Tag Archives: Genealogy

by | December 5, 2018 · 1:25 pm

Extreme Circumstances: The Life of Caroline Meier Waldeck (Sixth and Final BROAD STREET Magazine Article)

The sixth and final installment of what research went into the pieces in KIN TYPES, published by the beautiful magazine BROAD STREET.

The Family Kalamazoo

This is the sixth and final week that the beautiful creative nonfiction journal Broad Street magazine has published one of the pieces from my chapbook Kin Types along with documents and photographs that helped me piece together these old family stories.

The subject of the poem “Someone Else’s Story” is Caroline Meier Waldeck, the wife of my grandmother’s Uncle Fred, a German immigrant who, as a young husband and father, was hit by a streetcar and suffered severe brain damage from the accident.

You can read it here: Family Laundry: “Someone Else’s Story” by Luanne Castle

The first feature article is “Family Laundry: “An Account of a Poor Oil Stove Bought off Dutch Pete,” by Luanne Castle”

The second feature article is Family Laundry 2: “What Came Between A Woman and Her Duties” by Luanne Castle

The third feature article is: Family Laundry: “More Burials” by Luanne Castle

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by | November 9, 2018 · 9:51 am

Third Broad Street Magazine Article on Family History Literature

The poem this week is about the brother of a relative through marriage as told by their dead mother. They grew up in an abusive orphanage, but the subject of the poem did not keep quiet about it!

The Family Kalamazoo

As I described the last two weeks, Broad Street Magazine is featuring six poems and flash prose pieces from my chapbook Kin Types, along with some of the research and research artifacts I used to create the pieces.

Today the third part of the series was published and can be found here: Family Laundry: “More Burials” by Luanne Castle

This poem was written about the Leeuwenhoek family, specifically a relative by marriage, and the perspective is that of his dead mother. Her children were orphaned and the four youngest went to live in an orphanage.

The photo below is of a boy in Nymegen or Nijmegen, which is the city near the Neerbosch orphanage where the Leeuwenhoek children lived. It is most likely that this is a photograph of Gerrit Leeuwenhoek, the subject of my poem.

The first feature article is “Family Laundry: “An Account of a Poor…

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by | November 3, 2018 · 11:49 am

Second Broad Street Magazine Article on Family History Literature

Week two up at Broad Street Magazine! So thrilled. How did I learn that my great-great-grandfather’s sister was an artist?

The Family Kalamazoo

As I described last week in Six-Week Family History Series at BROAD STREET MAGAZINE, six poems and flash prose pieces from my chapbook Kin Types are being featured at Broad Street Magazine, along with some of the research and research artifacts I used to create the pieces. The idea was first suggested by editor Susann Cokal. Fabulous idea!

Today the second part of the series was published and can be found here: Family Laundry 2: “What Came Between A Woman and Her Duties” by Luanne Castle

This article is about a poem I wrote about my great-great-grandfather’s sister, Jennie DeKorn Culver. If you recall from past blog posts, she is the woman who left Kalamazoo for Seattle with her two adult daughters, years after a contentious divorce from John Culver.

An introduction to the series can be found here.  SERIES INTRODUCTION

The first feature article is Family Laundry: “

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by | October 27, 2017 · 5:20 pm

Family stories – The Lost in Books

The Lost in Books blog reviewed KIN TYPES, and I found it to be an interesting take on it.

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Whenever we think of family stories, the only forms we can think of are prose, memoir or short stories. That sounds rational and logical. Luanne Castle proves how wrong that typical and schematic thinking is. Why couldn’t you take the genealogical research and put it into the world of poetry?     M y adventure […]

Source: Family stories – The Lost in Books

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by | August 31, 2017 · 5:20 am

What Led Me to Kin Types? Read thestoryreadingapeblog!

As a child, I loved reading about times past. Biographies of famous women like Lucrezia Borgia and Annie Oakley let me experience life in the periods in which they lived. Historical fiction lent a sense of adventure to realistic depictions of old England or the American colonial period. Time travel became my favorite fantasy. But […]

via Meet Guest Author, Luanne Castle… — Chris The Story Reading Ape’s Blog

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by | August 30, 2017 · 6:02 pm

A Confession and a Book Review: Kin Types by Luanne Castle #bookreview #poetry

I am so grateful and humbled to have Kin Types reviewed by the wonderful book reviewer Marie!

