Kathleen Bogan

(1947-2000)
Oregon

Kathleen Bogan was born on November 25, 1947, in Boston. She graduated from Choctawhatchee High School in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in 1965 and studied poetry with Donald Justice and Philip Booth at Syracuse University, where she earned an A.B. in English in 1969. She then went on to work in journalism and advertising before obtaining her law degree from Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College in 1980. After her graduation from law school, Bogan clerked for Justice Betty Roberts, first at the Oregon Court of Appeals, and then, after Justice Roberts was appointed to the Oregon Supreme Court continued to clerk for her from 1980 to 1982. She served as legal counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Joint Interim Committee on Judiciary from 1983 through 1985 and as human services coordinator for the City of Portland in 1985. Then she took a position as executive director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Council, which she held from 1985 until 1992 when she retired. In 1990, Bogan was a Fulbright professor in Berlin.

Bogan published her poetry in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Confrontation, Writers' Forum, Blue Satellite and Seattle Review. Her poetry appears in Katherine McAlpine & Gail White (eds.), The Muse Strikes Back: A Poetic Response of Women to Men (Brownsville, Oregon: Storyline Press, 1997) and Whitney Scott (ed.), Prairie Hearts: Women View the Midwest (Crete, Illinois: Outrider Press, 1996). She was awarded a writer's residency at Centrum Art Center in Fort Townsend, Wash., in 1998, and a Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center in the spring of that year. Her art work, which combines poetry, collage and assemblage, has been exhibited in Oregon and Washington.

Bogan died on September 25, 2000, in an accidental fall from a ladder at her home in Portland, Oregon. [Source: Northwest Florida Daily News, Obituaries, September 30, 2000]