SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.
Diane LeBlanc is a writer, teacher, and book artist with roots in Vermont, Wyoming, and Minnesota. She is the author of The Feast Delayed (Terrapin Books, 2021) and four poetry chapbooks. Poems and essays appear in Bellevue Literary Review, Cimarron Review, and Mid-American Review, among others. Diane is a holistic life coach with emphasis in creativity practice. She is a professor and writer-in-residence at St. Olaf College. Read more at www.dianeleblancwriter.com.
For almost two years, a butterfly kite hung in the upper branches of a maple tree on our street. At night, its yellow wings soaked in the glow of street lamps. By morning it was a caution sign, a bow of light, a blinding amendment to leaf and trunk. It bleached in summer heat and wintered over like a blown shell. After storms fractured the rods, its forewings collapsed onto hindwings. Blue and pink markings faded to old bruises. Near the end, the kite dangled from a branch like a butterfly clinging to a torn chrysalis. It rocked and spun, but there was no great release, no flapping off with the monarchs. One morning it was simply gone, disappeared like a species of one.
Diane LeBlanc is a teacher, writer, and book artist with roots in Vermont, Wyoming, and Minnesota. She has published four poetry chapbooks, numerous poems and essays, and a history of women in sport, Playing for Equality: Oral Histories of Women Leaders in the Early Years of Title IX. Honors and awards include the 2019 Fineline Competition award from Mid-American Review and the 2020 runner-up award for the Donald Murray Prize in Creative Nonfiction. A poetry collection, The Feast Delayed, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books in 2021. To learn more, visit www.dianeleblancwriter.com.
