BONNY BARRY SANDERS

BONNY BARRY SANDERS

Touching Shadows

Bonny Barry Sanders is a writer of considerable diversity, and her background in the fields of publishing and teaching is extensive.

Ms. Sanders is an award-winning poet.  She won First Place in The Royal Palm Literary Prize for poetry in 2005.  Her debut collection, Touching Shadows, was published by Val Verde Press in 2005.

Although she thinks of herself primarily as a poet, her first novel—a work of historical fiction entitled Kiss Me Good-bye—was published early in 2007 by Byrd Street Press a Division of White Mane Publishing Company.  She considers it a major achievement after seven years of research, writing, revising, and patient persistence and focus.

Her poems, literary essays, and book reviews have appeared in journals and magazines throughout the country.  She adapted her screen play, Schoolmaster from Flat Creek, for musical theater, and it was performed at the University of New England.  Several children’s stories were published in the Century 21 Reading Series and in The Christian Science Monitor. Early in her career she spent several years in the publishing industry in New York and Boston, and she has taught on all levels—elementary, high school, university, and senior citizen.

In 1986-87 she served as an editorial reader for the Colorado Review, and she served in the same capacity from 1995-1005 for Kalliope: A Journal of Women’s Literature & Art.

She participated as a volunteer for the Jacksonville Public Library’s “Teen Read Week” which provided poetry workshops for teens in branch libraries throughout Jacksonville.  She also developed a very successful course for seniors, “Writing Your Memoirs,” which she taught for Jacksonville University’s Elder Hostel Program and at the University of New England.

As an artist, Ms. Sanders’ medium is words not musical notes, paint, marble, bronze or clay.  She states, “A note of music has identity and can relate harmoniously to other notes, but a word has a bouquet of ideas behind it and hosts an array of connotations.  These are the building blocks of writing.  Thoughts give us privacy.  Words give us connection.  A work of writing gives us community.”  Behind Ms. Sanders’ work is the goal to achieve connection through association.  Her writing is at ease in the natural world, and it derives its force from a conscious, quietude of spirit.

Kiss Me Good-bye

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