Charles Jensen (he/him) wrote Splice of Life: A Memoir in 13 Film Genres, which braids together in each chapter traditional memoir storytelling with discussion of a single film. His most recent collection of poetry is Instructions between Takeoff and Landing. His previous books include two collections of poetry and seven chapbooks of cross-genre work. The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs designated him a 2024-2025 Individual Master Artist Fellow and a 2019-2020 Cultural Trailblazer, and he is the recipient of the 2020 Outwrite Nonfiction Chapbook Award, 2018 Zócalo Poetry Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, the 2007 Frank O’Hara Chapbook Award, and an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, American Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Journal, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Exposition Review, The Florida Review, and Passages North. He spontaneously invented the digital literary magazine Villain Era, which publishes literature of revenge. He hosts The Write Process, a podcast in which one writer tells the story of crafting one work from concept to completion. He lives in Long Beach, serves on the board of directors at Angels Gate Cultural Center, volunteers with The Book Truck, and has served as a mentor for Arts for LA’s ACTIVATE Protege program, the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture Arts Internship Program, and in the Pocket MFA.

Photo: David Franco