Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette reflects on the condition of women—their joys despite their histories, and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic, and climate threaten their livelihoods. The documentation of these personal odysseys—which vary stylistically from abecedarians to free verse to centos—replicate the many ways women travel through the stages of their lives, all negotiated on a palette encompassing various shades of blue. These poems demand your attention, your voice: “Say history. Claim. Say wild.” The author will be joined by Pam Ward for a reading and conversation in The Wanda Coleman Theater. Reception & book signings to follow after the readings.

“Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette is at turns—and, often, all at once—old and new. That is, rooted strong in a long tradition and legitimately experimental. Thompson’s range in form and subject matter is equaled only by the deftness with which she handles each. In these pages we get a true blue blueswoman who knows when to whisper and when to wail, one who has lived some, and means to make song of what she’s seen.”

— John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry

Doors Open: 7:30 PM I Readings: 8:00 PM

About the authors

Lynne Thompson was Los Angeles’ 2021-22 Poet Laureate and is a Poet Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Press and Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar; and most recently, Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize selected by Jane Hirshfield. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards including an Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, the Tucson Literary Festival Poetry Prize, and the Steven Dunn Poetry Prize as well as fellowships from the Summer Literary Series to study in Kenya and the Vermont Studio Center. An attorney by training, Thompson sits on the Boards of The Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. In June of 2022, she completed her four-year service as Chair of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College, her alma mater. Thompson’s recent work can be found or is forthcoming in the literary journals Best American Poetry 2020, Kenyon Review, The Common, The Massachusetts Review, and Copper Nickel, and the anthology Beat Not Beat, among others.

Writer/designer, Pam Ward just released her poetry book BETWEEN GOOD MEN & NO MAN AT ALL, World Stage Press. She’s published two novels, WANT SOME GET SOME, and BAD GIRLS BURN SLOW, Kensington.

A UCLA graduate, recipient of a California Arts Council Fellow, a Pushcart Poetry Nominee, Pam has published in Chiron, Calyx, Voices of Leimert Park and the LA Times. She’s currently working on a novel about her aunt’s dalliance in the Black Dahlia Murder, an event that shocked the nation and happened in Pam’s own neighborhood.