Poets & Pies

Linda Nemec Foster
Linda Nemec Foster’s first collection, A History of the Body, was a chapbook of prose poems published by Coffee House Press in 1987. Since then, she has published over ten collections of poetry including Amber Necklace from Gdansk (finalist for the Ohio Book Award in Poetry), The Blue Divide, Talking Diamonds, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book). Her work appears in magazines and journals such as The Georgia Review, Nimrod, New American Writing, North American Review, Indiana Review, Quarterly West, Verse Daily, Paterson Literary Review, Witness, 2022 Best Small Fictions Anthology, and Best Spiritual Literature 2023. Her work has also appeared in anthologies in the U.S. and UK; been translated in Europe; been performed on stage and in video; and has inspired original music compositions by jazz musicians and folk artists. She has received over 30
nominations for the Pushcart Prize and awards from the Arts Foundation of Michigan, National Writer’s Voice, Dyer-Ives Foundation, The Poetry Center (New Jersey), Fish Anthology (Ireland), and the Academy of American Poets. In 2023, she won first prize in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest. A new collection of prose poetry, Bone Country, was published in 2023 after being honored as a finalist in several national competitions: the book has also been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Recently, she was invited to read an award-winning selection from Bone Country at the West Cork Literary Festival in Ireland. The inaugural Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan (2003-05), Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College.

Diane DeCillis

Diane DeCillis’ poetry collection, Strings Attached (Wayne State Univ. Press) earned a Michigan Notable Book Award for 2015, won the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Award, and was a finalist for the Forward Indie Fab Book Award. Her most recent collection When the Heart Needs a Stunt Double (Wayne State University Press, 2021) was selected by Publisher’s Weekly as one of eight books for Weathering the Times: Poetry 2021. Her work has been published in numerous journals including The Minnesota Review, Columbia Journal, Nimrod, Rattle and others. DeCillis’ poems are included in the Writers on the Moon project, launching this year, and will remain on the moon permanently in a time capsule for the future. She’s working on her new collection, Absolute Threshold about the five senses, and a full-length musical about a chemist who’s a sugar addict with composer Tracy Kash.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz

Linda K. Sienkiewicz (Nerva) grew up south of Cleveland, Ohio, where she enjoyed sitting cross-legged on the front step, folding and stapling manila paper into books she filled with happily-ever-after stories and drawings. She attended Cooper School of Art as a scholarship student and worked in graphics. Years later, she returned to her other love, writing. Her short stories, poetry, essays and art have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Prairie Schooner, Clackamas Literary Review, Paterson Review, New Ohio Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Permafrost, CALYX, Rattle, The MacGuffin, and others. Her essay, “My Horrible Celebrity Crush,” appears in Idol Talk: Women Writers on the Teenage Infatuation that Changed Their Lives. Linda’s debut novel, In the Context of Love, was a finalist for multiple awards, including the Eric Hoffer Award and a Sarton Women’s Fiction Award. Her poem “Solo Suite” was a Finalist for a Julia Darling Poetry Prize. She also has a Pushcart Prize nomination and a poetry chapbook award from Heartlands Today. She has four other poetry chapbooks: Postcard of a Naked Man (March Street Press), Dear Jim (Main Street Rag), Security (March Street Press) and Sleepwalker (Finishing Line Press). She holds an M.F.A. from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. She wrote and illustrated a children’s picture book titled Gordy and the Ghost Crab, published in 2020 by Writer’s Coffee Bar Press. Linda works as a volunteer for The Neighborhood House, a non-profit human services organization. Over the years, she has founded an adult ADD support group, conducted journal writing workshops at a domestic violence shelter, taught calligraphy, worked as a conservation picture framing specialist, and participated in Pet-a-Pet therapy by visiting hospitals and nursing homes with her chocolate Lab. She later adopted a lively Welsh Pembroke Corgi that became her own therapy dog of sorts when she lost an adult son, the oldest of three children, in 2011, to suicide. Linda is a member of the Detroit Working Writers, Springfed Arts, Detroit Writers’ Guild, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She lives with her husband in southeast Michigan where they spoil their grandchildren and then send them home.

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