News at Eleven: And then there's the poet laureate honor,

which [Eloise Klein] Healy says took her by complete surprise, "because I didn't think they'd choose a white lesbian."

This last comment tells you something about the choices Healy made in both in her personal and her professional life. To come out in the early 1970s, and to pursue a career as a feminist poet. To keep writing poetry, long before the days of poetry slams and the hundreds of poetry programs and writers' colonies that now litter the country, and to do it in Los Angeles. "Back then there was one place to go, Beyond Baroque, which was about the size of the men's bathroom. There was nobody publishing anything," she says.

from L.A. Weekly: Eloise Klein Healy: L.A.'s Poet Laureate

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