April Lindner

This summer, it seems my whole life is under construction. We've been living in limbo while the house we're hoping to buy in our beloved Lambertville has been taking shape.   I've been doing a lot of driving back and forth to the house to watch it grow into the next phase of its already quite long life. The process has been exciting and sometimes fraught.   Surprised by asbestos Then there's my usual summer preoccupation: writing.  With several novels underway at once, I've been trying to figure out where to take my writing next.  I've been researching and drafting what I suspect will turn out to be a Middle Grade novel and rethinking a YA novel that didn't quite cohere. I've also been turning back to my first love, poetry, putting together the first manuscript of poems in a really long time. Surprised by dogwood Most of all, I've been grappling with what kind of writer I want to become.  How should I spend the next part o...

Trevi Fountain Love, Lucy comes out in paperback today, and I thought I'd commemorate Lucy's paperback birthday with a celebration of the Eternal City, where she travels with her summer love Jesse.   Here are some of my favorite spots in Rome, including the "greatest hits" I've set out to find, street map in hand.  Here's Piazza Spagna in the evening: Stormy skies And the Spanish Steps themselves, gorgeous even when under construction: Of course there's the stunning Pantheon:   And all the wonders of Vatican City: And then there are the beauties I've stumbled upon by sheer accident, like St. John Lateran: Not to mention the city's smaller but no less noteworthy wonders: The world's best macchiato Wishing you were in Italy?  (You're not alone!)  Please check out Love, Lucy and Far From Over , Jesse's side of the story.  

Photograph by Jenny Spinner I've long been a fan of poet Marilyn Nelson--of her adept use of traditional forms, her extended explorations of history and personal spirituality, her desire to reach a wide readership that includes middle- and high-schoolers and not just the usual, insular adult audience sought by most poets.   Marilyn is also impressively prolific, with two new collections published in quick succession-- American Ace : ...and My Seneca Village :  Earlier this week, Marilyn paid a visit to Saint Joseph's University, to read in our Writing Series.   Among the poems she shared were a couple of very striking newer ones from Sacred Sisters, a collaboration with visual artist Holly Trostle Brigham .  Marilyn's poems and Holly's paintings depict the lives of nuns who also were artists.  This one was first published by the Academy of American Poets in their Poem-a-Day program :  Hilaria Batista...

The port of Santa Lucia Last summer, while I was teaching Travel Writing in Rome, the universe kept telling me to take a side trip to Naples.  I kept bumping into displaced Neapolitans who told me how wonderful their native city was, how I absolutely needed to see it. I'd been meaning to someday get to Naples--I'd even changed trains in its station once--but somehow I hadn't managed to really visit.  This time I went, and promptly fell in love--with the electric blue Bay of Naples and the view from Castel Sant'Elmo: With its colorful streets: With the quirky sights to be seen around every corner: A Violin Maker's Cat The picturesque Spanish Quarter: Not to  mention the food: Most of all, I fell in love with the people I encountered there, people who seemed instantly familiar--like extended family members.  Maybe that's not too surprising, considering my great grandmother set sail from the port of Santa Lucia  in 1909, my two...

All school year long I wait impatiently for extended writing time--a stretch of days when I can put my head down and focus with few interruptions.  And now that time is here--theoretically at least.  W hile I wait to hear more about the fate of the Greek novel, I've been trying--with uneven success--to get my head back into my next novel--the one set in a New Jersey river town. Lambertville, NJ But summer--and serious writing--comes with its own pitfalls.   I may hypnotize myself into believing I'm on the top deck of a ferry pulling into Santorini, or wandering the charming streets of a small New Jersey river town, but my body knows otherwise. So to fend off the Vitamin D deficiency and a bad case of the blahs, Andre, the dogs, and I went for a walk in Valley Forge... ...a green world where locals and tourists alike walk trails, ride bikes, and commune with ghosts. Captain Von Steuben looks out across the fields On other visits, we've op...

  A local celebrity As I may have mentioned (about a thousand times) Andre and I have been living in limbo these last few months.  Our house is in the market and half of our furniture is in storage, while we wait for the next chapter of our lives to begin--hopefully in the town of our dreams, Lambertville, New Jersey. What's so special about Lambertville? It's a small town--charming, picturesque, quirky, and with a startling number of artists per capita--the kind of place that would make the perfect place to live--or the great setting for a novel. You can probably guess where this is going, right?  Over the last few months I've been working on a new writing project. Another YA reimagining of a classic work of Brit Lit, it's set in a fictional New Jersey river town that bears a passing resemblance to a certain actual New Jersey river town. The Delaware Raritan Canal So of course I take every opportunity I can get to research my novel-in-progre...

Snack shack, Tinos, Greece (photo by Shawn Krahmer Heal) It's been a super-busy spring.  I've been struggling to balance teaching and a flurry of events promoting my most recently published YA novel,  Love, Lucy.   In the middle of it all, we put our home on the market, so this spring has been a blur of renovation, cleaning, and dog wrangling to get the house ready for potential buyers.   That's why you haven't seen me here for a long time.  But now that the spring semester is more or less over, I'll be back, sharing my thoughts about writing, travel, music, etcetera. And now (at last!) I hope to get back to some serious, sustained writing.  I've got several projects in the works, all too new and fragile to discuss in public just yet.    And then there's my Greek novel --a reimagining of Jane Austen's Persuasion , set on a high school study tour of Athens, Santorini, and Crete. Mule on Syros, Greece (photo by Shawn Krahmer Heal) La...

Italian Cheese Shop, photo courtesy of Madame Fromage On the eve of Love, Lucy 's release, I'm still fine-tuning the plans for Friday's big Italian-themed launch party.  One of the things I really want to do is recreate the impromptu picnic lunch my characters share in Florence's Boboli Gardens.   Lucy and her traveling companion Charlene meet up with Jesse, the cute street musician who also works at the hostel where they are staying.  He arrives bearing some very special delicacies: "Jesse--with his hair ruffled from the walk across  town--was a welcome sight, to Lucy at least.  'You brought your guitar,' she observed, taking one of the bags from him. "'Everywhere I go,' he said.  "Let me show you my favorite spot for a picnic."  He led them along a winding path to a shady spot in a grove of pine trees, spread his blanket among the fragrant needles, and motioned for them to sit.  Then he unpacked the grocery bags...