A Phone Call by Anne Born (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

A Phone Call
by Anne Born

I remember the hushed phone call.
My study-abroad daughter calling me in New York
From Gallery 12 at the Prado Museum in Madrid.

Mom. There’s a tour guide here.
He’s very proud.
He’s telling people that this painting here
Is the greatest painting in the world,
By the greatest artist in the world.
Is it?

And that this museum is
The greatest museum on the world.
Is it?

I thought for a moment.
Yes.
That painting, Velázquez’s Las Meninas.
It is absolutely the greatest painting in the world.

What about the museum?
Am I in the greatest museum in the world?

I thought for a moment.
Yes.

I have been to the Louvre, the Met, the Art Institute,
All of the Smithsonian, the British Museum, the Uffizi.
Yes.
It is the greatest museum in the world.

Thanks, mom.
I love you.
I love you too.

My sweet girl had picked up and gone
To an art museum,
And she was standing in front of the greatest painting by the greatest artist in the greatest museum in the world
And she thought to call me.
That’s what I remember.

PAINTING:  Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez (1656), Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

 NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes it’s the small details you think about and not the event itself. You should think about the time you went to Paris or Rome and saw cathedrals and cafes and galleries, but all you think about is that you ran out of toothpaste, got on the wrong train, or brought the wrong shoes. Here, the call did force me to assess what I knew about museums and paintings and artists, but the real story to me was that, in the moment, she wanted to know what I thought too. It’s a marvelous thing when your children experience the places you love.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: I took this photo at the Prado — when the guard wasn’t looking. I love watching people take in the art. (Gallery 12, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain. Photo credit: Anne Born, August 17, 2022.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Born is an award-winning author and photographer based in Michigan. A published poet, essayist, and travel writer, she is currently collaborating on a short documentary film about her book on one of the great cathedrals in Spain, If You Stand Here: A Pilgrim’s Tour of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Her photographs of the Camino de Santiago and views of New York are available on Redbubble (@nilesite), and her books can be ordered from Amazon, or your favorite independent bookseller.

Behind My Front Door by Anne Born (MY FRONT DOOR Series)

Behind My Front Door
by Anne Born

I’m looking out the window now.
I’m new to this house.
I notice things I probably won’t think twice about soon.

I listen for all the different bird calls,
I look at the time on my clock when I hear the trains,
     hoping to find a logic to their timetable.
I watch the trashmen pick up on Tuesday mornings,
     their big green trucks are dull, plodding,
     when they pull up in front of the house.
I hear all the cars when they drive down the street.

It’s pretty quiet here in Michigan.
Not like in my apartment in New York.

I am looking out the window now,
The fat groundhog hasn’t come out yet today
From under the old shed out back,
For his ration of berries and grasses.
My concern is that I assume it’s a male animal
Probably because the thought of it gathering food for babies,
     in this weather, in this climate,
     is too hard to hold.
A squirrel finds a bit of water in the bird bath.

I’m looking out the window now,
Cars driving by, but just a few,
They keep going, mostly, the birds take no notice.
They will sing regardless.
Folks drive into their garage, then disappear
Into their house.
So many houses, like my house.

I’m looking out the window now.
I open it a bit to watch the snow falling.
The tops of the branches are white now.
It’s supposed to rain later.
Window closed.

I’m new to this house.

The front door is not the barrier to my going outside.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I need a metronome to be able to write. I cue up Law & Order SVU, an Avengers movie I’ve seen, cooking shows, or something about tiny houses – that’s my background noise. It’s very difficult to write if I have to maintain the pace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Born is an award-winning, New York and Niles, Michigan-based writer who has been writing stories and poetry since childhood. She blogs on The Backpack Press, Tumbleweed Pilgrim, and Medium, and her writing focuses on family and life in a big city after growing up in a small one. She is the author of A Marshmallow on the Bus, Prayer Beads on the Train, Waiting on a Platform, Turnstiles, and Local Color. Her latest book is Buen Camino! Tips from an American Pilgrim (The Backpack Press, December, 2017, now updated for 2020). Her short essay on the call to the Camino is included in It’s About Time, by Johnnie Walker (Redemptorist Pastoral Publications, 2019). She a contributor to the 2015 anthology, Love Her, Love Her Not: The Hillary Paradox, edited by Joanne Bamberger. Anne’s essay on her cousin’s collection of Nancy Drew novels was published in the Silver Birch Press Nancy Drew Anthology (2016). She is also curator of the Late Orphan Project and a former contributor to The Broad Side. You can follow her on Redbubble, Instagram, Twitter.

