Jacqueline Derner Tchakalian, a poet and visual artist, has lived in five different states and seven cities in California. Trained as a visual artist, she discovered writing poetry later in life, at which time she quit painting for ten years. A past co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets Series and the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, her poems have appeared in Eclipse, So to Speak, California Quarterly, Westward 4, and other publications. She was a finalist in the 2010 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival Poetry Contest and the 2007 Conflux Press Artists Books Contest. She currently lives in Woodland Hills, CA.