Award-winning Pittsburgh author LORI JAKIELA comes to Riverstone to launch her memoir, THEY WRITE YOUR NAME ON A GRAIN OF RICE, with local poet scott silsbe
They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice is much more than a cancer memoir. It's a meditation on living. It's a pause between polarities. Cancer is almost an afterthought. Inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, it celebrates the tiny moments that spotlight the miracle of being alive, the messiness of being human.
A weirdly funny book about mortality, this book is also about family, genetics, nature vs. nurture, the Rust Belt, EPA clean-up zones, emotional support peacocks, box turtles, Emily Dickinson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Andy Warhol(a), and so much more. A fresh voice aligned with the work of classic stream-of-consciousness writers like Richard Brautigan and Virginia Woolf, Jakiela explores the way a mind works—complete with leaps and spirals—while reflecting on a life thoroughly lived against a dire breast cancer diagnosis.
Lori Jakiela is the author of seven books, including the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, which received the Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University, was a finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award and the Housatonic Book Award, and was named one of 20 Not-To-Miss Nonfiction Books of 2015 by The Huffington Post. A former international flight attendant, Jakiela directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, teaches creative writing in the doctoral program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and leads many community workshops. She lives in her hometown--Trafford, Pennsylvania (the last stop in Pittsburgh's Electric Valley) --with her husband, the author Dave Newman, and their children.
Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit. He now lives in Pittsburgh, where he writes and works for Caliban Bookshop. His poems and prose have appeared in numerous print and web periodicals including Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, The Chariton Review, Third Coast, The Volta, and the Cultural Weekly. He is the author of four poetry collections: Meet Me Where We Survive (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2022); Muskrat Friday Dinner (White Gorilla Press, 2017); Unattended Fire (Six Gallery Press, 2012) and The River Underneath the City (Low Ghost Press, 2013).