Dementia's Death Rant
Linda Nemec Foster
Linda Nemec Foster has published 14 collections of poetry including Amber Necklace from Gdansk, (finalist for the Ohio Book Award in Poetry), Talking Diamonds (finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year), The Blue Divide, Bone Country, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (with Anne-Marie Oomen and Meridith Ridl: a 2019 Michigan Notable Book). Her most recent book, The Lake Huron Mermaid (another collaboration with Oomen and Ridl), was published in 2024 by Wayne State University Press. Her work appears in numerous magazines and journals such as The Georgia Review, Nimrod, New American Writing, North American Review, Indiana Review, Quarterly West, Verse Daily, Paterson Literary Review, Vox Populi, Witness, 2022 Best Small Fictions Anthology, and Best Spiritual Literature 2023. Foster’s poetry has also appeared in anthologies in the U.S. and UK; been translated in Europe; been performed on stage and in video; and has inspired original music compositions by jazz musicians and folk artists. She has received over 30 nominations for the Pushcart Prize and awards from the Arts Foundation of Michigan, National Writer’s Voice, Dyer-Ives Foundation, The Poetry Center (New Jersey), Fish Anthology (Ireland), and the Academy of American Poets. In 2023, she won first prize in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest. Two of her recent books, Bone Country and The Blue Divide, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Bone Country was selected a Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Awards for Poetry in 2024. The inaugural Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids (2003-05), Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College.