Author Profile: Anne Born, writer featured in the NANCY DREW ANTHOLOGY

We asked the 97 contributors to the Nancy Drew Anthology (Silver Birch Press, October 2016) to send photos featuring the book in their home environments. Author Anne Borne provided this portrait of herself and the collection from the ever-wonderful New York City. Anne contributed the story “It’s Not the Books, It’s the Library” (featured below)  to the 212-page anthology.

It’s Not the Books, It’s the Library
by Anne Born

It’s easy to identify the Nancy Drew and Dana Girls mysteries as my favorite children’s adventure stories. When I read those little books, I wanted to be the one with the answer, the one to solve the crime, the one to show the grownups that this teen could do it. These girls were resourceful and clever. What’s interesting to me now is that, for the life of me, I cannot recall a single episode, and I couldn’t name more than one title. I do not remember just exactly what these plucky heroines accomplished. What I do remember is my cousin Diane.

Diane was much older than me. She was a child of the 1940s whose father served in WWII. She spent countless hours with my grandparents and her aunt and uncle, laying a foundation of trust and love for all of the cousins to follow. We all knew that we were important, and we knew that our family had something special—and a good bit of that came from the first cousin on the scene: Diane.

I came to know Nancy Drew because Diane collected the books. As far as I can remember, it was a complete set. I could borrow them, read them one at a time or a couple at a go, and return them to her collection. But it was never about the plot of the books, it was that Diane could read and when she did, she did it up in style. I could take books out of the town public library certainly, and I did that nearly every week I was in school. But Diane had a library and that was exciting to me.

Because my family did not have a budget line for book buying or the means to get to bookstores very often, and because I spent so much time at the library, I have only a dozen or so books from my childhood. I do not have all the great pirate books that I loved. I don’t have the stories of Pompeii that I remember so clearly. And I don’t have the Nancy Drew books. I vowed that when I had my own children, I would buy them books instead of just taking them to the library. I wanted them to know what Diane must have known, that there is tremendous comfort in being in a library, but there is something so much more powerful in owning a library.

Diane left us a few years ago. She had a heart ailment that would take her from us way too soon. In writing this, I am sad she doesn’t know the lifelong impact her choice in teen fiction had on me. I want her to know that her collecting Nancy Drew and Dana Girl mysteries, and sharing them the way she did, instilled in me a love of libraries as well as a love of a great mystery story. My library has books about everything!

I’m reading my own copy of The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey now with my book club and even though it does not feature a boyfriend with a slick convertible or helpful aunts and uncles, it does remind me of the debt I owe to my cousin Diane. It’s great to have a library card, but it’s even better to have a library.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Born is the author of A Marshmallow on the Bus (2014), Prayer Beads on the Train (2015), and Waiting on a Platform (2016). She is the editor of the award-winning anthology of stories from The Late Orphan Project —  These Winter Months.  (2016). Anne is a regular contributor on The Broad Side, and her essay on Hillary Clinton’s religious faith was included in Love Her, Love Her Not: The Hillary Paradox  (2015), edited by Joanne Bamberger. Her work has been published in the Newtown Literary Journal and in “Me, as a Child,” “All About My Name,” and “My Prized Possession,” Poetry & Prose Series published by Silver Birch Press. Anne’s essay on her cousin’s collection of Nancy Drew novels was published in the Silver Birch Press Nancy Drew Anthology (2016). Her poetry has been featured in New York at Boundless Tales, Word Up Community Bookstore, and the Queens Council on the Arts. She has been a featured performer in several venues with Inspired Word NYC, at the New York Transit Museum, on Queens Public TV in “The World of Arts,” and with the International Women’s Salon on Salon Radio. Anne divides her time between New York and Michigan, and the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Follow Anne Born and The Late Orphan Project at The Backpack Press, and on Twitter, Redbubble, Wattpad, andInstagram @nilesite. Listen to her in the Bronx podcasts on Our Salon Radio.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: This is me at the subway station in my neighborhood, the beautiful South Bronx. Snapped by a girl walking by who saw me balancing my cell phone and the book. She says, “Wow! I love Nancy Drew!” So I gave her the book.

