Miho Kinnas and Marc Olmsted
Miho Kinnas, a 2019 & 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee, is a Japanese poet, author, and translator. In 2023, a poetry collaboration with E. Ethelbert Miller, We Eclipse into The Other Side, was published by Pinyon Publishing, Best American Poetry 2023 selected her poem, Three Shrimp Boats On The Horizon, initially published in Wet Cement Magazine. Her translation appeared in Tokyo Poetry Journal Vol. 12. She is the author of two poetry collections: Today, Fish Only and Move Over, Bird (Math Paper Press). Kinnas serves as Artist in Residence or conducts various haiku/poetry workshops at, including Pat Conroy Literary Center, Life-Long Learning, Heritage Library, Richland Library, Island Writers Network, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, local schools, and Shanghai Literary Festival. She teaches translation at Tender Leaves Translation. She holds an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from the City University of Hong Kong.
Marc Olmsted has five books of poetry and has appeared in New Directions in Prose & Poetry, City Lights Journal, New York Quarterly, Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and a large international variety of small presses. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Olmsted received the San Francisco Acker Award for Poetry in 2014 along with David Meltzer and Ishmael Reed.
Marc began mindfulness meditation in 1974. Olmsted went on to become a student of Lama Tharchin Rinpoche in 1991 and completed a three-year retreat supervised by this great teacher. Afterwards, as a senior student, he was encouraged by Tharchin Rinpoche to teach at the San Francisco chapter of the Vajrayana Foundation, Last Chance Gompa. In time, Olmsted incorporated simple mindfulness meditation instructions into his poetry classes.
Allen Ginsberg said of Olmsted “…one of the few practitioners post-Kerouac that had picked up on the loose and lucid form that Kerouac had developed.” Olmsted’s 25 year relationship with Ginsberg is chronicled in his memoir Don’t Hesitate: Knowing Allen Ginsberg 1972-1997 – Letters and Recollections. For more on Marc and his work, visit his website.