Bio
Bio
Lyn Coffin is the author of three books of poetry: Crystals of the Unforeseen, (Plainview Press; it also contains drama and fiction); Human Trappings, (Abattoir Editions); and The Poetry of Wickedness (Ithaca House). She is also the author of four books of translation: one from the Russian (Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova; W.W. Norton), and three from the Czech (Jiri Orten; Jaroslav Seifert; Miloslava Holubova). One of Lyn’s fictions appeared in Best American Short Stories 1979, edited by Joyce Carol Oates.
She won a grant from the Michigan Council of the Arts (and worked with students at the Gibson School for the Gifted) and from NEH, for a collection of translations. Her plays have been performed at the Attic Theatre in Detroit and several theaters in Ann Arbor, including the Performance Network, the Kraft Theatre, the Trueblood, and the Civic Theatre. She has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in over fifty quarterlies and small magazines, as well as the Catholic Digest and Time magazine. The Academy of American Poets awarded her first prize in a Translation Competition judged by William Meredith, and while she was at the University of Michigan (Phi Beta Kappa, 1965), Ms. Coffin won Major and Minor Hopwoods in every category (Drama, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Poetry, and Essay.)
She was for a long time an editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review, and has three Masters Degrees. She was part of a four-person team (the only woman) representing Ann Arbor at the 1998 National Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas. With Professor Zdenka Brodska, of the University of Michigan, Ms. Coffin translated and adapted for the stage Milan Uhde’s radio play, “Ave Maria, Played Softly.” She and her daughter, Skye, 15, toured locally in 1998 with her play, “The Maze in the Aquarium,” and were favorably reviewed in The Ann Arbor News. Several of Lyn’s dramas, including “Maze,” “Ave Maria,” and “Fries in a Wineglass” have been performed live on the radio, and produced on cable television stations. One of her short plays was showcased in The Heartland Theater’s spring festival, a ten-minute drama for which she served also as an actor and a director; in the same festival, Lyn also directed New York playwright Nira Lipner’s “Pearls.” Her play, “Tonsils and Adenoids” was a finalist (out of two thousand plays) in the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville Short Play Competition.
She has given poetry readings with Nobel Prize Winners Joseph Brodsky and Czeslaw Milosz, and Philip Levine. She was a member of the Ann Arbor Storytellers’ Guild, and has been a featured storyteller at Washtenaw College. Her poetry and fiction were featured in Wind Eyes, an anthology of writing by eight women writers across the country, and two dramas she wrote based on fiction in this anthology were featured at the Performance Network’s “Theatrical Evenings.” She was a member of the Purple Rose Playwriting Lab until its demise in 1998, and then one of five playwrights involved in their Playwright/Actor/Director Lab. She directed Larry Shue’s “The Foreigner” to good reviews in downtown Detroit in the same year. Until she moved to Seattle, Lyn was active in Michigan Playwrights, Ann Arbor Playwrights, and Detroit Women Writers. She was a regular presenter at DWW’s conferences.
One of her musicals was performed in middle and elementary schools for two years by The Goodtime Players. Lyn was a Guest Artist at Joyce Uzelak’s drama camp. Her poems appear(ed) online in Afternoon, Motley Focus, Blue Moon Review, and elsewhere. She served as a poetry columnist for AOL’s PoetryList. She has read at Elliott Bay Bookstore and the Magnolia Bookstore in the Seattle area, and will launch the Writers and Work series at Hugo House in April. She will read at the Distinguished Writers’ Series in Tacoma this December.