Laurel Benjamin is a Cider Press Review Book Award finalist. She is active with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon, curates Ekphrastic Writers, and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Publication credits current and upcoming include: Pirene's Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Mom Egg Review, Nixes Mate. Lily Poetry Salon has featured her. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, Laurel holds an MFA from Mills College. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where she invented a secret language with her brother.