Dragon Gate Press records, 1976-1998

Dragon Gate, Inc., a short story and poetry publishing house, was established in Port Townsend, Washington, with some administrative operations in Seattle. The press was founded in 1979 by Gwen Head, and ceased publication in 1987, having produced about 20 volumes. Dragon Gate’s first book, Henry Carlile’sRunning Lights, was published in 1981.New as a Waveby Eve Triem was awarded a Western States Book Award.

Gwen Head was born on April 12, 1940 in New Orleans, Louisiana to parents Elsie Zaffarine Scott and Harry Gwen Head. She attended Southern Methodist University, Trinity University, and St. Mary’s University. Her first published set of poems appeared inPoetry Northwestin 1967, followed by published collections of poems that includedSpecial Effects(1975),The Ten Thousandth Night(1979),Frequencies: A Gamut of Poems(1992), andFire Shadows(2001).

Head has received several awards for her writing includingPoetry Northwest’s Helen Bullis Prize, the Anne Sexton Fellow at the 1975 Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, anAspen Anthologyfiction prize, and a 1995 literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts . Head taught at the Aspen Writers’ Conference, the Writers at Work Conference in Park City, Utah, the University of California at Davis, and The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In Iowa, Head and a team of three editors produced a special triple issue of theIowa Review, focusing on contemporary women writers. This issue was later published in book form by Macmillan in 1982 under the title,Extended Outlooks.

In addition to her work at Dragon Gate, Head was also involved with David Romtvedt in the creation of Poets for Peace, a group of writers protesting the arrival of the Trident Fleet Ballistic Missile submarines at the Naval base in Bangor, WA.

She is married to biographer Bernard Taper.