Amber West

Dr. Amber West is a Lecturer in Writing Programs. Her interests include poetry and poetics, puppet theater, race and gender studies, performance studies, intersectionality, and service learning.

West earned her B.A. in Literature & Creative Writing from University of California, Santa Cruz, M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New York University, and Ph.D. in English from University of Connecticut.

West’s scholarship has been published in the Journal of Research on Women & Gender, Puppetry International, Episodes from a History of Undoing: The Heritage of Female Subversiveness, and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry & Material Performance. Her plays and “puppet poems” have been performed in NYC, CA, and CT. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Calyx, and Furies: A Poetry Anthology of Women Warriors. Finishing Line Press recently published her chapbook, Daughter Eraser, and her full-length poetry collection, Hen & God, is forthcoming from The Word Works in 2017.

Dr. West is co-founder and director of a bi-coastal artist collective called Alphabet Arts and creator of Puppets & Poets, a hybrid arts festival that she directed annually in NYC from 2011-2015. She has taught writing, trained writing teachers, and fundraised for writing programs in underserved communities for nearly two decades, first as an AmeriCorps VISTA, and then with nonprofits including Brooklyn Public Library, America SCORES, and Girls Write Now. She is thrilled to join the UCLA Writing Programs faculty in 2016-17.