Valerie Nieman v. 3.0

I read the other day that Paul Simon wrote "Homeward Bound" while on a train trip in or around Manchester, England. That song was a favorite when I was a teenager, though I'd traveled no farther than Maine, and still calls up strong emotion when I hear it. So it's not surprising that when I connected with the folks at Kestrel literary journal to appear again this year at the Kestrel Festival in October, that music began playing in my thoughts. Kestrel was a special part of my years in West Virginia, where I began my work as a writer, gained my first publications, and then was "brought into the fold" as a literary magazine editor with the nascent Kestrel. Martin Lammon and the late John King and I would gather over coffee at the Poky Dot restaurant in Fairmont, WV, a classic "breakfast all day" diner that's been upscaled in recent years, to exchange our stacks of manuscripts and discuss what we liked, and what we weren't certain about. I...

Technology can be a marvelous thing, especially when it links you with readers and writers all around the world. That was the case with  a blogger from Ghana, West-Africa, who posts at "Geosi Reads." He says, "I am a book addict and I just can’t stop reading. I am particularly interested in literary fiction, be it contemporary or classic and poetry." It was a pleasure to correspond with Geoffrey and be interviewed by him about my work, from my first novel to my newest poetry collection. If you'd like to read the interview, click here.