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.
She has conducted workshops and spoken in numerous venues, including HAVEN Women’s Shelter in Pontiac, Firelands College in Ohio, Detroit Working Writers, The Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, First UU Poetry Vespers Series in Detroit, and Springfed Arts in Detroit. She has presented at schools including Imlay City School and Brownstown Public Schools. To book Linda for a reading, conference, workshop, retreat, book club appearance or as a speaker, please email her by clicking the envelope icon at the top of the web page.
How to pronounce Sienkiewicz: The Polish pronunciation is shin-KEH-vich. Most English speaking people say SINK-e-wits. Sienkiewicz is her married name; Linda is 100% Finnish American, but proud to share the last name of Polish Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Henryk Sienkiewicz.