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Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker: On Work and the Writing Life
In our Harmony Memoir Series. "Lori Jakiela's Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker is a hilarious, working-class hero of an essay collection. It's full of mall employees, flight attendants, working mothers, struggling writers, loving daughters, and adopted children, who all end up being one person named Lori Jakiela. A book of many masks, it proves the saying: there is no such thing as an ordinary life"-- Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia, and The Sarah Book
216 pages, Paperback
Published July 23, 2017
10 people are currently reading
134 people want to read
About the author
Lori Jakiela
19 books113 followersLori Jakiela is the author of seven books, including the memoir Belief Is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, which received the Saroyan Prize for International Literature from Stanford University, was a finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award and the Housatonic Book Award, and was named one of 20 Not-To-Miss Nonfiction Books of 2015 by The Huffington Post.
Her most recent book, They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So, is forthcoming from Atticus Books in October 2023.
Her most recent collection of poems, How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen? Poems at Mid-Life, received the 2021 Wicked Woman Prize from Baltimore's Brickhouse Books and was a September 2022 Book Club Read
Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, LA Cultural Weekly, Brevity, Chautauqua Magazine, Belt, and more. The actress Kristin Bell performed Jakiela's essay, "The Plain Unmarked Box Arrived," on The New York Times' Modern Love podcast on WBUR, and Jakiela has been featured on NPR and in PBS's "People Who Write Books Around Here," a documentary by Pittsburgh legend Rick Sebak.
Jakiela has performed her poems at Lollapalooza and was the winner of the first-ever Pittsburgh Literary Death Match.
Her work has been widely anthologized, most recently in The Best of Brevity: 20 Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction (ed. Zoe Bossiere and Dinty Moore).
A former international flight attendant, Jakiela directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, teaches creative writing in the doctoral program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and leads many community workshops. For four years, she co-directed the Summer Writers Festival at Chautauqua Institution. She was a co-founder of Veterans Write, a program that offered free writing workshops to veterans and their families.
The recipient of multiple Golden Quill Awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, her column, "Let Yourself Go," appears regularly in Pittsburgh Magazine. She lives in her hometown--Trafford, Pennsylvania (the last stop in Pittsburgh's Electric Valley) --with her husband, the author Dave Newman, and their children.
Her most recent book, They Write Your Name on a Grain of Rice: On Cancer, Love, and Living Even So, is forthcoming from Atticus Books in October 2023.
Her most recent collection of poems, How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen? Poems at Mid-Life, received the 2021 Wicked Woman Prize from Baltimore's Brickhouse Books and was a September 2022 Book Club Read
Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, LA Cultural Weekly, Brevity, Chautauqua Magazine, Belt, and more. The actress Kristin Bell performed Jakiela's essay, "The Plain Unmarked Box Arrived," on The New York Times' Modern Love podcast on WBUR, and Jakiela has been featured on NPR and in PBS's "People Who Write Books Around Here," a documentary by Pittsburgh legend Rick Sebak.
Jakiela has performed her poems at Lollapalooza and was the winner of the first-ever Pittsburgh Literary Death Match.
Her work has been widely anthologized, most recently in The Best of Brevity: 20 Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction (ed. Zoe Bossiere and Dinty Moore).
A former international flight attendant, Jakiela directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, teaches creative writing in the doctoral program at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and leads many community workshops. For four years, she co-directed the Summer Writers Festival at Chautauqua Institution. She was a co-founder of Veterans Write, a program that offered free writing workshops to veterans and their families.
