Carmen is a writer and a perennial learner, who is as at-home in class discussions as she is planted behind a good book. Her literature is in the Themis and Acacia journals, respectively and in Blacklandia’s 2026 Anthology. She has been honored with a James D. Phelan Literary Award and a Solas Award for Culture and Ideas. And, in 2023 she wrote A Love Letter, honored by Small Press Distribution as a bestseller in May and June of that same year.
A Love Letter steps you into the sharp tenderness of a loved one’s transition. San Francisco Poet Laureate emeritus, Tongo Eisen Martin wrote, “Its pages expose your mind to the various mirrors of an embrace while walking you down the predatory nodes of a medical system that serves capital and rage with equal measure. In a few pages, you are years changed.”
This love letter should make you uncomfortable. It should confront you with humanity. And it should animate your cry for care that is both cost free and comprehensive – care that follows the body from inception to interment.
It is as life affirming to honor the body’s return as its arrival, which is why this little book attempts to document some of the most graceful aspects of a goodbye. Carmen tells us, readers, “A Love Letter captures where I was when my beloved aunt left the world, and where I am now, and where any of us might find ourselves in the future.”
See more of Karen Bankhead at https://linktr.ee/ettamaetv.
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Carmen Estela Kennedy Saleh 