Pen Names:
Wanda W. Jerome, Ella Volé
Genres:
Inspirational, Memoir, Poetry, Spirituality, Women’s Issues, Self-care
Website:
Social Media:
Youtube.com/@MagicalMorningMoments
Youtube.com/@Awakeful
Other Contact Information:
flyingfancyllc@swcp.com
Bio
Welcome to my SouthWest Writers Author Page. My name is Wanda W. Jerome. I am an award-winning poet and author who has been channeling spiritual messages in fixed and free poetry and prose during morning meditations and contemplations since 2022. I live in the beautiful north-central valley of New Mexico and call the Sandia Mountains my home. Here, I receive messages of love and light which I share with readers for hope and encouragement.
May 20, 2025: My 2024 memoir in verse, Journey Beyond the Veil: Awakening the Heart to Love was recorded and released on AUDIBLE. I am so glad to spread the impact of my poetry in every manner I can. Thanks to Laurie Bower, narrator extraordinaire, whose voice added so much to my words.
2025: NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS Winner of the Poetry Book category, Journey Beyond the Veil: Awakening the Heart to Love was also finalist in spirituality and women’s issues by the prestigious international awards organization.
2024 – 2025: SOUTHWEST WRITERS. I received several awards for one haiku and first pages of my earlier memoir, Flying Fancy. I have a growing number of publications in anthologies, including Fixed and Free (Billy Brown), Voices in my Head (Red Penguin), Mosaic Voices (SouthWest Writers) and Green – Anthologies for the World (Red Penguin), Volume 1. A recent review of Journey Beyond the Veil by Bray McDonald will be published in the next quarterly anthology of Fixed and Free.
More from Wanda
What I’m working on now? Journey Beyond the Veil: Awakening the Heart to Love is a memoir in verse published in 2024. It won international awards in 2025. A new companion memoir in verse, After the Journey: Returning the Heart to Home, will be published this summer. Both are considered a series and are aimed at uplifting people who are suffering from addiction and/or depression and anxiety. They are filled with poetry that takes readers on one woman’s spiritual journey — and may be instructive and helpful for others on their own unique spiritual journeys.
Advice to share? Write what you know. But also be willing to write what comes through you — though you may not know who sent it. Whatever you do, capture the information — however you do it — nurture it — care for it — save it — and one day you will be able to pass it on.
I write memoir and poetry because I must. I also write song lyrics; most recently country swing and ballads about love between people. It’s a crazy, mixed up world — but it’s less so when we care for each other. Listen to each other. Be there for each other.
Books
Title: After the Journey: Returning the Heart to Home
Published: Flying Fancy, LLC (September 2025)
Genre: Memoir in Verse
From the author of Journey Beyond the Veil: Awakening the Heart to Love comes her next memoir in verse — After the Journey: Returning the Heart to Home. Through her poems and prose, experience her heartful transition back from a spiritual journey to her home place — her return to a mundane world of daily human drama and existential crises. Walk with her as she finds strength to commune with her Soul Self after an intense heart-journey beyond the veil of transmutation.
Does she live a mystic’s life in the skin of a human being who remains above the social fray? How does she sustain compassionate forgiveness? How does she serve a world needing more than she can ever give when her heart lives a sporadic loneliness? Come home along with her and see for yourself. Live the challenge of finding your own Heaven here on Earth. She says, Together, we can both find and keep it.
Available for Sale
Title: Journey Beyond the Veil: Awakening the Heart to Love
Published: Flying Fancy, LLC (July 2024)
Genre: Memoir in Verse
Experience one woman’s personal, private, and profound spiritual awakening through poetry and prose described as divine downloads — channeled by voices of wisdom from the past, present, and future. Each is shared to help you lift and remove the veil of separation, to take you from darkness to light, from fear and despair to hope and love. Reach through and remove the veil. Find a new way of being human in this your most precious lifetime.
Available for Sale
Title: Magical Morning Moments: Awakening to Love and Light
♦ Co-author: Jasmine Tritten
Published: Flying Fancy LLC (March 2024)
Genre: Poetry
Heartfelt poems channeled through spiritual inspiration and personal messages of love and light accompany photographs of enchanting New Mexico’s beautiful sunrises over the Sandia Mountains. Included are glimpses into the natural environment of New Mexico — the flora and fauna — that make it a special destination for nature lover and spiritual seekers.
