In Poetry and Short Stories
By Barbara L. Sellers
About the Book
Poetry was Barbara Sellers’s first love. She wrote her first poem at age nine, although she wrote most of the poems in this book when she was 35 (the same age she is on the book cover).
Sellers’s early poems were humorous and made people laugh. She enjoyed entertaining friends and family members with her humorous poems, so she continued to pursue her passion to write more.
Before long, instead of sitting down at a desk and waiting for inspiration to write her next poem, her poems started coming to her naturally while she slept. In the middle of the night, she often awoke with a new poem on her mind. If she did not take out a pen and write it down, going back to sleep would be very difficult. Originally, the first poem Sellers fell in love with was “Little Orphan Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley. She read Riley’s long poem so frequently that Sellers can still recite all four stanzas from memory, without notes.
Sellers said some of the greatest poems ever written often have to be closely examined before anyone can fully comprehend their meanings. However, many casual readers do not enjoy reading poems that are too cryptic to immediately decipher. That is why Sellers largely writes simplistic poems with messages that are easy for anyone to understand.
About the Author
Barbara Sellers was the sixth born in a family of 14—seven girls and seven boys—and grew up on a 400-acre farm in Glenwood, Minnesota. Sellers attended Glenwood Public School from first through 12th grade and credits her grandmother, Marian Brewster, for encouraging her to write. At large family gatherings, Grandmother Brewster would read the comical segments of Sellers’s letters aloud to everyone’s amusement and cheer.
Two days after graduating from high school, Sellers left the farm with her “Best Typist of the Year” award and one weekend suitcase half filled with books. When she arrived in St. Paul, she only had $4.16, but a friend was kind enough to let her stay with them until she got a job with Minnesota State Parks.
A few years later, Sellers moved to Tacoma, Washington, to escape snow and cold weather. There she worked as a Girl Friday at Richard’s Commercial Photography Studio. About a year later, she met her first husband at Tacoma Roller Bowl when he tripped in front of her, and she fell on top of him. He was in the U.S. Navy, so their lives were transported across the states from San Diego, California; Norfolk, Virginia.; Bath, Maine; Portsmouth, Rhode Island; Jacksonville, Florida; Bothell and Tacoma, Washington.
After Barbara became a single parent, she graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a Bachelor’s in English-Writing (Journalism). She then worked at the Army post for 27 years, mostly in the Public Affairs Office as a reporter, photojournalist, and editor of the Northwest Guardian newspaper. While there, Barbara won 32 individual and staff journalism awards, including the Thomas Jefferson Award twice for Best Metropolitan-sized newspaper in all branches of the military. Barbara is also a 32-year member of Toastmasters International and won 30 speech competitions.
Since she retired in May 2009, Barbara was in a TV commercial for DealDash and wrote her first book, Get Tough or Die: Why I Forgave My Parents for My Abusive Childhood.
Specifications
Format: Paperback
Trim size: 6×9
Cover price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-958711-01-9
Page count: 178