Linda Bratcher Wlodyka has been chosen as the Massachusetts, Beat Poet Laureate, 2023-2025. In the summer of 2023, Linda was chosen as a contributor to WordxWord a summer poetry festival in the Berkshires where she collaborated with a team of poets creating a very large poem that was read aloud for the audience at The Mount. She also has held the position as a docent at The Mount, Edith Wharton's summer home in Lenox, MA from 2002 -2006. She retired as an educator from Mt. Greylock Regional School District in Williamstown in 2020. Linda's poem, Secret Cottage, was voted Best in the Berkshires in 2012 and she was invited to the Colonial Theater to read that poem. Linda has 3 chapbooks previously self-published, My Spirited Cameo, Voices from the Blue Room and Tick Tock. This collection, If Brambles Were Bookends, is Linda's first full length poetry collection. Linda is an avid fan of Lewis Carrol's, Alice in Wonderland. She graduated from Berkshire Community College and earned a degree in Environmental Sciences. Her poems have been widely anthologized throughout the United States. She is a member of the Florence Poet's Society and has recently been involved with reading poems submitted in the yearly anthology, Silkworm.