Author and Poet Lucille Gang Shulklapper

Author and Poet Lucille Gang Shulklapper

Author and Poet: Lucille Gang Shulklapper

Children’s Picture Book; Out of Bed Fred, Rain Publishing, 2008

In school, I could never draw a straight line or sing on key, but in my head, I drew word pictures and heard them sing. Paper dolls spoke, clothes moved on my bedroom chair, a stuffed elephant named Umbriago dried my tears. My father encouraged me to write poetry and stories from the time he saw my childish scrawl. Living up to traditional expectations after his death led to working as a salesperson, model, realtor, teacher, and curriculum specialist throughout schooling, marriage, children, and grandchildren; limiting my story-telling to scraps of paper in a drawer.After writing countless stories and poems for my students in an effort to get them to read ...perhaps 500 a month... I successfully sent my own work out when I retired; but, my greatest success was with reluctant readers.

I once brought in a model kit for a student who was an electronic whiz who refused to read. Instead, he took one look at the pieces, and assembled them without reading the instructions. Somehow, I finally enticed him to read. Today, he heads an automotive plant. I love to experiment, and never drive home the same way if I can help it, so Out of Bed, Fred, a picture book began as another challenge. Poor Fred, started with that pitiful name. He farumphed, galumphed, harrumphed, and desperately tried to get out of bed. Then, he sang to me, and the word pictures drew themselves.

I was born and raised in Jamaica, N.Y. I hold a B.A. From Queens College of the City University of New York, and an M.A.

In reading from Manhattan College. I taught school in the Blind-Brook Rye School District inNew York where I developed and wrote a formal reading curriculum, ran a resource room program, and linked reading skills with literary skills. I prefer to think I taught children, and that learning to read taught them how to find pleasure and knowledge.

Presently, I'm a workshop leader for the Florida Center for the Book, the first affiliate of The Library of Congress. My fiction and poetry have been anthologized, and appear in numerous publications, including Still Going Strong, Poetic Voices Without Borders, Jerry Jazz Musician, Common Ground Review, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and Gulfstream. I have won awards and competitions, and am the author of three poetry chapbooks: What You Cannot Have, The Substance of Sunlight, and God, It’s Not Hollywood.I'm a member of The Mystery Writers of America, The Academy of American Poets, The Hannah Kahn Poetry Foundation, and an active member of Poets and Writers.

I live in Coral Springs, Florida with my husband, a retired pediatrician, and my cat OBE (yes, OBE spells her name in capital letters for Old Blue Eyes). I love my children, grandchildren, reading, volunteer tutoring, movies, clock collecting, museums, bookstores, music, sweets, and steamed lobster.

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http://members.aol.com/acinquain/WINTER-07/shulklapper.html
http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/mainHTML.cfmpage=shulklapper.html
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http://millerspondpoetry.com/index.phppage=vol7_3webhttp://www.princetonol.com/groups/artsreview/