"Finding Joy in Borrowed Time" by Patricia Joslin

 – much more kind and clever

There is much to lose over time, but so much more to gain.  

Patricia Joslin lives in Charlotte NC. Her essays have appeared in the Personal Story Publishing Project—That Southern Thing, 2020, Luck and Opportunity, 2021. Her poems are included in the Kakalak 2021 and 2022 anthologies. Patricia’s poem, “Today at Low Tide,” was selected by the NC Poetry Society for its 2023 “Poetry in Plain Sight" poster program. Her chapbook, I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow, a collection of poems about loss and healing, will be published in 2023 by Charlotte Lit Press. When not writing she works to improve her golf game.

Author’s Talk

Patricia Joslin

I’ve been a reader and writer all my life. I remember walking over a mile to the local library as a young girl. I was maybe 7 or 8 years old at the time, but that was a different time and children walked those miles to school alone or with friends. My secret reading nook was a quiet place in the attic crawl space where I read by flashlight. Some of my favorite books were the Nancy Drew mysteries and the Mary Norton stories about the Borrowers. My essay in Lost and Found is a delightful remembrance of those adventures with the Borrowers. My grandchildren are avid readers now, too, and I’ve introduced them to some of my favorite children’s books. 

Fast forward decades, and here I am still reading and writing. I don’t have to walk to the library, but simply download the books I wish to read. My retirement life is busy, so the kindle device makes it easy to read while I wait for flights to and from DC and Minneapolis where my grandchildren live. I carry a journal as I travel, and many of my jottings have made their way into my writing. 

My writing life is fluid. I enjoy the personal essay form, but I also love to write poetry. My chapbook of poems dealing with loss and healing, I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow, will be in print in May 2023. I was fortunate enough to participate in a year-long writing lab at Charlotte Center for Literary Arts in 2021. Our cohort of 11 poets, under the direction of Dannye Romine Powell, produced some marvelous work. Many of our pieces have been published in journals and magazines this past year. My own poems have been published by the Tipton Poetry Journal, NC Poetry Society, and have appeared in Kakalak, a North Carolina anthology of poetry. I also recently self-published a memoir of 50 stories using the StoryWorth website.  

Writing has been and will continue to be an integral part of my life. Morning pages keep me grounded, poetry delights me, and essay writing allows me to explore those areas of my life that need more space on the page. My next writing focus will be micro-memoir and tiny texts - a new genre that will teach me to condense and distill the essence of my thoughts. Join me on that journey?—Patricia Joslin