Ron L. Dowell

Shaking Hands: Crossing the Chasm, Sunday, May 7 at 5:00pm, Mt. View Mausoleum

Ron L. Dowell is the author of Watts UpRise, a poetry collection released by World Stage Press on July 13, 2022. Watts UpRise is a very public love letter to the city of Watts, Los Angeles. The collection honors its most notable artistic landmark, the Watts Towers, and its creator, Sabato Rodia. The Towers epitomize the beauty, strength, and resiliency of the city and its inhabitants and serve as a reminder that beautiful things must be kept heart close and loved. Ron’s poetry resides in Penumbra, Writers Resist, Oyster Rivers Pages, North Dakota Quarterly, The Wax Paper, Kallisto Gaia Press, The Penmen Review, Packingtown Review-Journal, and The Poeming Pigeon. Watts UpRise is a finalist for the 2022 Press 53 Award for Poetry, and a featured poem, “Compton, An Energy-Fueled Dark Star,” was nominated for a 2021 Pushcart Prize. https://crookedoutofcompton.com.

Books That Make a Difference: Parable of the Sower: The Autobiography of Malcolm X; The Spook Who Sat Next to the Door; Lucille Clifton’s poetry; The Color of Law; The End of Policing; Black Reconstruction in America; The Mis-Education of the Negro; The weary Blues; Our Nig; The Conjure Woman; The Bluest Eye; My Soul to Keep; Maya’s Notebook; Metamorphosis; Testify; In The Not Quiet Dark; Orientation and other stories; Dead Boys; Jesus’ Son; If I Were The Ocean, I’d Carry you Home; The Collected Poems of Sterling Brown; Uncle Tom’s Cabin.