I’m delighted to have the opportunity to share the work of some of my writer friends. I hope you’ll enjoy their work and support their writing journey too.
Ghosts Rip Free, by Norma Bradley, is such a lovingly imagined book. It’s no accident that Bradley, in addition to being a virtuoso poet, is a virtuoso quilter. She writes exquisitely about, and out of, memory: the often-precarious art of arranging, then stitching together, remnants, swatches, ephemera, what’s been lost or forgotten, to create a stunning composite cosmos that the fragments lack – a pattern wrought of improvisation and intuition at once. What’s more, these poems, like a quilt, function as a genealogy, the plat and locus of the heart – over time, terrain, and ancestral devotion. Bradley has fashioned in this volume a praise-song to family and the willed act of memory, joined to language, that resurrects it. ~ Joseph Bathanti, North Carolina Poet Laureate (2012-14) & author of Land of Amnesia
Poet/multi-media visual artist, Norma Bradley grew up in New York City. Summers were spent upstate New York. A yearning to live in a more natural environment brought her to the mountains of North Carolina. Her experiences in both places inform the poems in this collection, as did the desire to have a greater understanding of her heritage and continued appreciation for our natural world.
Mary Fisher now has a writer’s website where you can read some of her beautiful memoir stories, essays, and poetry. http://maryfisherwrites.squarespace.com
Mary Fisher’s story, “Caught,” is posted at https://www.prometheusdreaming.com/caught. Here’s the first paragraph to give you a taste of this touching story.
“Helpless as a fish on a hook—that’s how I’d describe my Uncle Jay. That week I stayed with Aunt Marge, my cousin Maddie, and him, silent and separate from their struggles, I initially judged my aunt’s and cousin’s denial in sidelong glances and grimaces. In the end, I understood Aunt Marge, Maddie, and I were in the same boat. We were all caught.”
Wendy Miller’s creative non-fiction story, “Seconds Count,” has been published by the Sweet Tree Review and can be accessed at the following link. http://www.sweettreereview.com/seconds-count-wendy-miller
The poems of Creative Voices (Maxine Chauvaux, Suzanne Cottrell, Phyllis Castelli, Stanley Winborne, and Katherine Ravenel), my local writers’ group, were featured in issue #454 of The Weekly Avocet on August 15, 2021. My two poems were “Leisurely Observers” and “Longing.”
The poems of the Taste Life Twice Writers (Wendy Miller, Tanya Schmid, Mary Fisher, Akira Odani, and Suzanne Cottrell) were featured in issue #450 of The Weekly Avocet on July 18, 2021. My two poems were “Graced by a Dahlia” and “Pollinators’ Delight.”
Wesley Sims has published three chapbooks of poetry: When Night Comes, 2013; Taste of Change, 2019; and A Pocketful of Little Poems, 2020.
His work has appeared in Artemis Journal, Connecticut Review, G.W. Review, Liquid Imagination, Plum Tree Tavern, Novelty Magazine, Poem, Poetry Quarterly, Bewildering Stories, and others.
https://wesleysims884296882.wordpress.com/poetry-of-wesley-sims/
https://amazon.com/author/wes4words
Karen Jackson’s debut poetry chapbook, GRIT, which chronicles the life of her sister, Janis Luke Roberts, and her sister’s alter ego, Clancey the Clown, is now available from the bookstore at www.finishinglinepress.com, barnesandnoble.com, and www.amazon.com. Written in different forms, styles and voices, this honest and heart-warming collection captures the human spirit at work and vividly portrays the resilience of a creative mind. The poems also explore the sacred lineage and fear of clowns, making it, as award-winning poet Tina Barr writes, “a timely publication.”
For more information, contact Karen at karen@kljackson.net or visit her website at https://www.karenlukejackson.com/.
Cadence Mandybura is a writer and editor based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Learn more about her work and latest fiction publications at www.cadencemandybura.com and follow her on Twitter @cade_bura.
Wendy A. Miller lives in Oregon with her family. She has rediscovered her passion for writing now that her son is almost grown. Once upon a time, she worked for a public relations firm and holds an M.S. in Communications. She is a cancer survivor and military spouse. Her nonfiction essays have been published in Grown and Flown and Quail Bell Magazine. I hope you enjoy her personal essay, “The Mountains We Climb,” published by Quail Bell Magazine on April 22, 2020.
http://www.quailbellmagazine.com/the-real-20/personal-essay-the-mountains-we-climb
Suzanne's Words 