About the Author...
Libi Siporin is known by two names, Libi and Ona. For many years she wrote poetry, short fiction, and essays. Libi's first mystery is set in the countryside and forests of Tuscany and feature Leah Contarini, a feisty outdoors woman and freelance writer turned amateur detective. Hiking the ancient Etruscan trails, Leah learns what it is to face death, not only her own, but that of people she loves. As Ona Siporin, Libi is the author of two chapbooks of poetry (Poems for a Primitive Mythology, finalist in the Elliston Book Award, and Girl on a White Gate), one work of history and fiction (Uncommon Common Women: Ordinary Lives of the West, coauthored with historian Dr. Anne M. Butler), and one book of essays (Stories to Gather All Those Lost) and one mystery, The Must of Murder. Her poems, short fiction, essays, and articles published in various journals and magazines are a look at the meanderings of a woman often perplexed, but mostly awed, by living. Libi is thankful to the Celia B. Wagner Award in Poetry; the Albert J. Colton Fellowship for international research; the Idaho Commission on the Arts; and Utah State University’s Mountain West Center and Women and Gender Research Institute for supporting her work; and to Sundance Institute Playwrights Lab, WordBridge Playwrights Lab, Utah Performing Arts Tour and the Utah Arts Council Artists Roster for their support and for inviting her to join with them in the hard work and joy of creative endeavor. |
News and Reviews...
Praise for Libi’s poetry and essays: "In this collection of intricately crafted short personal essays, Ona Siporin is as slippery as a rainbow trout in the Logan River at her beloved First Dam. When you think you have her pegged as an environmentalist, she slips into her humorist guise. Before you can net her, she shows you her sensual side. And while you’re admiring her spirituality, and probing her tightly written anecdotes and allegories for hints of sentimentality, she breaks your heart." - Paul Swenson, Salt Lake Tribune “Through a series of poems based in folktales and legends, Siporin explores the ‘primitive woman’s’ struggle to define herself in a tradition-locked culture. She explores…necessary anger at discrimination, waste, and indifference…But it is too simple to name this book just another tenet of feminist politics. Here is a close-up look at love, struggle, and the will to survive that can belong to no single time nor be claimed solely by either gender. These poems contain powerful rhythms and should be read aloud as if they are verses of a single song.” - Linda Schrevens, Northwest Review |
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