Lance Carden has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. For many years, he was a writer and editor at The Christian Science Monitor. He also spent two years as editor of The Citizen Advocate, a newspaper published by Massachusetts Fair Share, an advocacy group organizing blue-collar neighborhoods statewide. In 1989, he wrote this book, Witness: An Oral History of Black Politics in Boston, 1920-1960, which was published by Boston College.
In 2013, he and his wife, Charlene Vincent, published Tuscan Retreat, a book of poems written during a long stay in Italy. In 2015, he published another book of poems titled City of Lions, A Poet’s Guide, celebrating the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine, Florida. In October of 2018, A Classic Theatre (ACT) gave a successful staged reading of his play Democracy’s Demise in St. Augustine. A full production scheduled for 2020 did not take place because of the coronavirus. Spiritual Exercise, another book of poetry, was published in 2019 by Wipf and Stock Publishers, who also published in 2021 his latest poetry book, The Civil War: It Ain’t Over Yet!