This collaboration between poet and photographer came about magically through a mutual appreciation for their morning rituals of wellness and self-care. Weaving a tapestry of poems and photographs, the authors create a timely gift to lift the spirits of humanity in hopes that by sharing their own upliftment, they can help others live in the light of love and joy.
Available for Sale
Title: Crow Wisdom: A Seasonal Journey
♦ Co-author: Jasmine Tritten
Published: Flying Fancy LLC (March 2024)
Genre: Poetry
Crows have symbolic meanings in many cultures. Incredibly smart, these birds carve a unique place between the natural and spiritual worlds. They fly into our lives and communicate important insights as harbingers of change to come. In homage to the family of corvids — especially crows — we compiled this collection of uplifting poetry, photography and artwork to shed light on their unique contributions to our human experience here on earth. We hope you enjoy this book and crows find their way to you when you need them.
Available for Sale
Amazon: Paperback
Amazon: Ebook
Title: Flying Fancy: A Fly Girl’s Memoir
Published: Flying Fancy, LLC (April 2022)
Genre: Memoir
Readers can fly away with Ella Volé as she tucks you into her flight bag. Fly aboard some of the fanciest commercial airplanes of the 1970’s – when people dressed up to fly and were served the finest gourmet foods, wines, and spirits. These were the days when passengers had free reign of the cabin — when they could sit on Ella’s jump seat or gather in the front or back of the airplane and converse with the cabin crew, smoking their favorite cigarette. These were the days cockpit crews lounged in the aisles, chatting with passengers, their cockpit doors often left open. Ella’s happy passengers enjoyed themselves without today’s cell phones, laptops, or the Internet.
Available for Sale
Anthologies
Title: Fixed and Free Quarterly Volume 4 Issue 3 Fall 2025
Published: August 12, 2025
“Desiree”
Fixed and Free Quarterly showcases the poetry and prose writers who participate in our monthly Fixed and Free readings, which are held on Zoom, usually the fourth Thursday evening of each month, with some exceptions; ALL are welcome! Many of our participants are published in our Quarterly issues, and now, guest submissions are welcome, which are submissions of pieces not read at our readings. Essays and book reviews are also welcome, as long as the reviewer is a Fixed and Free participant or the book under review was authored by a Fixed and Free participant. Fixed and Free readings began our eighteenth year in August 2025, and they have been held online since April 2020, the beginning of the COVID pandemic. While many of our readers and authors are located in New Mexico, the use of Zoom has allowed us to expand our reach to readers and authors all across the US, from the East coast to the West coast as well as from Canada, Virgin Islands, Portugal, India and Singapore. For information about our readings and submitting or subscribing to our Quarterly, please contact Fixed and Free Host and Editor, Billy Brown at fixedandfreequarterly@gmail.com.
Available for Sale
Title: Seasons of New Mexico: A Natural High
♦ Co-authors: John J. Candelaria, Jasmine Tritten, Ric Speed
Published: July 13, 2025
A poetic picture of the many ways New Mexico calls people to love her land — the flora and fauna — the diverse cultures that make her The Land of Enchantment. This tapestry of poetry and photography captures both ancient and new places with words, colors and vistas — her glorious sunrises and blue skies — the TRUE essence of the homeplace known as New Mexico.
Available for Sale
Title: Green: Anthologies for the World, Vol. 1
Published: Red Penguin Books (June 4, 2025)
“Little Green”
Green is more than a color; it is a symbol, a feeling, a language spoken across cultures, disciplines, and personal experiences. It evokes the vitality of spring, the sting of envy, the promise of renewal, and the slow decay of time. It is the color of both innocence and ambition, of balance and contradiction. In nature, green is life in motion. In society, it is money, power, and sustainability. In emotion, it is hope and healing-and sometimes, the ache of longing.
This anthology gathers a diverse array of voices-poets, storytellers, essayists, and artists-each exploring the multiplicity of green in their own way. Here, green is not pinned down to a single meaning. Instead, it grows wild and unpredictable, revealing itself in unexpected corners: in childhood memories, in urban landscapes, in political movements, in intimate reflections.
As you turn the pages, let yourself drift through the spectrum of green: from the lush to the toxic, the sacred to the mundane, the personal to the collective. These pieces do not aim to define green, but to invite you into its many interpretations-to see through the lens of others, and perhaps discover new hues within yourself.
