Arlene Ladden is a Bronx-born native New Yorker. She holds a BA in English from SUNY at Buffalo and an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. She also has both an MA in English and a Ph.D in Comparative Literature from NYU, where she specialized in Medieval Studies. She is a full professor of English at LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) where she was actively involved in College and University governance: as college and University Senator; as member of the CUNY Council of Governance Leaders, as interim chair of the English Department; as President of the Faculty Council. In these capacities, she was a strong advocate for students, for faculty, for a strong liberal arts curriculum, and for continuing access to low-cost education for any student with the will to learn. Most recently, she appears in The Heretics, a feature film on the work and influence of the Heresies Collective, of which she was a founding member. This full-length documentary--which charts the Collective’s groundbreaking work and its influence on the Feminist arts movement--will have its NYC premiere at MOMA in October of 2009.

Arlene Ladden lives in Manhattan with her artist husband and their daughter Cassidy. She divides her time between NYC and upstate New York where she continues to privately but actively write poetry.