When I wish on birthday candles, fountain coins, or a stray eyelash on my ruddy cheek, I long to be a writer who can transform and transfix. Whitney Vale is such a poet. She doesn’t just draft stanzas, she pens magic. She alchemizes leaden words into gold. In Sermon of Swallows, Whitney Vale summons ghosts, awakens hearts, and invites readers to blossom, soar, and sing.
In Sermon of Swallows: Memoir in Fragments, Whitney Vale offers a luminous, lyrical look into one woman's journey through time. Vivid and evocative, her poetry reflects the beautiful and haunting mysteries of a life anchored in the natural world. Vale's writing is a revelation.
I dare you to read Whitney Vale’s Sermon of Swallows: Memoir in Fragments and not be deeply moved by the exquisite language in her poems, their evocative imagery, and emotional honesty. Vale allows herself to be vulnerable as she writes about her childhood as a navy brat struggling to fit in at each new location and dealing with a mother prone to rages and a disconnected father, as a young girl dealing with rejection and disappointing lovers, and as a woman dealing with multiple losses. But if there is sadness here, there is also so much beauty, as she writes about her love of art and nature and always, hope.
Meet the Author
Born in California, and having lived all over the United States, Whitney Vale now resides in Louisville, Kentucky with her husband of over thirty years. She was scheduled for surgery the same day she was accepted into the MFA program of Ashland University. She is a six-year survivor of cancer, and she has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Poetry and prose have been published in the following literary journals: Trailer Park Quarterly, Crab Creek Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rogue Agent, Thimble Literary, Louisville Review, Gyroscope: The Crone Issue, Quartet, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry, RockPaperPoem, Black Fork Review, Palisades Review, Lit Angels. She has two chapbooks, Journey with the Ferry Man, and the current Sermon of Swallows. She has been anthologized in Haunted by Pork Belly Press, and Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness by ELJ Editions.
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