Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop Team
Garland Lee Thompson, Jr.
As the Executive Artistic Director of a nearly 50-year-old theatre company, Garland Lee Thompson has made significant strides in the arts. An award-winning poet, actor, playwright, filmmaker, theater designer, and producer, Garland got his start in his hometown of Hollywood, acting in the film MADGAME, written by his father at the age of five. After moving to NYC in his early teens, he immersed himself in theater with some of the greatest companies, including The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, American Place Theatre, Negro Ensemble Company, New Federal Theatre, and the Big Apple Circus. At 18, Garland was hired as the first official sound and lighting engineer for the Blue Note Jazz Club, where he worked with legendary musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Carmen McCrae, and Betty Carter. From 1997 to 2007, he produced the West Coast Championship Poetry Slam at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur and brought the national recitation program POETRY OUT LOUD to Monterey County. He has collaborated with California Poets in the Schools and the Arts Council for Monterey County, and served as the 2007-08 Poet Laureate of Pacific Grove, CA. Until Covid-19 impacted the world, Garland produced and hosted the longest-running poetry slam and open mic in Monterey County—known as the Rubber Chicken Poetry Slam & Open Mic at the East Village Coffee Lounge in downtown Monterey. Currently, as the Executive Artistic Director, he leads the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop, a company founded by his father Garland Lee Thompson alongside notable figures such as Morgan Freeman and Billie Allen Henderson. In 2021, Garland is set to release his new book, GARLAND AT 18: NEW BOOK OF POEMS, published by Old Hat Press in Los Angeles.