BreAnn Lynn Brandlen is a third generation Anchorage, Alaskan, Westsider.  She started her dealings in poetry by writing hate-lyrics in junior high, and then as a freshman at the alternative high school, Polaris, where she was lucky to have two pro-poetry teachers. By her senior year, she co-taught two poetry classes, won second place at the UAA High School Poetry Out-Loud Contest, opened up for Nuyorican Poet Edwin Torres at Out North, and self-published her first chapbook. She had also made a small reputation on the local poetry scene of Anchorage in the late nineties at poetry readings at the likes of The Roosevelt Cafè, The Java Joint, Cyrano's, Side Street Espresso, and Kaladi Brother's. She has some spoken word recordings and a poem or two on performance video, somewhere. She received an undergraduate degree from Seattle University in English/Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry, as well as a minor in Philosophy. She is in her third year of composing her thesis of her Master's of Fine Arts degree in Poetry from the University of Alaska Anchorage, where she also works as an assistantship-editor of Understory, the undergraduate literary and visual arts magazine. She has studied poetry in the small town of Allihies, Ireland, and has hopes of composing her first book-material while living in Scandinavia in the not-too-distant future. She is also a freelance writer for The Anchorage Press, where she sometimes shakes up the local music scene with overly honest reviews. In regards to poetry, she credits her own taste in music, art in general, her personal friends, Linda McCarriston, Don Winter, Brian Hendrickson, Anne Caston, Olena Kalytiak-Davis, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Jonathan Harrell for inspiring faith and inspiration in the fact that writing poems is, for her, the only path through life that makes sense. She hopes to earn a Doctorate's degree and have a first volume of poetry published by her thirtieth birthday, among other creative projects.