Seashell, poem by Anne Born (MY PRIZED POSSESSION Poetry and Prose Series)

Seashell
by Anne Born

I am a pilgrim.

I choose
To leave a predictable life,
To carry so little,
To walk for days and days,
To pray in the presence of a saint
In a sacred space.

The symbol of this pilgrim
Is not a full dinner served on a bountiful table.
Or all those photos of Sunday-best clothed cousins in front,
Proud grown ups in the back.

It’s a seashell.
On a fraying bit of rope.

To carry while I walk,
To be my calling card,
To take the place of my past,
My name,
My provenance —
To help write my future.

I bought it years ago
In a tiny mountain town in France
Before beginning
And I’ve carried it across Spain
For years since.

It’s cracked a little from the time it fell
And someone caring came up to me running,
Did you drop this? I think it’s yours.
It looks like yours.
It looked like his.

It’s the best essence of me
A reminder to walk,
A reminder to love,
A reminder of where I’ve been
And why I also choose not to look back.

A pilgrim.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: Ultreya! Souvenirs from walking the Camino de Santiago.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: If Marie Kondo is right, you should only keep objects that spark joy. I like to keep objects that spark memory — sometimes joyful, sometimes sad, but the object is an agent for memory. For over 1,000 years, pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago have carried seashells to identify themselves as pilgrims — not only to fellow pilgrims but to the great number of people along the road who offer assistance and protection. In May 2009, this shell was picked from a basket of one-Euro shells in the pilgrims’ office in St. Jean Pied de Port, France, traditionally the beginning of the Camino Frances, or French Route to Santiago de Compostela — a journey from that point in the French Pyrenees of over 800 kilometers to the medieval city of Santiago de Compostela in Northwest Spain. I’ve carried this shell with me on four shorter pilgrimages in Spain from 2009 to 2014 — only leaving it at home when I walked this past May because I worried I might lose it if I took it on one more hike. It reminds me of the pilgrim on the bike in 2010 who waited for me to catch up to him, offering to carry my backpack on his bike. It reminds me of the woman I met who vowed if she ever became cancer-free, she would walk the Camino. It reminds me of how important it is to be able to step away from your life just long enough to find your life. It reminds me of why we walk — to pray at the cathedral of Saint James, the resting place of the Apostle. The Camino de Santiago is my bliss.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Born is the author of A Marshmallow on the Bus (2014), Prayer Beads on the Train (2015), and Waiting on a Platform (2016). Her work has been published in the Newtown Literary Journal and in “Me, as a Child” and ”All About My Name” Series published by Silver Birch Press. She is the editor of These Winter Months: The Late Orphan Project Anthology  (2016), and her essay on Hillary Clinton’s religious faith was included in Love Her, Love Her Not: The Hillary Paradox, edited by Joanne Bamberger. Her poetry has been featured in New York at Boundless Tales, Word Up Community Bookstore, and the Queens Council on the Arts. She has been a featured performer with Inspired Word New York City, the New York Transit Museum, and on Queens Public TV in The World of Arts. Anne divides her time between New York and Michigan, and the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Follow Anne Born at The Backpack Press, and on Twitter, Redbubble, Wattpad, and Instagram @nilesite. Listen to her in the Bronx podcasts on Our Salon Radio.

Never Annie by Anne Born (All About My Name Poetry Series)

Never Annie
by Anne Born

Annie Nannie Anita — Anne
For four generations, someone in my mother’s family
Was named Anne.

Born into a family of women,
Born with a hand-me-down name,
In the end, I was the only one never to suffer a nickname.

For just one day, just once
My grandfather called me his little Nancy
And I felt special, unique, only, new.

