Letters From Home

Sandy LeonVest has, over the course of her writing career, been a poet, playwright, singer-songwriter, political journalist - radio and print - and the editor/publisher of SolarTimes (solartimes.org), a groundbreaking energy publication and newspaper distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area from 2006 through 2013. Today she spends most of her time writing poetry and fiction, which she believes was "who she meant to be all along." Sandy's poems capture the spirit of the 21st century, with all of its circularities and contradictions - fathomless beauty and incomprehensible ugliness; infinite joy and endless grieving; and the inevitability of "the ever-spinning circle." Sorrowful endings followed by new beginnings. Her poetic voice seems to channel the poets of long ago, at once emanating from another era, yet echoing universal and timeless themes. Those who love literature will be tempted to read these exquisitely poignant and readable poems over and over again - to themselves or out loud to each other - by candlelight, or moonlight, or sitting outside at sunset with a glass of Chardonnay ...
About the Author: As Leonard Cohen wrote, "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Sandy Leon Vest's work has a way of "letting in the light" with a poetic force that captures the mood of the 21st century, while simultaneously channeling her rich (mostly Irish) ancestral heritage. All of it delivered in a voice that constantly surprises and delights, and with a passion for the world of the human heart that spills onto the page in a richly graphic tapestry -- one that is both dreamlike and prophetic. At times carried in an undercurrent of dark humor, the poems of Sandy LeonVest encompass a stylistic range that crosses cultural boundaries and spans generations, lending her work a peerless quality. Yet, her powerful voice is reminiscent of Margaret Atwood, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski and even the mystical musings of Rumi. Sandy Leon Vest's first poetry volume is preceded by her decades as a political journalist --radio and print -- beginning in the late 1980s at Radio Pacifica (KPFA) in Berkeley. She and her late husband, James Vest, worked for years as a songwriter-musician team in the San Francisco Bay Area under the name LeonVest. The two were recording their second album (Alive By Request) at the time of his sudden death. Sandy also spent seven years as editor/publisher of the groundbreaking energy publication SolarTimes. Today Sandy, a fifth generation native Californian, lives in Fairfax, California, where she continues to be a prolific poet and songwriter.