Available for Sale
Title: Unbreaking the Circle
Published: May 20, 2025
“Sayōnara”
The circle often serves as a symbol of completeness. Military service, however, often breaks circles: of place, time, relationships (both with others and with self), and sometimes of life. This anthology, providing a platform for the military, their family members and caregivers, to tell their stories, seeks to mend those rifts. For many in the military, their experiences are so deeply seated as to be inseparable from their identities, so expressing them is made at risk of having not only their work, but themselves, misunderstood or rejected. But when, instead, their confidences are received and resonate, it helps reforge the circle of community which was broken by silence born of fear.
Available for Sale
Title: Fixed and Free Quarterly Volume 4 Issue 1 March 2025
Published: February 19, 2025
“Heart of the Rose”
This is the first issue (Spring 2025) of the fourth volume of the Quarterly. It contains poems which were read at Fixed and Free monthly readings, plus an essay and book reviews and a Schedule of Events, which includes Fixed and Free events and publication dates and submission deadlines as well as other events of interest, both in-person and online events of interest to our community. For more information about Fixed and Free events and publications contact the organizer and editor, Billy Brown, at fixedandfreequarterly@gmail.com
Available for Sale
Title: voices in my head: a poetry anthology
Published: Red Penguin Books (November 15, 2024)
“Awakening”
“Heartache”
“voices in my head” aims to provide a platform to writers and artists alike who have experienced mental health struggles in their own lives and see their poetry as a tool that can spread awareness. Through uniting the stories of our submitters, this anthology reminds us of all of the humanity that is present in all, from the world that we can sense to the voices we can hear.
Available for Sale
Title: Mosaic Voices (The 2024 SWW Winners Anthology)
Published: September 8, 2024
“Flying Fancy” ♦ 1st Place: Chapter One, Published Memoir
pale water lilies ♦ 2nd Place: Haiku
The latest SWW anthology Mosaic Voices features the award-winning prose and poetry from the 2024 SWW Writing Contest. This year we had over 400 entries in twenty-five categories from talented writers and artists eager to share their work. Our winning entries came from all over the country and beyond. The writers are from a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences, and education. Like the pieces of a mosaic, these voices come together in beautiful patterns that enrich each other while also maintaining their own identity. Enjoy this mosaic of voices!
Available for Sale
Title: Fixed and Free Poetry Quarterly June 2024
Published: June 3, 2024
“I AM Speaks”
“Shadow Woman”
This is the tenth issue of our quarterly which began in March 2022 and is published every March, June, September and December. We publish poems and short prose pieces which have been read at our monthly Fixed and Free readings. We also publish essays and book reviews written by our Fixed and Free community members (those who have read at Fixed and Free readings) as well as reviews written by anyone else of books published by our members. This issue contains 116 poems and short prose pieces by 46 writers, including a poem by the youngest poet we have ever published, plus one essay and seventeen book reviews by six reviewers. Everyone is welcome at Fixed and Free! For information on our monthly readings and submission guidelines, contact the editor, Billy Brown, FixedandFreeQuarterly@gmail.com
Available for Sale
Title: Fixed and Free Quarterly, March 2024: Volume 3, Issue 1
Published: February 20, 2024
“Awakening”
Fixed and Free Quarterly celebrates Fixed and Free community members—writers who have read at Fixed and Free readings. Since the COVID Pandemic in early 2020. Our readings are held online using Zoom. For information on attending or participating in our readings or submitting to this Quarterly, please send an inquiry to editor Billy Brown at fixedandfreequarterly@gmail.com. Included in this issue are 101 pieces by over 40 writers, two stimulating essays by Vijali Hamilton and John Macker, and thirteen reviews by five reviewers! Noteworthy are poems by Mary Oishi and all her guest readers at her November Occasional Fixed and Free reading: Sandra Yannone, Amanda Ranth, and Gary Copeland Lilley. Recent featured readers included here are: Michael Ball, Richard Wolfson, Steven Concert, Marilyn O’Leary, Mary Oertel Kirschner, Joe Sorenson and Marietta Patricia Leis. Welcome to newcomers Cheryl Howard and Wanda Jerome and to returnees Heather Gunn and Britt Verstegen! Britt’s poignant poem “Dear One at Bosque del Apache” (to Ashraf) is very moving.