Linda Joy Burke is a performance poet and published writer residing in Maryland. She grew up in the Nation’s capital during the 1960s, went to Mt. Vernon College in DC for poetry and Loyola College of Baltimore for not long enough. She’s done a number of labor intensive jobs where she learned service and patience. She’s been writing for over 40 years and reads everything she can get her hands on except horror, computer manuals, and most contemporary science fiction. She listens to PBS, watches a lot of documentary TV, and listens to everything in music from hip hop to classical, country to world beat–and she values silence. She says, “I believe there’s always a little more room in the old brain for something new.”