RD Armstrong hosts Lawrence Welsh

Welsh has published six collections of poetry, including Skull Highway (La Alameda Press, 2008). Poet and editor Naomi Shihab Nye has featured his work in The Texas Observer, and the Los Angeles Daily Journal has called him “one of America’s leading writers on life in border towns.” Kathleene West, poetry editor of Puerto del Sol, has also lauded his work, noting: “It’s getting harder and harder to pull off poems with Southwest imagery, but Lawrence Welsh has worked form, content and diction to make it all new again.” His work has appeared in about 200 national and regional magazines and journals, including Puerto del Sol, The Louisiana Review, Hawaii Review, Onthebus, The Wormwood Review, Nexus, Chiron Review, The Café Review, Poetry Motel, Poetry Now, Pearl, Big Bridge, Flipside, The Raven Chronicles, The Santa Fe Poetry Broadside, Main Street Rag and the book Das Ist Alles–Charles Bukowski Recollected. A winner of The Bardsong Press Celtic Voice Writing Award in Poetry, Welsh is an associate professor of English at El Paso Community College. A former guest lecturer at UCLA, he has also taught at the University of Texas at El Paso and the Southern New Mexico penitentiary. From 1995-97, he served as poetry editor of the Rio Grande Review. A nationally known spoken word artist, Welsh has given more than 50 readings during the past 10 years in Mexico, New Mexico, Texas, California and Kansas, and he continues to conduct writing workshops throughout the Southwest. He has won numerous journalism awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists Bill Farr Reporting Award, the Copley Los Angeles Newspapers Award, the Women in Communications Endowment Award and the Jessie Steensma Scholarship. In 1992, the YMCA named him man of the year for his community service in South Central Los Angeles.Welsh is married to Lisa McNiel, a poet and teacher, and they have two young children, Megan and Patrick.