Lori Jakiela was a 2025 Rattle Poetry Prize Finalist for "Build a Bear." She is the author of eight books, including the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, which received the Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University, was a finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award and the Housatonic Book Award, and was named one of 20 Not-To-Miss Nonfiction Books of 2015 by The Huffington Post. Her most recent book, All Skate: True Tales from Middle Life, was published by the great literary underground Roadside Press in 2025. A former international flight attendant, Jakiela directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, teaches creative writing in the doctoral program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and leads many community workshops.

Find more here:

https://www.lorijakiela.net/

As always, we'll also include the live Prompt Lines for responses to our weekly prompt. Submit your poems through Submittable by midnight Sunday for a chance to be invited:

https://rattle.submittable.com/submit/269309/rattlecast-prompt-poems-online

For links to all the past episodes, visit:

https://www.rattle.com/page/rattlecast/

This Week’s Prompt:

Write about a time you took something more literally than you probably should have. Include as many colors as possible.

Next Week’s Prompt:

Write a poem that rallies against its own epigraph.

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