BAIPA member Aleta George’s book, Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California’s First Poet Laureate, has received a bronze medal in the biography category from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The IPPY Awards program is open to independent, university, and self-published titles. They had nearly 5,000 entries for this year, which was the their 20th annual Independent Publisher Book Awards contest.
Ina Coolbrith is about a pioneer poet, Oakland’s first public librarian, and the most popular literary ambassador in the early American West. Coolbrith was crowned America’s first state laureate 101 years ago. Her first love was poetry, but she earned a living as Oakland’s first public librarian where she mentored Jack London and fought gender discrimination in the workplace. Throughout her life, Coolbrith met with a series of challenges that tested her devotion to her art. In the end, she put her full faith in poetry and her story reveals the saving grace of creativity in a woman’s life.
Here’s a link to an interview she did on C-SPAN: InaCoolbrithBookDiscussion
For more information on Aleta George or the book, visit aletageorge.com.
CONGRATS ALETA!
