Linda K. Sienkiewicz's Blog, page 10

Soul to Soul: Faye Rapoport DesPres

It’s all about connections:

Faye Rapoport DesPres is a multi-genre writer whom I’ve long admired. We met in the early 2000s through the same small press that published her memoir, Message from a Blue Jay, and my novel, In the Context of Love. Both of us have also published a children’s book (except Faye published an entire series!). We’ve had some of the same mentors, too, like the late Michael Steinberg. I invited her to talk about her newest release, a collection of inspiring stories.

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The Little Pill and Deanna’s Big Story to Tell

You know the TV commercial…

And it probably annoys the heck out of you because after you hear it, the tune plays in your head on endless repeat. I bet you could sing it in your sleep. That’s the power of a good jingle.

Whenever the Jardiance ad aired, I looked away. If I couldn’t mute the TV, I stuck my fingers in my ears and said “nanananana.” I asked my husband “Look at her! Who IS this crazy woman and why is she so freaking happy?”

I really, really wanted to know who she was a...

What, Why, How: Andrew Collard

What:

I write poetry! My first book of poems, Sprawl, won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and was recently published by Ohio University Press. Sprawl is about life in the metropolis of southeast Michigan centered on Detroit. It attempts to evoke the complex relationships between various people and places within that metropolis, as well as Detroit’s relationship to other places. The opening poem, “Diorama,” deals with some of those issues directly and is something of an ars poetica. At so...

Love at 350° A delicious romance-comedy

Welcome fellow Detroit author, Lisa Peers, to my blog:

Lisa Peers and I met many years ago at a Detroit Working Writers Conference. I remember her sitting at the table in the conference room with her latest book, Love and Other B-Sides. So much time and so many books have happened since then for the both of us! Lisa has a brand new book to celebrate, Love at 350°, that Booklist describes as “Scrumptiously entertaining . . . Fans of a certain popular British baking show will be giddy with ...

What, Why, How: Sarah Carson

What: 

This neighborhood, our boulevards, neighbor boys’ whose long legs count cement stoops, whose daddies warm motorcycles on the driveway, whose mommas can’t leave their card tables, tell these men to ride along. South of the mailboxes, the box elder tree, the box truck now half empty, there was no justice but one solder burn, one pen knife. Momma held us to her thigh as warning. What is a trailer park anyway if not a tire fire, burning barrel? A mirror where the bed fit. The way a sl...

Ch-ch-changes

How you doing?

No, how are you really doing, post pandemic? We’ve come a long way since 2019, with so much progress in vaccines and treatment, for those of us who believe in science, anyway. A few weeks ago, I got my updated COVID shot, followed by the RSV (I keep wanting to call it RSVP), pneumococcal pneumonia, and the “senior” flu vaccine. I feel like a pincushion.

Good Changes

Remembering the start of the pandemic made me think about the changes in my everyday life since then:

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What, Why, How: Craig Terlson

What:

I’ve always been a maker of things; I actually prefer that moniker to the somewhat loaded term “artist.” The first things I made were illustrations. I was lucky enough to draw and paint for a living for more than twenty-six years. Now, I make stories. I’ve written six novels, a bucket of short fiction (published in literary journals and made into a collection), and one really weird novella. Somewhere in-between all that, I wrote three plays together with my daughter. Having them pr...

Text me. or text me

Don’t sweat punctuation…

Michelle Markowitz, co-author of Hey Ladies!: The Story of 8 Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails, a book about off-the-rails group messages, is quoted in the WaPo:

“We’re done fighting over capital letters and punctuation. Sorry, sticklers — this ship has sailed. A good text makes sense to its recipient, but that shouldn’t require consulting an SAT grammar workbook.” After years of reduced social contact, [Markowitz] is happy when someone reache...

View Master of Worries: 3 am overthinking

In the middle of the night:

I shift positions, check the time, punch the pillow into a fresh shape, and then lay there. The worries begin. Always the same concerns: Will my kids find happiness? Will the planet be hospitable when my grandkids are adults? How will I die? Who will care for the dogs? Did Don remember to shut the refrigerator door before he came to bed?

Don likens this fretting in the middle of the night to looking through one of those old View-Masters, where you drop in th...

Sleepwalker Reviewed in MER

Grateful

I’m so pleased to share this review by poet Joy Gaines-Friedler that appeared in MER: Motherhood, Literature, Art.

The other day I saw an infant t-shirt for sale that read “I come without instructions.” It made me think even more deeply about Linda Sienkiewicz and her extraordinary book of poetry, Sleepwalker. Having a child is the most life-altering event in our lives that comes without instruction. “Our eldest child is missing from the picture/he will always be missing,...