New York City
Poetry
I was b orn in New Orleans, raised east of East L.A. , and started out a s a Screenwriting major at Loyola University , L . A. Two years later , I left for 20 years of acting ( theatre, film and television ) , the last ten years in New York City after my wife, actress Asta Hansen, and I moved east. We founded and ran The Catskill Actors Theatre , an Equity theatre for ten years . After s elling it, I went back to screenwriting at NYU where my mentor suggested a poetry class. I snickered a bit. Ignorance, he said, and I finally waded in . Remaining classes all were poetry. Next came a Sarah Lawrence College MFA, where I worked with D. Nurkse, Vijay Seshadri, Stephen Dobyns , etc. Since then , I worked with Heather McHugh and Jean Valentine. My first collection , “ The Book of Clay ” ( Wicked Rufous Press , 2017) , was cited by Kirkus Reviews as one of the recent outstanding independent press publications .
I publish under the name C.S. Nelson .