Diana Cohen

Diana Cohen was born and raised in northern New Jersey and attended Oberlin College in Ohio where she majored in creative writing and women’s studies. She moved to Portland in 1986 and has held myriad jobs in various fields including DJ, janitor, carpenter, bookstore manager, and mediator. She published her first collection of poems, Grasp: Selected Poems from the First 30 Years, in 1995.

Since then, she has been focusing on her moneymaking career, which is not poetry. She earns her living in corporate America as a fabrication technician in a microchip facility. She also recently received her associate of general studies degree, and is currently working towards a bachelors degree in management and organizational communication through Marylhurst College.

Diana has read and performed her work all over Portland including at Portland’s International Women’s Day celebration, and in other states such as at her mom's Unitarian Church in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, and at political events such as the anti-Oregon Citizens Alliance Walk for Love and Justice.

Her work has been published in Spoon River Poetry Review, Rain City Review, and three anthologies: Sister/Stranger, The Unitarian Universalist Poets, and the soon to be released Between Our Lips. She won an honorable mention in the National Billee Murray Denny Contest.

Diana has performed her poetry in the 3-woman show Dykes Using Our Mouths: Revolutionary Poetics, in Love Cabaret at Dreamswell Studio, and for The Way Back, an arts event for women healing from abuse.