Feminist Beat poet Diane di Prima was born in Brooklyn, New York and is the author of more than 40 books. Her poetry collections include This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards (1958), Revolutionary Letters (1971, expanded 2021), the long poem Loba (1978, expanded 1998), and Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems (2001). She is also the author of the short story collection Dinners and Nightmares (1960), the semi-autobiographical Memoirs of a Beatnik (1968), and the memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years (2001). With Amiri Baraka, she co-edited the literary magazine The Floating Bear from 1961 to 1969. She co-founded the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre and founded Eidolon Editions and the Poets Institute. Di Prima was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2009. She has been awarded the National Poetry Association’s Lifetime Service Award and the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement and had also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Committee on Poetry, the Lapis Foundation, and the Institute for Aesthetic Development. St. Lawrence University granted her an honorary doctorate. Di Prima lived in Northern California and passed away on October 25th, 2020.