Bonnie Ditlevsen

Bonnie Ditlevsen, founding editor of Penduline Press in Portland, Oregon, has worked extensively with emerging and established writers, poets, and visual artists as a curator, editor, and events organizer. She emigrated at age 19 to frosty, rum-soaked Quebec, then to Mozart’s birthplace in Austria, and then to Munich, where she studied linguistics and translation at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität. She was there for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sudden rush of people from the east to the west, influencing her decision to complete a master’s degree in English/TESL. In the aftermath of Tiananmen, she moved to central China as a guest university faculty member in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, and taught academic writing, also discovering a keen interest in jazz and blues vocals. While living and teaching in the Czech Republic, she took part in several jazz, alt-jazz, and blues ensembles. In Portland, she began a rigorous course of study in creative writing at the Attic Institute as well as with Ariel Gore’s School for Wayward Writers. In the last five years she has focused her energies solely on high soprano classical voice studies, learning and performing music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras with the Bach Cantata Choir and with Portland's highly regarded early music program at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.