Biography
Born in San Francisco from an immigrant Italian father and a sixth generation Californian, Art Goodtimes spent seven years in a Catholic seminary, earned a B.A. in English from San Francisco State University (1970), and got a lifetime teaching credential from U.C. Berkeley Extension (1978).
Currently working as a non-profit program director, he served five terms on the San Miguel County Board of Commissioners as Colorado’s only Green Party partisan-elected official [1997-2017]. He’s been an award-winning member of over 50 boards, commissions and committees on the local, regional, state and national levels. He’s been connected with the Telluride Mushroom Festival in various capacities for over 40 years and is a long-term trustee and former president of the Telluride Institute.
Twice director of the Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities (1980-81, 1995-96), Art has worked as pre-school teacher and director, as well as a freelance writer, journalist, editor and columnist for publications around the Western Slope. His poems appear monthly in the online Colorado Times Recorder.
Art’s been the poetry editor of Twin Peaks (with Sharon Skolnick, San Francisco, 1979), Earth First! Journal (Tucson, 1981-91), Wild Earth (Vermont, 1992-2000), and the Mountain Gazette (2011-13). He’s currently poetry editor for Fungi magazine out of Illinois and the online poetry anthology, Sage Green Journal.
Founder of the Talking Gourds Poetry Program and the gourds circle tradition, he has performed alone and with others at bookstores, schools, libraries and coffeehouse venues all over the Southwest, as well as the Sparrows Poetry Festival in Salida, Café Nuba in Denver, the Festival of the Imagination in Del Norte, Heart of the Rockies Poetry Festival in Trinidad and the annual Crestone Poetry Festival.
In 2010, he was named the first Western Slope Poet Laureate at the first annual Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival in Carbondale. He, along with Daiva Chesonis and Ellen Metrick, have started performing regionally as the Writes Mesa Gang.
