Born in New York City, Lynda La Rocca is a poet and freelance writer who has also worked as a teaching assistant, newspaper copy editor, and municipal and general-assignment reporter for New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press.
Lynda’s three previous poetry-chapbook collections include The Stillness Between (Pudding House Publications, Ohio, 2009) and Spiral (Liquid Light Press, Colorado, 2012). Her individual poems have appeared in numerous state and national poetry-society anthologies along with such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Quarterly, Frogpond (Haiku Society of America), and The Colorado Sun.
Lynda was the first-place winner in the poetry category of the 2020 Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, a literary-arts outreach program of the National League of American Pen Women, and a “Top-Four” winner in the 2021 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest for her sonnet “Benediction,” the final poem in this collection. Her sonnets “Portents of the Future” and “Unbroken,” also in this collection, won first place and third place, respectively, in the 2018 and 2021 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest.
Lynda has taught adult-education poetry, presented poetry workshops at various venues throughout Colorado, and served as a judge in some three-dozen state, national, and international poetry contests. She loves writing, reading, cooking (and eating), learning about wine, hiking, birding, spending lots of time in nature, and performing her poetry solo and, from 2004 to 2023, with the performance-poetry troupe the River City Nomads. Lynda lives in Salida, Colorado, with her writer-photographer husband Steve Voynick.
Paperback: 44 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (March 7, 2023)