And yet, when I order my
Frappuccinos with whipped cream at Starbucks now,
I tell them my name is Lucy.

PHOTOGRAPH: Anne Born in her very own personal district of Barcelona, Spain (2009).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My name is too short. I always wanted something lingering, graceful. It was only when Ian Fleming’s stories took hold that I realized my name sounded like a spy. Born, Anne Born. I don’t care for Martinis, but if I did, I would like them shaken, not stirred.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Born is a New York-based writer who has been writing stories and poetry since childhood.  She blogs on The Backpack Press and Tumbleweed Pilgrim and her writing focuses on family and life in a big city after growing up in a small one.  She is the author of A Marshmallow on the Bus, and Prayer Beads on the Train. Anne is a photographer who specializes in photos of churches, cemeteries, and the Way of St. James in Spain. Most of her writing is done on the bus.  Find out more at www.about.me/anneborn. You can follow Anne on Wattpad, Instagram, and Twitter at @nilesite.

The Subway at the Lake by Anne Born (Me, as a Child Poetry Series)

The Subway at the Lake
by Anne Born

The subway doors open at Columbus Circle
and the air on the platform is suddenly fresh.
Trees from Central Park, the dew of the morning,
the warming heat of August coming up from the damp grass.

And I am back at Indian Lake, at my grandpa’s place there,
playing with my cousins.
Sailboats at the dock, the pier stretching out like train tracks
into the blue-gray water around.

Me, terrified of the dull green grasses
that grow just off shore, hidden beneath the surface
of the water.

My dad, teaching me to swim so my face stay’d dry
and I could see where I was going without my glasses.

My mother, cool sipping from a fragile Martini glass
while she sits on a lawn chair, her feet up on a stool.

My grandmother in the house.
Fish caught by grandpa for supper,
Cards and dice played after coffee,
Marshmallows toasted over the fires on the beach.

Fireflies light up the night sky,
ducking in and out of the bushes.
Wet swimsuits hang on the line.
I can taste the icy too-sweet grape Nehi.

Then the double doors shut on the subway train,
and I am heading down to Seventh Avenue now.

I wish I remembered how to play Pinochle.

PHOTOGRAPH: The author as a child in her green cowgirl outfit.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote “The Subway by the Lake” on the downtown B train [in New York City] one morning in August 2014. The poem appears in my second collection of stories written on the MTA — Prayer Beads on the Train. It describes the memories prompted by the rush of fresh air into the train car as we pulled into the Columbus Circle station one morning on my way to work. The moment lasted only as long as the train car doors were open — roughly 15 seconds. But I felt refreshed by it and found myself quickly writing down the images on the way downtown.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anne Born is a New York writer whose blog posts have appeared on Red Room, Open Salon, Bubblews, and as a feature in Non-Fiction on Wattpad (as Nilesite). She is a regular contributing writer on The Broad Side. Her writing focuses on family and life in a big city after growing up in a small one in Michigan. Anne published her first collection of MTA stories, A Marshmallow on the Bus, in June 2014. Most of her writing is done on a city bus or train. Anne is a performing artist in the Platform Series at the New York Transit Museum and has featured as a Local Poet at Inwood Local, as an author at We Heart NYC Writers sponsored by Inspired Word, and as a poet and storyteller with No Name at Word Up Community Bookstore in Washington Heights. Her poetry has also been featured at Boundless Tales at the Astoria Bookshop in Queens, New York. She is a participating member of Poetry & Coffee. Anne is a photographer who specializes in photos of churches, cemeteries, and the Way of St. James in Spain. Her photos are sold on Redbubble (Nilesite). Follow Anne Born on Twitter and Instagram @nilesite and at http://thebackpackpress.com and http://tumbleweedpilgrim.com.

