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Lori Jakiela

Goodreads Author

Born

The United States

Twitter

lorijakiela

Genre

Memoir, Poetry

Member Since

December 2007

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Lori Jakiela is the author of seven books, including the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, which received the Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University, was a finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award and the Housatonic Book Award, and was named one of 20 Not-To-Miss Nonfiction Books of 2015 by The Huffington Post.

Her most recent book, They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So, is forthcoming from Atticus Books in October 2023.

Her most recent collection of poems, How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen? Poems at Mid-Life, received the 2021 Wicked Woman Prize from Baltimore's Brickhouse Books and was a September 2022 Book Club Read

Her Lori Jakiela is the author of seven books, including the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, which received the Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University, was a finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award and the Housatonic Book Award, and was named one of 20 Not-To-Miss Nonfiction Books of 2015 by The Huffington Post.

Her most recent book, They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So, is forthcoming from Atticus Books in October 2023.

Her most recent collection of poems, How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen? Poems at Mid-Life, received the 2021 Wicked Woman Prize from Baltimore's Brickhouse Books and was a September 2022 Book Club Read

Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, LA Cultural Weekly, Brevity, Chautauqua Magazine, Belt, and more. The actress Kristin Bell performed Jakiela's essay, "The Plain Unmarked Box Arrived," on The New York Times' Modern Love podcast on WBUR, and Jakiela has been featured on NPR and in PBS's "People Who Write Books Around Here," a documentary by Pittsburgh legend Rick Sebak.

Jakiela has performed her poems at Lollapalooza and was the winner of the first-ever Pittsburgh Literary Death Match.

Her work has been widely anthologized, most recently in The Best of Brevity: 20 Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction (ed. Zoe Bossiere and Dinty Moore).

A former international flight attendant, Jakiela directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, teaches creative writing in the doctoral program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and leads many community workshops. For four years, she co-directed the Summer Writers Festival at Chautauqua Institution. She was a co-founder of Veterans Write, a program that offered free writing workshops to veterans and their families.

The recipient of multiple Golden Quill Awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, her column, "Let Yourself Go," appears regularly in Pittsburgh Magazine. She lives in her hometown--Trafford, Pennsylvania (the last stop in Pittsburgh's Electric Valley) --with her husband, the author Dave Newman, and their children. ...more

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Lori Jakiela's Blog

Readers' Favorite Review of They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice

Thanks to Readers' Favorite Review for this sweet advance review of They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So. Pub date is October 31, 2023 from Atticus Books.

*****

Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite
Five Stars

They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So is a work of non-fiction in the memoir, medicine, and
inspirational sub Read more of this blog post »

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Published on September 19, 2023 08:35 • Tags: review

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Lori Jakiela’s books

Average rating: 4.21 · 852 ratings · 183 reviews · 19 distinct works • Similar authors

	Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe 4.54 avg rating — 137 ratings — published 2015 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Miss New York Has Everything 3.50 avg rating — 158 ratings — published 2006 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious 4.28 avg rating — 122 ratings — published 2013 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker: On Work and the Writing Life 4.26 avg rating — 46 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So 4.60 avg rating — 40 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Spot the Terrorist! 4.63 avg rating — 32 ratings — published 2012 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Mill Hunk's Daughter Meets the Queen of Sky 4.28 avg rating — 18 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	All Skate: True Stories from Middle Life by Lori Jakiela (Goodreads Author), Michele McDannold (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Lou Ickes (Contributor) 4.50 avg rating — 10 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen? Poems at Mid-Life 4.86 avg rating — 7 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Big Fish 4.40 avg rating — 5 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Lori rated a book it was amazing Better Than The Best American Poetry by Dave Newman	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Oct 05, 2025 06:22PM · like
Lori rated a book it was amazing Dissolution of Ghosts by Berwyn Moore	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 12, 2024 07:21PM · like

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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To Be Renamed... ...: September 2016 - Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children	1	8	Aug 31, 2016 06:19PM

Lori’s Quotes

“I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.”
― Jim Harrison

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