Alice Rogoff is from New Rochelle, New York and went to a large diverse high school, then a small college with lots of political activism in the 1960s, arrived in San Francisco in North Beach, was published in Amphora, Gypsy Table and the San Francisco Bark (an anthology) , then moved to the Castro, Noe Valley and the Mission, co-edited two anthologies of Noe Valley Poets Workshop, for awhile went to Maine and Mendocino, studied creative writing and drama at SF State and labor studies at SF City College, worked for a writers’ union and organized readings for Laborfest, was in a drama group that performed for seniors and is still an editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, which she’s done since 1984. Alice has lived in the Sunnyside since 1987, has two books of poetry, Mural and Barge Wood, and received a grant from the SF Arts Commission for poetry. Most recently, she has published fiction in Caveat Lector, and So To Speak and poetry in Blue Collar Review and Avocet.

As for Phyllis Holiday, she writes:  “Working class family in Idaho and Oregon, cowboy, bus driver Dad, Telephone Operator Mother, who read to me; Alice in Wonderland, “Little Women,”  fairy tales. She died when I was nine. A gypsy life after that. Decided early I had to write stories, and poems. Worked my way slowly at Lewis & Clark; William Stafford, very supportive. Then jobs of all kinds, family, theater….now, retired, published, prizes! A good life, with endless stories of Central Oregon, magic realism, and Laborfest Writers.”