Kathleen Balma
Kathleen Balma is a youth services librarian, navy veteran, and the author of Gallimaufry & Farrago (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a poetry chapbook. She received a Master of Library Science and MFA in Poetry Writing from Indiana University. A Fulbright scholar and Pushcart Prize winner, she is the recipient of a Tennessee Williams scholarship at Sewanee Writers' Conference and a writer-in-resident fellowship at Rivendell Writers' Colony. She grew up in the Ohio River Valley and has lived in the Ozarks, the Great Lakes region, AndalucĂa, New South Wales, Western Australia, Castilla la Mancha, New England, and Acadiana. She makes her home in New Orleans.
Works

Gallimaufry & Farrago (Finishing Line Press)
How did Abraham Lincoln build the log cabin he was born in? What happens at an invisible gun show? Are aliens really controlling a Chicago musician's ears? Where can a ghost find a good therapist? The poems in this chapbook offer answers to these and other metaphysical questions with quirky, offbeat humor, using a range of forms, from couplets to free verse to prose poetry. Themes of sexual and regional identity, love and loss, wanderlust and historical mythmaking all merge in this collection of lyrical first person narratives, resulting in a sneaky, supernatural, faux memoir laced with deadpan and surreptitious optimism.