Mother-in-Law Curry by Roseanne Freed (SPICES & SEASONINGS Series)

Mother-in-Law Curry
by Roseanne Freed

In our Jewish home in Johannesburg we ate
matzah and chopped herring at Passover,
apples and honey at Rosh Hashanah,
and sufganiyot at Chanukah, but neither

Mom nor Granny spoke Yiddish—both born
in Bombay—Hindustani filled our kitchen.
Curry with turmeric-stained yellow rice
and mango achar was served as often as roast

chicken and potatoes, and my parents munched
raw garlic and hot chilies with their food.
We four kids had to eat every morsel
on our plates because my father grew up

hungry. No drinking with meals: Dad’s mantra,
Have you seen an animal drink while it eats?
Mom bought fresh spices at Asian-owned shops,
and criticized those who thought Indian cuisine

was a supermarket masala-mix added to a stew.
I learned that garam masala is a complex
mix of turmeric, ginger, cumin, coriander,
cloves, chilies, cinnamon, cardamom.

Sauté the garlic and onions with the spices,
stir in the meat, cook for an hour lid on,
add potatoes, tomatoes, brinjal, or okra,
and her secret ingredient, fresh dhania

leaves. The tradition every time a new beau
came to dinner was mother-in-law curry.
A taste test they had to pass. We laughed
to see them trying to be polite with mouths

on fire. My boyfriend Stan didn’t know
spicy food in his kosher home.
His face, neck and ears were bright red,
sweat and tears poured down his cheeks

when he begged for water. Dad began
his, Does a lion drink while it eats?
speech, but Stan looked so pitiful,
he got his water. And never came again.

PHOTO: Ground garam masala and other curry spices by Stock Image Factory.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: During the apartheid era in South Africa, very few white women shopped in the Indian area of our divided cities. Mom loved going there and chatting in Hindustani. My husband loved spicy food and passed the mother-in-law taste test with an A+ the first time he came to dinner over 50 years ago. Like most South Africans, my family is scattered around the world. My siblings and our children live in five countries, in six time zones. Curry is our home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Roseanne Freed grew up in apartheid South Africa and now lives in Los Angeles, California, where she takes inner-city school children hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains. A Best of the Net nominee, her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, MacQueens Quinterly, ONE ART, Naugatuck River Review, Storyteller Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice among others.

Author photo by Angus MacNeil.

Sleepless by Roseanne Freed (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Sleepless
by Roseanne Freed

I knew you’d cry once my head kissed
the pillow, but I lay down anyway,
praying for a few minutes of rest—

my nighty damp with milk and sweat,
every one of those sleep-deprived
summer nights after your birth.

Only your insistent cries
and my maternal instinct dragged
me from my bed. A single glance

of you my mewling, sweet-smelling
miracle, your little head wet
from the humidity, your arms

and legs calling for me—
and I’d forget my weariness
or that I stank of a dairy.

With the world in my arms,
a love I’ve never known
filled my heart, and milk

spouted out like a fountain,
spraying you—your face,
your hair, even up your nose.

Looking across at me
as you raced to gulp my liquid love,
your little hand grasped my finger,

and you gave a crooked smile.

PAINTING: Mother and Child by Pablo Picasso (1905).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: My adult daughter died in 2020. It’s good to be reminded of the happy times we shared.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Roseanne Freed is a third-generation wanderer. Born in South Africa, she raised her children in Canada, and now lives in the United States. Her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, McQueens Quinterly, One ART, and Verse-Virtual among others. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and sociology from The University of South Africa, and worked for a dozen years at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She is currently an outdoor educator, sharing her love of nature with school children by leading hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains. She and her husband live in Los Angeles.

PHOTO: The author and her daughter.

Plant the Habit of Loving by Ranney Campbell (HOW TO HEAL THE EARTH Series)

Plant the Habit of Loving
by Ranney Campbell

During all the time we continue to exist in this particular universe we will bathe in the far too cold for our eyes to see glow leftover from the Big Bang that was accidentally discovered by radio astronomers in the dark spaces between stars and galaxies in 1965 that was perhaps the black I saw and cold I felt when I floated away off that gurney in a San Bernardino emergency room in 1983 after suffering a by all evidence of medical science fatal head injury as a result of the missed hairpin turn somewhere above Crestline and all these years later when I put some plastic into my trash can I try to remember this happening even if the thought just hovers vaguely omnipresent like the microwave background remains of our primeval fireball with no point of origin occurring everywhere at once rather than project more invented stress into the universe with perturbed thoughts as I did for so long, because if I learned anything in those 77 seconds it was that the words “love” and “nonjudgement” don’t quite cover it and since not enough of my fellows ever would follow advice to recycle nor would they change opinions when I told them if you separate according to color any eight-year-old could tell you it is called “division” and that healing blooms best in conditions of unity, I eventually was forced into the compassion that the only thing I have to contribute is what is created within me and it cannot be expressed most effectively through bodily experiences but in higher energies because the force of loving without self-seeking attachment creates irrepressible exchanges and is the only chance we have to disrupt the temporal order enough to set free whatever futures are possible including one wherein maybe we can find a way to send enough carbon dioxide to Mars to create an atmosphere there and in the doing save what we can of what is left of our so delicately interdependent biodiversity here.

