Sharmagne Leland-St. John

'''Sharmagne Leland-St. John''' (born May 23, 1946) is an American poet. Leland-St. John is best known for the poem "I Said Coffee", for which she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2007. She has received a total of 21 Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2013 International Book Award honoring Excellence in Mainstream and Independent Publishing for best poetry anthology.

Early life
Her father Jerome was an animal trapper in the jungles of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. During her childhood, he collected exotic animals to supply zoos and private estates. She also had a pheasant farm and quail ranch in Mexico City and eventually settled in Tarzana, California.

When Leland-St. John was three years old, her father left the family, sued for custody, won, and then placed her and her older sister in a Catholic convent. In 1958, her father returned to the U.S. and brought his daughters to live with him and his new wife in Tarzana, which caused his wife to leave him.

Career
In the mid-1960s, she met Peter Yarrow from the folk singing group Peter, Paul and Mary and started dating him. Through the group's road manager, she was introduced to guitarist Peter Walker, with whom she began performing in concert and writing song lyrics. Under the name Peter and the Countess, they performed in venues such as The Fillmore East and West, The Psychedelic Super Market in Boston, The Ark in San Francisco, and The Ash Grove in Los Angeles. In addition to Peter and the Countess, Leland-St. John and Walker formed the band Orient Express, which included Bruce Langhorne and Lowell George. They also performed the music behind Timothy Leary’s slide shows, "Celebrations".

In the late 1960s, while working for songwriter Jimmy Webb, Leland-St. John began writing poetry and song lyrics. She collaborated with Yarrow and Walker, as well as several other well-known composers, including Darby Slick, Jefferson Airplane, Hedge Capers, Hedge and Donna and Wes Farrell. At age 19, she co-wrote two episodes of the TV series "The Beverly Hillbillies." Leland-St. John was close friends with actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski. She lived with her boyfriend Jay Sebring, who, along with Tate, was murdered by members of the Manson Family in August 1969.

In the 1970s, Leland-St. John acted in TV commercials and appeared in features and on TV. She later returned to writing and published seven books of poetry and prose. With a journalist, she co-wrote the memoir her husband, Richard Sylbert, had begun but left unfinished at the time of his death, titled Designing Movies: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist (2006). She has also overseen the publication of the online journal Quill and Parchment for the past 22 years.

In 2001, Leland-St. John designed her first film Tricks. She co-directed and co-produced the short film Being with Eddie in 2003. Her short film screenplay, Butterfly Catcher, was filmed by the Native American Film and TV Alliance (NAFATA) in 2004.

Personal life
Leland-St. John is the widow of Richard Sylbert. They had two children: a boy, Nikolai, who lived for only a few hours (her poem "Tiny Warrior" was written about him), and a daughter, Daisy Alexandra. She now splits time between Pasadena, California, her private fly-fishing lodge in Washington, an adobe in Taos, New Mexico, and a villetta in Florence, Italy