Most Recent: October 12, 2016
Joan Jobe Smith, founding editor of Pearl and Bukowski Review, worked 7 years as a go-go girl before graduating from CSULB and the UCI MFA Program. Since 1950 her art, poetry, prose, cooking columns, memoirs and reviews have been published in more than 1000 literary journals, newspapers, anthologies--and one billboard when she was age 9 and won a Red Cross Safety Poster contest with her rhyming aphorism: "Always wait for the green/And you will become a Safety Queen." With her poet husband Fred Voss she has done 7 reading tours of UK and Scotland, debuting at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, 1991, and last appearing 2012 at the Hull Literature Festival and the Betsey Trotwood pub in London. Her UK-published poetry collection THE POW WOW CAFE was a finalist for the 1999 Forward Prize. A Pushcart honoree with 23 poetry books (including 2 cookbooks), her award-winning work has recently appeared in AMBIT (UK), Swallow Dance, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Like A Girl, Circe's Lament, Ladyland: Litteratur Feminine Americaine (France) and the Silver Birch Poetry Series. Her 2012 literary profile Charles Bukowski: Epic Glottis: His Art & His Women (& me) and her 2014 memoir Tales of An Ancient Go-Go Girl are available via amazon.com and for sale @ Gatsby's Books and Fingerprints, in Long Beach, California. Fall, 2016, the New York Quarterly will publish her selected/new poetry Moonglow a Go-Go.