Writing

From 1978 through 1980, the Waterfront Writers and Artists produced three self-published chapbooks and a full-length anthology (published by Harper & Row). Blending firsthand knowledge of dock work with literary chops, their output includes poetry, prose, and plays interspersed with photographs and illustrations by Brian Nelson and Frank Silva. As Robert Carson put it in the introduction to the first chapbook, their writing seeks “to uphold the lure and the lore of the sea, preserved by an ongoing oral tradition,” while also offering readers “a better understanding of the problems of men trying to hold on to and use their creative talents in a dehumanized and automated environment.”

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• ◦Lee Olds. Too Much Sun. The Vanguard Press, 1960. (Novel)
• ◦George Benet. The Hoodlums. Avon Books, 1953. Republished by Stark House Press, 2021. (Novel)
• ◦George Benet. A Place in Colusa. Singlejack Books, 1978. (Novel)
• ◦George Benet. A Short Dance in the Sun. Lapis Press, 1988. (Novel)
• ◦Tom Wayman (editor). Going for Coffee: Poetry on the Job. Harbour Publishing, 1981. (Poetry anthology)
• ◦Frank Silva and Gene Dennis. Waterfront: Longshoremen in the Era of American Labor. True North Editions, 2016. (Photographs and poetry.)
• ◦Herb Mills. Presente: A Dockworker Story. Hard Ball Press, 2023. (Novel)