Diane di Prima’s poetry collections include This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards (1958), the long poem Loba (1978, expanded 1998), and Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems (2001). She is also the author of the short story collection Dinners and Nightmares (1960), the semi-autobiographical Memoirs of a Beatnik (1968), and the memoir Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years (2001). She co-founded the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre and founded Eidolon Editions and the Poets Institute and, with Amiri Baraka, co-edited the literary magazine The Floating Bear from 1961 to 1969. She was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco in 2009.