About
Linda K. Sienkiewicz's short stories, poetry, and essays have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She has a poetry chapbook award from Heartlands, and her debut novel, In the Context of Love, earned multiple finalist awards including a Sarton Award and Hoffer Award. Her fifth poetry chapbook, Sleepwalker, is from Finishing Line Press. She also wrote and illustrated a children’s picture book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab. Her latest novel, Love and Other Incurable Ailments, will be published in fall 2026 from Regal House Publishing. Linda holds an MFA from the University of Southern Maine, and is a volunteer at Neighborhood House, a local nonprofit.
Featured Work
Sleepwalker
Linda K. Sienkiewicz‘s poems speak with intense fierceness to hard-earned compassion and painful healing after her eldest son’s suicide. Trying to make sense of tragedy, she unearths the heartbreak of motherhood and deep loss, revealing tender, resilient love in poems that embrace who her son was and what he will never be. Readers who have suffered such a loss will know they are not alone.
Sleepwalker is a moving poetic tribute to Linda Sienkiewicz’s late son, Derek. Resolute, lyrical, and unflinching, these poems are informed by profound loss even as they pulse with a mother’s capacious love. A brilliant and devastating account of parenthood as the junction where both our greatest gifts and our greatest fears sometimes converge. –Kelly Fordon, author of I Have the Answer and Garden for the Blind (Wayne State University Press) and Goodbye Toothless House (Kattywompus Press)
