Shannon Hammermeister is a fourth-year freshman at UCLA and her goal is to
become a veterinarian because she loves children . . . oops, wrong
introduction. She is currently pursuing her M.A. at the University of You
Never Leave Vegas and plans on a long, scandal-wracked career as a
poetry/theater groupie (i.e. academic). She was born in Tacoma, Washington
and since then has moved over fifty times in her twenty-seven years, a fact
that undoubtedly has affected her ars poetica, but, for the life of her, she
cannot think of how. She blames her unusual tendency to move once or twice a
year on the gypsy blood mixed up with her Helga-from-the-highlands ancestry
and her addiction to packing tape, cardboard boxes, and rearranging
furniture. She has lived in Las Vegas for nine years (in nine different
houses/apartments) which, she thinks, qualifies her as a native and/or
long-time survivor.
Shannon has many deep and profound poetic influences, but since she has
started writing her thesis on the radical feminist playwright Paula Vogel,
she cannot tell you any of them. She can, however, define the Brechtian
theatrical technique of Verfremdungseffekt and discuss the intricacies of the
feminist pornography debates of the 1980s. She prides herself on being a
feminist, a hedonist and a sado-masochist (i.e. graduate student). Because
she has the unique ability to pick up any faint music that is playing in the
immediate vicinity and start humming it, you'll often find her riding up and
down elevators, trying to figure out the lyrics to "Whiter Shade of Pale."
She currently resides with her orange tabby tomcat Simon (whose greatest joy
is to chew upon her toes at four in the morning) and her sister Heather.
Although she had a stint of blonde-ambition, Shannon's hair is currently a
serious, sober brown.