COMING April 2010!

Burned: A Memoir
Available April 2010

BUY A COPY!

How to Bury a Goldfish (More info...)

January 2010

Teaching Trauma & the Arts at CCSF.
(More info...)

April 2010

Appearing at
- Bird & Beckett
- RJ Julia Booksellers
(More info...)

May 2010

Appearing at the following bookstores:
- Book Passage
- Kepler's
- Green Apple
- Borders - Stonestown
(More info...)

Biography

Louise Nayer, a native New Yorker, grew up among books, music, theater, art and dance. Her father, a physician, was co-founder of the country's first HMO and he worked as a medical officer for the Fire Department. His parents were from Vilna, Lithuania and left the country in the late 1800's to escape the pogroms. Her mother, German and English, was a minister's daughter, so Louise is both Jewish and Christian. Her mother got a Master's Degree in nursing at a time when few women pursued their education. She became an associate editor for The American Journal of Nursing and worked tirelessly to help nurses get the respect they deserved. Louise and her sister attended the Little Red Schoolhouse in Greenwich Village, a bastion of leftists and artists, where she learned to love learning, to relish the arts and to believe that it's important to work toward a better world for all. Arthur Miller's son, Norman Mailer's daughter, Woody Guthrie's children and Angela Davis were among the students at her school. Her family moved to Greenwich Village when Louise was 12.

Louise attended the honors program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1967 and graduated with a B.A. in Comparative Literature. She also studied with the poet Ruth Stone. During her Junior Year, she went to the Universite d'Aix-Marseille in Aix-en Provence and traveled throughout Europe and North Africa during one of the most explosive times for youth. At the University of Wisconsin, she was part of the anti-war movement and fought for a Black Studies Department. After college she moved back to New York and dedicated her life to writing poetry and still has twenty bound journals from that period of her life sitting on her bookcase. Her sister, Anne, who had moved to Montreal, and started Vehicule Press published Louise's first broadside in 1971. Louise then went on to publish poems in many literary journals and published two collections of poetry. In 1974 she attended SUNY at Buffalo for graduate school where she studied with Robert Creeley and John Logan. During those two years she lived among poets and writers during the cold winters of Buffalo, gathering poems and friends and continuing to dedicate herself to writing.

After receiving her Masters Degree in Humanities, and finishing a book of poems, she got a late-night call from a friend in Berkeley who needed someone to take over her room. Spurred on by adventure, impulsively she put everything into a '68 Camero and drove cross country by herself in a car without air conditioning or radio, driving further and further away from her New York home, alternately loving her independence yet missing New York and the streets of Greenwich Village.

Once in California, she began teaching writing workshops at UC Berkeley Extension Center and later in nursing homes and senior centers. She received California Arts Council grants for six years and was privileged to hear many stories of older people who had survived the Great Depression and the General Strike in San Francisco. She also worked with developmentally disabled seniors, a program her husband developed, helping them write poems and stories. She collected their work in numerous collections. During the same time, she worked for Poets-in-the Schools, teaching writing workshops for children. She also set up workshops at her house. She met her husband, Jim Patten, at the Haight Ashbury Senior Center where she was the poet-in-residence and he was director of the center. He ran a radio show, San Francisco Surreal Journal on KALW an NPR affiliate, where Louise was the "masked poet" for two years. They lovingly raised their two daughters, Sarah and Laura, now young adults. Louise's step-daughter, Bonnie, son-in-law, George and grandchildren Quinn, Tait and Reed live in Connecticut. Louise's sister, Anne and niece, Lily, live in St. Thomas.

Though Louise led a privileged life in New York, at four years old her world was shattered. Her parents were severely burned in a gas explosion in Cape Cod. Her mother's face was horribly disfigured. Miraculously, her parents survived the operations and lived until their 90's, finally moving to Oakland, California.

Over many years Louise has written poems about the accident, the bookmark that divided her life, one chapter to the next. The book Burned: A Memoir will be published by Atlas and Company in April 2010. She also co-authored a non-fiction book with Virginia Lang, How to Bury a Goldfish: Celebrations and Ceremonies for Everyday Life.

For over twenty years Louise has been an English Professor at City College of San Francisco where she teaches Creative Writing, English Composition and Literature. She lives in Glen Park, a San Francisco neighborhood, with her husband, and beloved dog, Penelope. She teaches, writes and still tries to work for a better world for all, particularly through her constant contact with young people, inspiring them to write about what matters.