Stephen James Kessler

Background

Stephen James Kessler was born on January 12, 1947, in Los Angeles, California, United States, to Jack and Nina (Ifland) Kessler.

Education

Stephen attended the University of California in Los Angeles. In 1968, he received a Bachelor of Arts from Bard College and a Master of Arts from the University of California in Santa Cruz, in 1969.

Career

Since 1969, Stephen has been working as a freelance poet, translator, essayist, critic and journalist. From 1973 to 1979, he worked as an editor and publisher at Green Horse Press in Santa Cruz, California. Since publishing his first chapbooks of poetry in 1975, Los Angeles native Stephen James Kessler has done literary work, including translations of fiction and poetry, editing, criticism, and writing his own poetry. Among his translations are two books by Fernando Alegria, a collection of poems by Julio Cortazar called Save Twilight, and Ariel Dorfman’s novel Widows, which gives a veiled account of political abduction and murder in Chile.

From 1978 to 1989 Kessler edited the anthology irregularly published magazine Alcatraz, which featured a variety of poetry and prose. Also, from 1981 to 1986, Stephen was an associate editor at Santa Cruz Express and at The Sun magazine from 1986 to 1989.

In 1994, he also worked as an editor at the Outlook magazine and at The Redwood Coast Review in 1999.

Achievements

• Stephen James Kessler is known as a prolific writer. He is also known as a contributor of translations to periodicals and as a contributor to American Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Northwest, Minnesota Review, Oxygen, Hambone, and Poetry Flash.

Works

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• book

  • Written In Water: The Collected Prose Poems

    (While Cernuda’s verse is vivid testimony to various aspec...)

    2004
  • Changing Centuries

    (Presented in both English and Spanish, the 38 poems in th...)

    1984
  • The Mental Traveler

    (Fiction. At the dark end of the 1960s, a young poet is la...)

    2010
  • After Modigliani

    (Poetry. Widely acclaimed as a translator, essayist, criti...)

    2000
  • Tell It To the Rabbis and Other Poems 1977-2000

    (Poetry. Moving through a great range of moods and modes o...)

    2001
  • Nostalgia of the Fortuneteller 1975
  • Destruction or Love 1976
  • Poem to Walt Disney 1977
  • Thirteen Ways of Deranging an Angel 1977
  • Beauty Fatigue 1978
  • Living Expenses 1980
  • Alcatraz 1982

Connections

There is no exact information about Stephen's personal life and his wife, but it's only known that he has a daughter, Claire Kessler-Bradner.

Father:

Jack Kessler

Mother:

Nina (Ifland) Kessler

Daughter:

Claire Kessler-Bradner

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010