Known as La Loca (the crazy woman), this internationally acclaimed, prize-winning poet was born in Hollywood and raised in a poor, racially mixed neighbourhood in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, an area entrenched in anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia and violence. Today, the pain, pathos and people she knew in those early years, as well as the resilience and humour she developed in dealing with her difficult personal circumstances, are recurring themes and hallmarks of much of her award winning work. A graduate in Communications Arts & Film Studies, La Loca applied her skills in a number of capacities in the film industry before her first reading ot the celebrated Lhasa Club in Hollywood, after which her writing career exploded. But success has not always come easy, she was booed off the stage of an anti-censorship gig for having the temerity to recite "Why I Choose Black Men For My Lovers", an attack on white middle-class propriety. 

"The Mayan", a song of domestic violence, bigotry, the joys of adolescence and the resilience of youth. It is now included in her most famous collection of poems "Adventures On The Isle Of Adolescence". 

"La Loca's poems are the most acutely autobiographical... It becomes clear that she is a survivor (a recovered casualty more like it) of the Berkeley 60's and the indulgent 70's, Her tone is boisterous and the language and confessional candeur of the life revealed are jolting. But beneath the bravade, it seems to me, the sounds of pain and despair are only too easy to make out"