over from West Hollywood’s first City Poet, Steven Reigns—who is an AULA alumnus from our MA in Clinical Psychology program—who helped craft the position of City Poet by making poetry and the literary arts more accessible to the community through workshops, readings, literary events, curated public poetry displays, and more.
The City of West Hollywood has an unwavering commitment to fostering reading, literary arts, and books. The West Hollywood Library, which showcases the City’s rich intellectual, literary, and cultural diversity and provides a landmark facility for the community’s passionate commitment to lifelong learning. The WeHo Reads literary author series and the One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival, held each year in June, fosters literary arts programming in the City. For additional information about literary arts in the City of West Hollywood, please visit the WeHo Arts section of the City’s website at www.weho.org/arts.
