James Tyner has been writing for only a few years, and still considers himself new to poetry. In that short time, he has won the Andres Montoya Scholarship, the Larry Levis Prize, the Ernesto Trejo Poetry Prize, and the Coal Hill Review Chapbook contest. His thesis, a book of poetry titled “Baptized in Dirt,” was voted most outstanding thesis of 2009 from California State University, Fresno. His writing takes place in Los Angeles and the California Central Valley, the two places that made him who he is. A struggling pacifist, Tyner writes poetry about the violent gang world he came from and the effects of violence around him in order to help him make sense of the world he lives in.

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