Professional Bio:​

Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native. She is active with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon, curates Ekphrastic Writers, and is a reader for Common Ground Review. She is a winner of the Poet's Corner Ekphrastic Challenge for 2024, She received Honorable Mention for the Ruben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition, was a finalist for the Cider Press Review Book Award, and received Honorable Mention with Small Harbor Publishing. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  Publication credits include: Lily Poetry Review, Pirene's Fountain, Cider Press Review, Mom Egg Review, Nixes Mate, Taos Journal of Poetry, Gone Lawn, West Trestle Review, Of the Book Literary Magazine, Deronda Review,  and Rise Up Review, where her work has been recognized. .Her work has also been anthologized in Women in a Golden State (2025), The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America's Land, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders (2025), and Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women's Poetry (2006). Lily Poetry Salon has featured her. Laurel holds an MFA from Mills College. 

 

Beginnings & Core Values:​

Laurel's writing is influenced by the geographic, historic, and diverse cultural experiences of growing up in Richmond, California. She is the beneficiary of a culture-vulture mother who exposed her to the arts. She studied dance, art, and music, first instrument the piano, second the oboe. She and her brother invented a secret language, harassed their father, then wrote down his sarcasm. They made up songs on long car trips, and at campsites drummed the rhythm with sticks. Laurel has held various occupations, such as clerical temp worker, children's book buyer and seller, and community college teacher in Oakland, California, meeting with students not only from around the world, but also from local urban surroundings. ​

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Personal:

Laurel enjoys spending time with her husband, who she met on a camping trip through family friends. They have two cats, sister tabbies. When not writing, Laurel avails herself of the convection feature on her oven to bake fennel golden raison scones, along with gardening and walking the hills of her town. 

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Photo: Dan Dickinson