April Lindner

Thanks to Bearings Online for publishing this poem.   March of the Ladybugs One at a time, they’re good luck charms, quaint as a cartoon greeting-card                    neat dome like a candy button.  At daybreak one circumnavigates the waterglass, His glossy shell cracks to sprout waxpaper wings. As the window brightens, more collect in its skim of condensation. They cluster on the ceiling, red and random as measles. Every so often one is moved to buzz in sudden spirals, and land with a clatter on a lampshade. or bungle into my hair.  Their ranks swell, an army of redcoats. Once doctors mashed them to cure toothaches; farmers entreated Our Lady to send in scarlet swarms-- rosary beads spilling from the sky.  Harvest in, they’d clear the fields and burn the vines. By afternoon The multi...

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.  

Here in Southeastern Pennsylvania, we've fast forwarded through April Showers and made it to May Flowers in what seems like record time.  This year April brings with it the publication of Far From Over , the new digital-exclusive companion novella to Love, Lucy.  It also brings some celebratory blog posts including this one, from NOVL , on the travel destinations that inspire me most .     And this musical F ar From Over playlist from With Her Nose Stuck in a Book .  What songs does street musician Jesse Palladino play on the streets of Naples?  Here's a little taste: Finally, April brings a really nifty sale-- Love, Lucy in e-book form for only $2.99 --which means for a little while longer you can download both Love, Lucy and Far From Over for under five dollars.  So if you're yearning for a little vacation flirtation in sunny Italy, please give them a look!

Today marks the launch of my newest baby, Far From Over , a digital-only novella companion to Love, Lucy .  And to mark the occasion, the e-book of Love, Lucy is on sale (only $2.99) for the rest of the month.  If if you've got a yen for some southern Italian sunshine and romance, please take a look!

Though I like to consider myself adventurous, my travels in Europe have generally been limited to the Rick Steves-approved tourist spots, the ones teeming with other American sightseers.   Michelangelo's cupola, St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City But last summer while I was teaching a study abroad course in Rome, I let myself be lured off the beaten track, to an Italian seaside town called Cattolica.  Just south of Rimini on the Adriatic sea, Cattolica has beach resorts, charming pedestrian walkways, and restaurants like this one :     What it doesn't have a lot of is English speaking visitors. At the hotel where I stayed, my warm and welcoming hosts were thrilled to be able to practice their English on me. Claudia and Massimo at the Hotel Jupiter To be honest, I'd never even heard of Cattolica before last summer.  I travelled there only because I wanted to see a concert by MIKA, a multi lingual British pop star with a five-oc tave r...

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...