Letters to Colin Firth

by Katherine Riegel

This collection tells the story of one month in the life of a woman in between--between an ending marriage and a beginning romance, between Illinois and Florida, between past and future.

68 pages, Paperback

Published December 10, 2015

About the author

Katherine--Katie--Riegel is a poet, writer, editor, educator, meditator, and animal lover. She's the author of a lyric memoir, three full-length books of poetry, a chapbook, and other books. In late July 2025, she's permanently moving to a small village not far from Edinburgh, Scotland. She teaches independent online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction--more info on her website.

Reviews

[Sandra Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katie Riegel's Letters to Colin Firth is a unique combination of transcendent imagery, the everyday concerns of human existence, and moments that made me laugh and snort. I'll be rereading this.

[lex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soaked this up in thirty minutes! I loved it, especially as someone who writes her diary entries as letters to famous people!!!!!!

[Elizabeth Theriot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout these epistolary musings and confessions, Riegel affirms her own vulnerability and strength. She is learning to save herself. The letters are written on her sister’s horse farm in central Illinois, where she is temporarily hiding from the “tar-pit-of-grief” of her divorce. Riegel is not coy about her turmoil—emotions buzz and spiral from the pages like the midges she admires for their ability to fly. Though caught between guilt and pain over the divorce from her “sweet soon-to-be-ex-husband” and sharp longing for her English lover, who she must continuously leave, this book is no more about these men than they are about Colin Firth. In one letter, Riegel recounts a childhood memory of her brother lifting an old pump and watching wasps instead of water emerge. She says “this is not a metaphor,” and it isn’t one. It is truth, her truth, and if “the best we can hope for is not to learn that every possible good thing could come out stinging but to keep admitting our thirst and to open our mouths anyway” then Letters to Colin Firth is Riegel’s wide-mouthed appeal to hope.

(Excerpt from my official review of this book! http://bwr.ua.edu/chapbook-review-let...)