Eric Paul Shaffer Biography

Eric Paul Shaffer is author of five books and one chapbook of poems. LAHAINA NOON (Leaping Dog Press,2005) contains poems of local life in the Hawai‘ian islands and received a 2006 Ka Palapala Po‘okela Book Award of Excellence from the Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association. LIVING AT THE MONASTERY, WORKING IN THE KITCHEN (Leaping Dog Press,2001) and PORTABLE PLANET (Leaping Dog Press,2000) contain poems written on Okinawa during the eight years he lived in Japan. INSTANT MYTHOLOGY (Backer Editions,1999) is a chapbook of selected favorite poems. RATTLESNAKE RIDER (Longhand Press,1990) contains poems of living, traveling, and exploring in New Mexico and California. KINDLING: POEMS FROM TWO POETS (Longhand Press,1988) contains early poems by Shaffer and his long-time friend James Taylor III. He also edited and wrote a critical introduction for Lew Welch's HOW I READ GERTRUDE STEIN (Grey Fox Press,1996) . THE FELONY STICK, a chapbook of his short fiction was published in 2006, and BURN & LEARN, his first novel, will appear in late 2007 or early 2008. Shaffer is the recipent of the 2002 Elliot Cades Award for Literature, an endowed literary award presented each year to an established writer in Hawai‘i.