KANSAS CITY – Mo.  Grand Rapids, Michigan, poet Linda Nemec Foster will appear on the nationwide broadcast of the public radio literary program New Letters on the Air.  Foster, the first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan, talks about her books of poetry, including her most recent, Amber Necklace from Gdansk. The program will be available on the public radio satellite on April 27, 2005, and can also be heard on the program’s website www.newletters.org. May 4-17.

Foster discusses one of her earliest books, A History of the Body, that details her thoughts and emotions during her first pregnancy.  Foster also talks about her friendship with German-American writer and mentor, Lisel Mueller, and how she contributed to Foster’s getting in touch with her Polish heritage and the lives of her ancestors under Nazi rule.

“It took me until my middle age to really understand the richness of that heritage and culture, and wanting to know more about it,” says Foster.  “That’s what led me to Poland for the first time in 1996, and I was just so amazed with what I saw, the people I met, the family that I never knew I had.  Amber Necklace from Gdansk really is a by-product of that first trip.”

Linda Nemec Foster holds a B.A. in social science from Aquinas College, Michigan and an M.F.A. from Goddard College, Vermont in 1979. She received the Pushcart Prize for poetry in 1984, a National Writers’ Voice Project Fellowship in 1999 and was named Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2003. She lives in Grand Rapids Michigan where she has been working as the coordinator of the Contemporary Writer’s Series at Aquinas College since 1997. 

Available to over 400 public radio stations nationwide, New Letters on the Air is distributed weekly via the Public Radio Satellite System, and also is streamed in RealAudio format on our website, http://www.newletters.org. New Letters on the Air is public radio’s longest-running literary program, and is a production of New Letters, a magazine of new writing, published at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The program is funded in part by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.

New Letters on the Air is pleased to offer a catalog of archive programs available on audiocassette or CD. Call Angela Elam or Dennis Conrow at (816) 235-1159, or write to 5101 Rockhill Road, Kansas City, MO 64110, or email OnTheAir@newletters.org to place orders, or to comment on the program. People with speech or hearing impairments may call Relay Missouri at (800) 735-2466 (voice). Also visit www.newletters.org for more information or to order past programs.