Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperSanFrancisco), Dictionary Poems (Pudding House Publications), and The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel (HarperCollins), which won Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize for Fiction in Support of a Literature of Social Change. Her second novel, Self Storage, was published by Ballantine in 2007.
Gayle’s poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies (such as Salon.com, The Nation, and The Mississippi Review) and have received several awards, including the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award, a Barbara Mandigo Kelley Peace Poetry Award, and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Her essay on the meaning of liberty was one of three included in the Statue of Liberty’s Centennial time capsule in 1986. In 2004, The Writer Magazine honored Gayle with “A Writer Who Makes a Difference” Award.
Gayle holds a BA in “Poetry and Movement: Arts of Expression, Meditation and Healing” from the University of Redlands, and an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction from Antioch University. She is writer in residence for the Mission Inn Foundation’s Family Voices Project, and has taught at universities, libraries, community centers, and writing conferences around the country. Gayle is also a community activist and was recently named Communications Goddess of the international women’s peace organization, CODEPINK. She lives in Riverside, California, with her husband and two children.