Marilyn Zelke Windau, the middle child of three, grew up on Wilson Avenue in Chicago, where all the houses were bungalows made of brick and looked very much the same. Elm trees arched the street where she and her siblings played chalked games of hopscotch, four square, and concentration.
She remembers those youthful days of antics and lessons, and records them here, dedicating these poems to her newborn grandchildren.
At age thirteen she started writing poetry in high school study hall as well as in the dry bathtub of her family home with a pillow and a pencil. Her poems have been published in many print and online venues since 2007, when she was encouraged to get them out of a desk drawer to share.
Her chapbook Adventures in Paradise (Finishing Line Press) and full-length, self-illustrated manuscript Momentary Ordinary (Pebblebrook Press) were both published in 2014. Owning Shadows (Kelsay Books) was released in 2017.
Zelke Windau lives in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin—still very close to her beloved Lake Michigan. She is a retired public-school art teacher, the mother of three daughters, and the wife of an environmental engineer. She enjoys traveling, volunteering at the local art center for children’s workshops, assisting in maintenance of public gardens, and helping to make poetry public through combined visual art and poetry exhibits.
She adds her maiden name when she writes to honor her father, who was also a writer.
Paperback: 94 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (April 13, 2018)