The recipient of multiple Golden Quill Awards from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania, her column, "Let Yourself Go," appears regularly in Pittsburgh Magazine. She lives in her hometown--Trafford, Pennsylvania (the last stop in Pittsburgh's Electric Valley) --with her husband, the author Dave Newman, and their children.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 5, 2018
I loved this book. Anything I say won't live up to the book itself. I felt like the author was a friend and it was a chronicle of coming of age and how we ended up where we are of some of my personal friends. I've already recommended it to one of those "we've been friends since junior high" friends. Really embodies the hopes and dreams -- and settling for what life has handled us of those from our generation. I wanted to be an actress. I've been to Hollywood once -- for a taping of American Idol Semifinals from a contest I won. That's likely the closest I'll ever be to being an actress, but it's okay. Lori Jakiela also shows it's okay to have dreams that don't quite pan out, and the experiences we have along the way. (And by the way, I do remember it as "Things Remembered")
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July 27, 2020Read it. And blurbed it. Yo.
"I could throw a rock in just about any direction and hit a good writer. The hard part is finding the special ones, the writers who make us laugh, then cry and who make us feel like they're in our heads. Lori Jakiela is one of the special ones, and with Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker, she reminds us why, essay by essay, sentence by sentence. She writes from the heart, she's fearless and funny, and her love for her family and her craft leap off the page."
"I could throw a rock in just about any direction and hit a good writer. The hard part is finding the special ones, the writers who make us laugh, then cry and who make us feel like they're in our heads. Lori Jakiela is one of the special ones, and with Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker, she reminds us why, essay by essay, sentence by sentence. She writes from the heart, she's fearless and funny, and her love for her family and her craft leap off the page."
August 3, 2017
Lori Jakiela's newest book, Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker (published by Bottom Dog Press), is a fantastic collection of personal essays. I have loved Lori's work (both her poems and her memoirs) forever, and this book is such a great read! Funny, yet touching, Lori explores what it is like to break out of a blue-collar family to try to make it in the mysterious, yet often discouraging, world of writing. Along the way, she writes about her adventures as a flight attendant, a young worker at Things Remembered, and of course, as the title suggests, a Bingo worker (just to name a few...) Intermixed in these life narratives are also musing about the perils and pitfalls of struggling to write the truth.
July 22, 2017
Lori Jakiela's fourth book of memoir...it's a book that will make you laugh and cry--two requirements from Anton Chekhov. It hits the heart of working-class and the writer's life. She is such a fine and caring writer.
"Lori Jakiela’s Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker is a hilarious, working-class hero of an essay collection. It’s full of mall employees, flight attendants, working mothers, struggling writers, loving daughters, and adopted children, who all end up being one person named Lori Jakiela. A book of many masks, it proves the saying: there is no such thing as an ordinary life."-- Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia and The Sarah Book
"Lori Jakiela’s Portrait of the Artist as a Bingo Worker is a hilarious, working-class hero of an essay collection. It’s full of mall employees, flight attendants, working mothers, struggling writers, loving daughters, and adopted children, who all end up being one person named Lori Jakiela. A book of many masks, it proves the saying: there is no such thing as an ordinary life."-- Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia and The Sarah Book
October 1, 2024
school read | english 161 | fall 2024
this was the one and only book i read for my college english class. not a classic or a book by a critically acclaimed author. no, it was this. i know i have a lot of english and writing classes ahead of me in college, and that complaint isn't the book's fault, but i just needed to say it.
the book itself was just meh. it mostly made me think "what was the point of this?" at the end, which isn't a great thing when you have dozens of papers and essays to write on said book. i kind of feel like we read it just because it was set in the pittsburgh area? i'm sure there has to be better books set here though, right?
this was the one and only book i read for my college english class. not a classic or a book by a critically acclaimed author. no, it was this. i know i have a lot of english and writing classes ahead of me in college, and that complaint isn't the book's fault, but i just needed to say it.
the book itself was just meh. it mostly made me think "what was the point of this?" at the end, which isn't a great thing when you have dozens of papers and essays to write on said book. i kind of feel like we read it just because it was set in the pittsburgh area? i'm sure there has to be better books set here though, right?
