Barbara Lightner

Poet

Milwaukee, WI
Wisconsin US
Email: 
ragsypoet@gmail.com

Author's Bio

Barbara Lightner is a 73-year old shameless agitator, retired. She grew up in rural Tennessee among sharecroppers and cotton magnates, hard scrabble farmers and one aristocrat. Writing poetry in law school became her escape from the intolerable burden of injustice by law. Her poetry has appeared in Verse Wisconsin, Poesia, the Table Rock Review, New Verse News, Occupy Poetry, and the anthologies Letters to the World and So You Want to be a Memoirist. Several of her poems will be set to music by composer Larry Alan Smith.

Publications & Prizes

Anthologies:
Come be a Memoirist (Woodland Pattern Book Center, 2009)
,
Letters to the World (Red Hen Press, 2008)
Journals:
New Verse News
,
Poesia
,
Verse Wisconsin
Prizes won: 

The Wisconsin People & Ideas/ Wisconsin Book Festival 2012 Poetry Contest awarded Lightner both a third place and an honorable mention for two of her poems.

Personal Favorites

What I'm reading now: 
The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner, The Devil's Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea, Columbarium by Susan Stewart, Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey, [saina] by Craig Santos Perez

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Identifies as: 
White
Prefers to work with: 
Adults, LGBTQ, Seniors, Teachers
Fluent in: 
English
Born in: 
Akron
Raised in: 
Raleigh, TN
Tennessee
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: May 28, 2012