Meet COLA author Lynne Thompson

Lynne Thompson is an African American poet who writes about her life experiences. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and started writing in 1995.

“I am retired from UCLA where I was the Director of Employee and Labor Relations for 20 years, now I write all the time and I’m the board of trustees at my Alma Mater’s Script College,” said Thompson.

Thompson has had two full-length collection of poetry released and has had a lot of work appear in national and international literary journals.

“I was a voracious reader and I wanted to write the kind of stories that I was reading but was also central to my own experience,” said Thompson.

Thompson considered her father as a “closet poet” because he did not work as hard as Thompson has in her career. Furthermore, her father played a role in influencing her because he loved poetry and language, and read poetry to her.

“Read everything you can, and read things that don’t come to you naturally,” said Thompson. “Anything that involves language is something that you can use.”