Diane Wakoski, who was born in Southern California and educated at UC, Berkeley, lived and began her poetry career in New York City from 1960-1973. She has earned her living as a book store clerk, a junior high school teacher in Manhattan, a library story-teller, a Visiting Writer and, for ten years on-the-road, by giving poetry readings on college campuses. Since 1975, she has been Poet in Residence at Michigan State University, where she continues to teach as a University Distinguished Professor.
Her work has been published in more than twenty collections and many slim volumes of poetry since her first book, Coins & Coffins, was published by Hawk's Well Press in 1962. Her selected poems, Emerald Ice, won the William Carlos Williams Prize from the Poetry Society of America in 1989.
Her collection Diamond Dog was published by Anhinga Press in 2010. Bay of Angels, also from Anhinga Press, was released in October 2013. Lady of Light was released in 2018.
