Page 141 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

Cynthia Anderson grew up in Connecticut and attended

the University of Pennsylvania as a Benjamin Franklin

Scholar. She went on to earn a B.A. in literature from the

College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara, where

she received two grants to conduct research on the poet

George Oppen. Her work with Oppen’s archives was

published in the journals CONJUNCTIONS and Ironwood.

Cynthia lived in Santa Barbara from 1982-2008. During

that time, she received poetry awards from the Santa

Barbara Writers Conference and the Santa Barbara Arts Council, and served as an

organizer of the Santa Barbara Poetry Festival. For many years she hosted a quarterly

reading series at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. She also wrote poetic scores for

choreographer Robin Bisio and co-founded Mille Grazie Press to publish poets of the

Central Coast.

Since moving to the Mojave Desert in 2008, Cynthia has embraced writing about her

new home. Her books include Mythic Rockscapes, Desert Dweller, Shared Visions I and

II, and In the Mojave. She frequently collaborates with her husband, photographer Bill

Dahl. Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black as the Sun: California Poets on

Crows & Ravens, which features over 80 leading poets and is described by the Los

Angeles Review as “a riveting collection.”

Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Askew, Mojave River Review, Inlandia:

A Literary Journey, The Sun Runner Magazine, Phantom Seed, Dark Matter, and Whale

Road. This year she has received poetry awards from the Palm Springs Writers Guild

and the Harpa Concert Hall in Reykjavik, Iceland.