Madeleine (DeCoste) Sterkowicz grew up in Chicago, Illinois’ northwest suburbs, where she developed a penchant for storytelling as she delighted in relatives recounting incidents bent by their own points of view. Madeleine’s poetry and writing style reflects her love for the word-filled richness of family coffee-klatches, kitchen-table conversations, and front porch tales. Communication is Madeleine’s mantra: if people refuse to communicate, I drag the words out of them.
Madeleine has utilized her ability to hear event details, and nine years of interpersonal communication training, in her varied careers, including office management, employee training, human resources, business consultant, and Subway restaurant owner. She instituted participative-management principles within the companies she served.
Prior to poetry, her primary writing endeavors included technical manuals, business letters, and short stories; and wrote and directed children’s programs and plays. She has contributed twenty-seven prose articles in the Daily Lenten Journeys of 2008 Walking the Jesus Way, 2009 Stop! Look! Listen!, and 2010 Life’s Cross Roads, published by Lord of Life Lutheran Church, Sun City West, Arizona, where she also facilitated writers’ workshops. Madeleine attended Arizona State University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Academy classes at Grand Learning in Surprise, Arizona (an ASU Osher affiliate); the classes, as well as writing workshops, had been conducted under the tutelage of teacher and published poet, James Masao Mitsui, through whom am published in the anthology, Measuring Twine: Poetry With Strings Attached.
Besides the Chicago suburbs, Madeleine has resided in Flushing and Battle Creek, Michigan, Sylvania, Maumee, and Toledo, Ohio; migrated to Tacoma, Washington, in 2002; and from Sun City Grand, Surprise, Arizona in 2017 to now live in Puyallup, Washington with her husband of 57 years, Leo, and rescue MaltiPoo, AJ.
I am looking for a group that would hear my poetry and prose and offers helpful criticism for improvement.