Lauren Wheeler

I have this dream of retiring to a lavender farm in the south of France and running slow-motion through the fields wearing long, flowy dresses while my own personal trip hop soundtrack plays in the background. That's pretty awesome, right?

Lauren Wheeler is a recovering slam poet who competed at the National Poetry Slam in 1998, as a member of the renegade Team SF-Mission District, and again in 1999, as a member and the coach of Team Ithaca, NY. She has featured at Cornell University, where she studied English Literature, as well as in Los Angeles, Miami, and throughout the Bay Area. Lauren curated and hosted two poetry series in Ithaca, Tongue & Groove at Stella's Wine and Whiskey Bar and Re-Verse at the Oak Café, and was a core organizer of the ForWord Girls poetry and spoken word festival in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Lodestar Quarterly, Other Magazine, Spindle Magazine, 365tomorrows, and PANK Magazine.

Lauren is a member of San Francisco-based go-go dance troupe Poor Impulse Control and can often be found stomping around on a box at local EBM, industrial, and goth nights as well as the award-winning burlesque and variety show Hubba Hubba Revue at the DNA Lounge.

Lauren also has two alter-egos:

Lola Vauntz, a burlesque performer who likes to think of herself as a semi-naked comedienne. Her witty and wacky performances have audiences not just wolf-whistling but also howling with laughter.

DJverse, who spins tech house, industrial, and whatever else ends up in her record bag.

Professionally, Lauren has several years of experience in project management, localization, and video game production under her belt, including time at Three Rings Design, maker of Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, Shockwave.com, and Electronic Arts' Maxis studio, where Lauren was a producer on the award-winning game The Sims 2. (Here's her resume.)

If you'd like to contact Lauren, you can reach her here.