Maggie Collins writes about real people who live on the page.Celeste Bastille is a young woman who will win the reader and stay in her memory. Most of the characters are as vivid as Celeste and they are a family. As much as you want Celeste to find happiness in her own life, the family needs her. Collins weaves a tale as intriguing as the folk tale which is the basis for the book. Celeste earns her Celestial Blue Sky.

Lee Grue New Orleans poet and author
Publisher of the New Laurel Review

Lee Meitzen Grue is a Louisiana poet and fiction writer, who often writes about New Orleans culture and music. Her published books are: Trains and Other Intrusions: Poems; French Quarter Poems; In The Sweet Balance of The Flesh; and Goodbye, Silver, Silver Cloud, a collection of New Orleans stories. A spoken word CD with jazz accompaniment "Live! On Frenchmen Street" was released in 2000. Performing with jazz or reading without accompaniment, Grue has appeared in night clubs: The Knitting Factory in New York, Snug Harbor, and True Brew in New Orleans. and at literary festivals: The Tennessee Williams and Faulkner Festivals, and Jazz Fest in New Orleans. As a Visiting Writer, she has conducted seminars and performed her work at La Universidad de Barcelona in Spain; at Librairie, an English language bookstore in Paris, Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa at an international symposium on “The Literature of Place" She has translated the work of Mexican poet David Huerta as part of “Bridging The Gulf”an exchange of four Mexico City poets and four new Orleans poets. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship; prizes in poetry and fiction from Deep South Writers; The Associated Writing Programs; and A PEN Syndicated Fiction Prize, Grue has taught at Tulane University, Westminster College, and Xavier University. She is the former Director of The New Orleans Poetry Forum and The First Backyard Poetry Theater and long time editor of The New Laurel Review. Grue is a member of The Authors Guild and is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in American Women. 

www.leegrue.com