Dear readers,

I’m excited to have five of my letters to Colin Firth published at The Offing today. I’m also a chronic explainer, perhaps because of my earnest Midwesterness. So let me introduce you to the project through a snippet of yet more correspondence:

Editors at The Offing: While The Offing’s adoration of Colin Firth is boundless, it’s not immediately clear why, or in what context, these letters are meant for him.

Katie: (Chuckling and typing) Colin Firth is my longest-standing celebrity crush. I have a poem in my first book called, “After Watching a Colin Firth Movie, I Think About Quantum Mechanics.” This crush is playful, a way to bring some humor to my poetry and to laugh at myself.

Last April I was between: between marriage and divorce, Illinois and Florida, my soon-to-be-ex husband (also a writer) and my new love, who just happens to be English. I needed to do NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) and produce a poem every day—I needed it to stay sane in my in-between-ness. My ex—still, lucky for me, my friend—half-jokingly said I should write a letter to Colin Firth each day. I did. And it turned out that having a mostly-imagined correspondent, someone intelligent and sensitive but completely outside my complex personal situation, was ideal. 

The result: 30 letters/prose poems/mini-essays, now gathered into a chapbook that is looking for a publisher. (I initially kept going after April, ending up with 50 pieces, but my English boyfriend said, “More than 30 letters to Colin Firth seems a bit creepy, don’t you think?”)

I hope you enjoy the letters.

Yours,

Katie