William Minor

William Minor was originally trained as a visual artist (Pratt Institute and U.C.-Berkeley), and exhibited woodcut prints and paintings at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Smithsonian Institution, and other museums. His woodcut prints incorporated the text of Russian, Modern Greek, and Japanese poetry--which he also translated.

He began to write poetry as a graduate student in Language Arts at San Francisco State (1963), producing his first book containing poems and woodcut prints, Pacific Grove, in 1974. Bill has, since that time, published six more books of poetry—most recently Some Grand Dust (for which he was a finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award), and Gypsy Wisdom: New & Selected Poems.

A jazz writer with over 150 articles to his credit, Bill has also published three books on music: Unzipped Souls: A Jazz Journey Through the Soviet Union, Monterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years (Angel City Press; Bill served as scriptwriter for the Warner Bros. film documentary based on the latter, same title as book), and Jazz Journeys to Japan: The Heart Within.

A professional musician since the age of sixteen, Bill set poems from For Women Missing or Dead to music and recorded a CD--Bill Minor & Friends (on which he plays piano, tenor guitar, and sings). A second CD, Mortality Suite, offers original poems and music. Bill was also commissioned to write a suite of original music and voice script: Love Letters of Lynchburg.

Bill was “first grand prize winner” in a national essay contest, “What Music Means to Me,” sponsored by RPMDA (Retail print Music Dealers Association). More biographical information and links are available at www.bminor.org.