PAINTING: Starlight by Agnes Martin (1963).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ranney Campbell was born and reared in St. Louis, Missouri, and lives in Southern California. Her chapbook, Pimp, is published by Arroyo Seco Press and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Misfit Magazine, Shark Reef, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Hummingbird: Magazine of the Short Poem, Eastern Iowa Review, and others.

Calling my Dad on Father’s Day, poem by Marianne Peel (MY PRIZED POSSESSION Poetry and Prose Series)

Calling My Dad on Father’s Day
by Marianne Peel

I remember him
not letting me drive myself to college
until I’d practiced changing a tire three times.
He gave me an index card
in his penciled hand
reminding me what I need to do
and when
to maintain properly my car.
I still have that card.
the only writing I have
that belongs to his hand.

But today
I interrupted
the Nascar he was watching.
Out of Seattle, not Indy, he told me.

He stayed on the line
twenty minutes.
Muted the race.
The longest conversation
I’ve ever had with dad.

He asked about the brakes on my G6 Pontiac.
We discussed warped rotors, machining,
the amount the shop shaved off.
I knew his mechanic’s vocabulary.
He assured me they did right by me at the shop,
only charging me eighty for the service.

In the heated garage, growing up,
he’d plunge his hands in Goop,
massage this grease into the lines of his hands.
He would press down hard on his nail beds,
trying to dislodge stubborn oil.

And so tonight,
after silence filled the space between
Arizona and Michigan again,
I vacuumed out my car:
road dirt, leaf fragments, twigs, gravel bits,
bread crumbs from that French baguette

I took Armor All to the dashboard
pressing with elbow grease into the leather.
Making it shine.
I squirted Bug and Tar Be-Gone
onto a lumpy rag,
wishing I had the smooth yellow chamois cloth
he used to use.
I knuckled down
a full body press
and erased splattered insects
from the front bumper of my Pontiac.
Just because
I know
how much he admires
a clean, clean car.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: The front and back of the 3 x 5 card my dad gave to me.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Loved this prompt, as it caused me to reflect on what I consider to be “prized” among my possessions. I’ve accumulated tons of stuff over my 57  years, even though I actually consider myself non-materialistic. I have only one possession from my father: a three x five card with directions on how to take care of my car. He gave this to me as I was leaving for college. He was a mechanic. This was important information for him to share with me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marianne Peel taught English at middle and high school for 32 years, and is now retired, doing Field Instructor work for Michigan State University.  She won first prize for poetry in the Spring 2016 Edition of the Gadfly Literary Magazine, and.  also won the Pete Edmonds Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared  in Encodings:  A Feminist Literary Journal; Write to Heal; Writing for Our Lives:  Our Bodies—Hurts, Hungers, Healing;  Mother Voices; Metropolitan Woman Magazine;  Ophelia’s Mom;  Jellyfish Whispers; and Remembered Arts Journal, and will appear in the fall editions of Muddy River Review and EastLit Journal. The recipient of Fulbright-Hays Awards to Nepal and Turkey, she is a flute-playing vocalist, learning to play ukulele. Raising four daughters, she shares her life with her partner Scott, whom she met in Istanbul while studying in Turkey.  She taught teachers in Guizhou Province, China, for three summers, and in January 2016 toured several Chinese provinces with the Valparaiso Symphony, playing both flute and piccolo.  In June 2016, she was invited to participate in Marge Piercy’s Juried Intensive Poetry Workshop.