April 25, 2018
I would have appreciated Jakiela's style no matter what, but being a native Pittsburgher made this book extra special. Reading this made me feel like I was in a Pittsburgh bar, hanging out with the author and sharing a few laughs. Smart, concise language melded together with the oh-so-refreshing ability to laugh at herself makes this one of my favorites for the year. I immediately followed the author on Facebook and have her writing workshops on my bucket list. Even if I do have to cross all kinds of rivers to get to them.
December 23, 2023
P 42 …. We all carry our younger cells in us all the time. “It’s your acorn,” Haven says about it. “You grow around yourself like a tree.”
P 110 … “ if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
P 188 …. (On why we write) it makes us happy. It helps make sense of things. It allows us to be ourselves. It allows us to see what’s possible. It gives us hope.
A wonderful memoir with Pittsburgh references that I deeply enjoyed. The author was open and reflective- story telling was amazing- such an enjoyable book! Thank you Lori Jamila for writing.
P 110 … “ if people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
P 188 …. (On why we write) it makes us happy. It helps make sense of things. It allows us to be ourselves. It allows us to see what’s possible. It gives us hope.
A wonderful memoir with Pittsburgh references that I deeply enjoyed. The author was open and reflective- story telling was amazing- such an enjoyable book! Thank you Lori Jamila for writing.
June 3, 2023
Loved this, and cannot wait to read more from her!!
October 6, 2023
This was a short and quick memoir that was required reading for my College Writing course this semester. While I can say that it is honestly not something that I would have picked up on my own to read, I ended up really enjoying it!
Jakiela writes in such a way that is captivating and from the very beginning, I was drawn into her world - experiencing everything right alongside with her. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, I was even more enthralled with her story because it related to me. I also related when she spoke of working at Bingo with her Grandmother, as I grew up the child of parents that were members of the local Fire Dept. and Ladies' Auxiliary and spent many Friday nights in the same 'cloud of cigarette smoke', making food for old ladies who tipped you 10 cents for a 'job well done'.
The storytelling is powerful and immersive. Whether recounting moments of joy, hardship, or self-discovery, each chapter had vivid details that as a reader we could relate. She spoke on her time as a Flight Attendant and the wild world of jerks she was exposed to in that capacity. Her first author's signing event a local Sam's Club after the publishing of her first book that went wrong..and so much more!
Honestly, it's a story that lingers in your thoughts for a bit even after you've finished it. I was very glad that this required reading didn't seem like a chore.
If you're from Pittsburgh and you're looking for a quick read about someone local that you might find some relevance too, I highly recommend!
Jakiela writes in such a way that is captivating and from the very beginning, I was drawn into her world - experiencing everything right alongside with her. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, I was even more enthralled with her story because it related to me. I also related when she spoke of working at Bingo with her Grandmother, as I grew up the child of parents that were members of the local Fire Dept. and Ladies' Auxiliary and spent many Friday nights in the same 'cloud of cigarette smoke', making food for old ladies who tipped you 10 cents for a 'job well done'.
The storytelling is powerful and immersive. Whether recounting moments of joy, hardship, or self-discovery, each chapter had vivid details that as a reader we could relate. She spoke on her time as a Flight Attendant and the wild world of jerks she was exposed to in that capacity. Her first author's signing event a local Sam's Club after the publishing of her first book that went wrong..and so much more!
Honestly, it's a story that lingers in your thoughts for a bit even after you've finished it. I was very glad that this required reading didn't seem like a chore.
If you're from Pittsburgh and you're looking for a quick read about someone local that you might find some relevance too, I highly recommend!
May 7, 2018
Another stunning memoir from Lori Jakiela.
This book focuses on working. I think it's splendid and tugs at my emotions in a fabulous way.
From the author bio: "The author of three previous memoirs and a poetry collection, she writes to figure things out, to connect the dots between all that beautiful strangeness."
This book focuses on working. I think it's splendid and tugs at my emotions in a fabulous way.
From the author bio: "The author of three previous memoirs and a poetry collection, she writes to figure things out, to connect the dots between all that beautiful strangeness."
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews