An Interview with Alice Pero ~ Dedicated to Awakening the Creative Spirit

Alice Pero was born in New York City, the child of an electrical engineer and a housewife/editor. She graduated from Putney School in Vermont and The Manhattan School of Music in New York City. She received dance training at the Martha Graham School in New York and from many private teachers and studied flute with Harold Bennett. While a student she played with the National Orchestral Association in New York City and currently she is playing chamber music concerts, after a long hiatus from the flute.

Pero discovered poetry after studying rhythm with the music educator, Jamie Faunt, and has been writing poetry seriously for 29 years. She has done many featured readings in New York and LA and has been published in over 60 small magazines and anthologies. Her first book of poetry, Thawed Stars, published in 1999, was hailed by Kenneth Koch as having “clarity and surprises.” She is a member of the California Poets in the Schools, and was a workshop leader for the New York City Ballet Education Department Poetry Project for many years.  She continues to teach poetry to children throughout the Los Angeles area.  Founder of the celebrated “Moonday” reading series, she recently inaugurated the series at the newly constructed Flintridge Bookstore, La Cañada, while  continuing the popular reading on the West Side at Village Books, Pacific Palisades.

In addition to all of her activities in the arts, Pero works as a pastoral counselor for the Church of Scientology, a religion she has studied for 43 years. She lives by the edge of a desert wash with her husband, Dennis, and their two cats, Biscus and Gurdjieff. She has two grown children, Sky and Amy and three grandchildren.