1WriteWay

First, the confession: I’ve been away in body as well as in mind. For two years my husband had been planning this road trip. For one year, it’s been almost an obsession with him and then with me. And, into the mix, as if it weren’t enough to be planning and obsessing over a road trip, I started a course of study that might lead me to a “second career.” (See my previous post here.) Sometimes I think I purposely set up roadblocks to writing. Anyone else I know would have been blogging about this trip, before and during. But not me. No, I was discreet. Only those who had a need to know knew of our plans. Now I’m back to my hot, humid home and our three cats who have (yet again) proven that they are loyal to whose-ever hand that feeds them, be it my hand…

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by | August 27, 2017 · 12:13 pm

Luanne Castle’s Kin Types

Jaye wrote an amazing review of Kin types. I am so grateful!

jayesbrain

When is a poem not a poem? When it’s a kin type, Kin (literally, one’s family or relations) type (a category of people or things having common characteristics). The reader doesn’t quite know what to expect when diving into Luanne Castle’s second poetry collection, Kin Types because it is immediate evident that this is not fiction, not poetry, not history nor prose. Kin Types is all of these things spun into a genre-bending volume of poems that demand to be read over and over again, for their plot and lyricism, and for their contribution to the preservation of times past for both one family and all families.

As a fan of Castles first award-winning book, Doll God, I was expecting more of the types of poems that cause one to pause, and reminisce; these poems provoke memory you didn’t even know you had. The kin in Kin Types are…

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by | August 24, 2017 · 6:47 am

Guest author: Luanne Castle – Kin Types

A huge thank you to Sue Vincent for featuring me and my baby Kin Types on her beautiful blog!

Sue Vincent's Daily Echo

Jennie Bomhoff Zuidweg

The poems and flash prose in Kin Types were begun as I accumulated family stories and information over the years. My grandfather had an excellent memory and was an enthusiastic storyteller, so over time I came to feel that I knew his parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, although they died decades before I was born.

When my grandfather got older, he gave me a collection of glass plate negatives that had belonged to his uncle, as well as antique photographs. As my family noticed my interest, they began to send me other heirlooms, including documents and more photographs. I started to research my family history, using online websites. Then I started a WordPress blog called thefamilykalamazoo.com, and readers from around the world contacted me, sending me yet more information.

As I became more knowledgeable about my family, the stories I heard at my grandfather’s knee were enhanced…

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by | August 21, 2017 · 6:21 am

A Visit to Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore Today

Welcome to the first of the update for authors in the Cafe and Bookstore this week and we have a full house… you might need a cup of coffee and a few minutes to enjoy. Our first author with news is Luanne Castle who is celebrating the release of her second book Kin Types. About […]

via Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – Author Update – Luanne Castle, Teagan Riordain Geneviene, Chuck Jackson and Paul Cude — Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life

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by | August 13, 2017 · 7:40 am

Family Histories: Kin Types by Luanne Castle

Adrienne at Middlemay Books allowed me the opportunity to guest post about family history, a subject close to my heart and that of Kin Types! Thank you so much, Adrienne.

Nothing Gilded, Nothing Gained-Author Adrienne Morris

Welcome to Family Histories, a series of guest posts by some of my favorite bloggers in which they explore family . . . and history. The families and the histories are sometimes the writers’ own and sometimes not.

This weekLuanne Castle discusses how the exploration of family history has enriched her creative life:

By combining a passion for family history with my creative writing, I felt able to—for a brief moment—inhabit the lives of women and men from previous generations and imagine how their stories felt to them.

Family history as done by genealogy buffs only interested in filling in the dates and places of lineal ancestors miss the point. Everybody has ancestors. What becomes fascinating is that by recreating and listening to the stories of previous generations, we learn from the experiences of those who have lived on Earth before us.

Family history is a messy, complicated, and…

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