Poetry. "Sandee Gertz Umbach's THE PATTERN MAKER'S DAUGHTER is a remarkable debut collection full of honesty, wisdom, and heart. Like a fine photographer, she has empathy for her subjects, an eye for the telling detail, and a commitment to the truth. She brings this community to life from an insider' perspective—these are her people, though the love she brings to these poems never slides into sentimentality or idealizing—they never lose the necessary grit. In these finely wrought poems, danger and trauma exist in the landscape, in the homes, and in the very bodies of her characters. These are simply the stories we tell each other to stay alive."—Jim Daniels

Author City: WASHINGTON, PA USA

Sandee Gertz Umbach was born and raised in the Borough of Dale, surrounded by the City of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Here, she found endless inspiration as an adult writer and poet. She worked for a news magazine in Washington, D.C. before settling south of Pittsburgh in Washington, PA, where she and her husband Paul raised two boys. She is a Commonwealth Speaker with the Pennsylvania Humanities Council where she leads poetry workshops that focus on a sense of place. She founded the award-winning Washington Community Arts and Cultural Center in Washington, PA which provides fine arts programming for children and youth. She has a M.A. in Creative Writing from the Wilkes University Low-Residency Program and is currently an M.F.A. candidate. She received a poetry fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in 2000. THE PATTERN MAKER'S DAUGHTER (Bottom Dog Press, 2012) is her debut poetry collection.