High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Leslie Scalapino (July 25, 1944 – May 28, 2010) was a United States poet, experimental prose writer, playwright, essayist, and editor, sometimes grouped in with the Language poets, though she felt closely tied to the Beat poets. A longtime resident of California`s Bay Area, she earned an M.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley. Among her works, Scalapino is the author of way (North Point Press, 1988), a long poem which won the Poetry Center Award, the Lawrence Lipton Prize, and the American Book Award.