Dear Friends, Old Northwest Review published two of my poems, "Inheritance (For Oma)" and "Policing My Apartment," in its fall 2015 issue. This journal focuses on literature from the Midwest. I read the first poem at my grandmother's funeral in Milwaukee. I wrote it when I lived in Chicago in the 1970s. The second poem is a modified sonnet about my apartment in Chicago. Best wishes! Janet Ruth Heller
Motivated by her concern after the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, Kathryn Erskine wrote mockingbird (mok′ ing-bûrd) to examine how families cope after a sudden tragedy. Erksine’s first-person narrator is a ten-year-old girl with Asperger’s syndrome named Caitlin Ann Smith. Caitlin is a talented young artist, but her life is difficult. Caitlin’s mother died of cancer, and her older brother Devon died after a shooting at his high school. The two siblings were very close, and Devin had helped his sister to deal with the complex and confusing world around her. Caitlin’s father is paralyzed by grief after he loses his son, and he has trouble parenting Caitlin. (more…)