Northern California poet Leslye Layne Russell, also a performing singer-songwriter and minimalist dancer, was born a bona fide first wave baby boomer in 1946 in Chico, California, while her father was completing his college studies at Chico State after being an officer and fighter pilot in World War II. She lived in several far northern California towns as she was growing up. When she was very young she lived for several years in Portola, a small train stop town on the Feather River in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains. These mountains became and still remain an important part of her writing and personal inspiration. Layne enjoys giving poetry readings, and often has presented her poetry with music performed by her husband James Russell who is a guitarist, arranger, composer, and guitar builder. Twice Layne has been a featured guest on the live PBS radio program "Inkwell." She has founded two online poetry lists, "Socopoet," now called "Essential Poet," which she began in 1997, and "Raku Teapot," which she co-created with John Polozzolo in 2001. Since 1984 Layne has been an independent nondenominational minister and has performed over a thousand weddings, many memorials, and done personal consultation and taught meditation, breath work, and dream work. She has also been a high school substitute teacher since 1990. After living in Sonoma County, California, for twenty-six years where she raised her two daughters, Rain and Crystal, and stepson, Kyle, Layne recently moved to Redding with her husband and their blue-eyed Lynx Point Siamese, Sky. She is happy to be surrounded by mountains again, and frequently makes the short drives to Mt. Shasta, Mt. Lassen, and into her heart's home, the northern Sierra Nevada. Layne's poetry has appeared in many poetry journals since she officially began publishing her work in 1996. Layne is an award winning poet published in Dickens, Poetic Express, Poetry Now, Sublette's Barn, Poets4Peace, Free Cuisenart, Poetry Repair Shop, Fish Dance, Vancouver Canada Tibet Art Speaks, One Dog Press, Minotaur Press, Baker Street Irregular, The Hold, In the Grove, Disquieting Muses, TADS, Blue Moon Quarterly, Haiku Yearbook, and others.
haiku: "pine needles" - previously unpublished
biography
newspaper, magazine, & journal appearances
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