Gail Rudd Entrekin grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, earned a Masters degree in English literature from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to the Bay Area in 1978. She worked as a sales clerk, switchboard operator, bookkeeper, girl Friday for a television production company, waitress, overseas telephone operator, copy writer, public relations coordinator, advertising production manager, word processor, secretary, and assistant editor of a boating magazine. In 1984 Gail married poet/novelist/computer consultant Charles Entrekin and after eight years in Berkeley, where they hosted the Berkeley Poets Workshop & Press while putting the final touches on the rearing of Demian and Caleb, they moved to Nevada City, California, and brought up Ben, Nathan and Katy.
They founded Hip Pocket Press and published books by various poets over the 13 years there, as well as founding the online magazines Sisyphus (Charles) and Canary (Gail), an online magazine of the environment and its state of endangerment. Gail also founded the Women’s Writing Salon, both an online publication and a monthly gathering for women to air works in progress among their peers.
In 2008 they returned to Berkeley and in 2013 moved over the hill to Orinda, where they continue to publish books and both online magazines. Their five children found partners and all live nearby in the East Bay.
Gail & Charles have a German shepherd, Stella, seven grandsons, one granddaughter, three grandcats and three granddogs. For the past years Gail has been caring for Charles, who has gone blind from glaucoma and has Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Parkinson’s Disease.
Gail is a poet, editor, publisher, teacher, quilt maker and hiker. Books of her poems include The Art of Healing (with Charles Entrekin) (2016), Rearrangement of the Invisible (2012), Change (Will Do You Good) (2005), which was nominated for the Northern California Book Award, You Notice the Body (1998) and John Danced (1988). Her poems have been widely published in poetry magazines and anthologies. She is co-publisher and Poetry Editor of Hip Pocket Press, where she served as Editor of the 2002 anthology Sierra Songs & Descants: Poetry & Prose of the Sierra and the 2007 anthology, Yuba Flows. She is Editor of the on-line literary magazine of the environment, Canary, founded in 2007. She has taught English and Creative Writing in California community colleges for 25 years, most recently at Sierra College in Grass Valley, and for many years she has taught poetry to kids through California Poets in the Schools. She currently serves as Director of the Entrekin Foundation, a funder of non-profit programs for the endangered environment, children, and the arts.
When Gail became interested in textile art in 2010, she began to design and create large quilts. They can be viewed at her Facebook page, Gail’s Designer Quilts and at her Etsy account of the same name.
