Poetry. Linda Lerner's latest book, TAKES GUTS AND YEARS SOMETIMES, is a collection of poems dating from the early 80s to the present. An immigrant daughter's courageous search for her identity, her refusal to compromise who she is for a paycheck or for love is viewed in the backdrop of major public events. Upheavals in her personal life are paralleled by those in the larger world. There's the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the subsequent attack in 2001 six blocks from her home. This latter event triggers memories of stories her estranged father told about his escape from Russia. There are the hardships caused by gentrification. The locale is primarily New York City, but it could be any place, where the fault lines of vulnerability in individual lives suddenly give way to tremors outside, and the earth shifts beneath them.

Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA

Linda Lerner is a New York City Poet, born and raised in Brooklyn where she now lives. She is the author of thirteen poetry collections and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent collections are: Something Is Burning in Brooklyn (Iniquity Press/Vendetta books, 2009), Living in Dangerous Times (Presa Press, 2007), and City Woman (March Street Press, 2006). (The last two were Small Press Reviews' Pick of the Month.) In 1995, she and Andrew Gettler founded POETS on the line, the first poetry anthology available on the internet. For Nos. 6&7 (1997/98), the Vietnam Veterans/Poets issue, she received a 1997 Puffin Foundations Grant and Ludwig Vogelstein Grant. POETS on the line will be kept permanently on the net, though it ceased publication with the Millennium issue, 9&10. Her poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Louisiana Review, Paterson Literary Review, Onthebus, VAN GOGH'S EAR, Home Planet News, BigCityLit, Chance of A Ghost Anthology, Ragged Lion Anthology, Big Hammer, and Danse Macabre.