Coleman will deliver the university's third annual Phenomenal Women Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. in the Grand Salon of the University Student Union, located on the east side of the campus off Zelzah Avenue.

Coleman, who received a Phenomenal Woman Award from the university's Women's Studies Department last year, will talk about "Recreating Yourself: How the Creative Process Heals, Redefines and Revives."

A former medical secretary, magazine editor, journalist and scriptwriter, Los Angeles-based Coleman has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation for her poetry. In 1999, she won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.

Her poetry books include Bathwater Wine, Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Tremors, Hand Dance, African Sleeping Sickness, A War of Eyes & Other Stories, Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems & Stories and Mercurochrome: New Poems. She has also written Mambo Hips & Make Believe: A Novel.

A 6 p.m. reception will be held in the Grand Salon before the lecture.

For more information, call the Women's Studies Department at (818) 677-3110.