New, Now, and Next
What's New?
IMG DESCR: white ceramic bust of a mythical woman in flower cap that covers her eyes with blue strands of hair down her neck and shoulders.
"Poke"
This baby was written at Kate Hopper's Motherhood & Words retreat at Faith's Lodge last February. Submitted 33 times in 2019, this essay of six vignettes had a variety of titles such as "Needles," Tiny Rituals," "From One Side of Skin to the Other," and finally, "Poke."
It was revised as flash fiction, creative nonfiction, read at Penngrove Reading Series, with one vignette accepted as a stand-alone with Mothers Always Write before landing at Redivider Journal out of Emerson College in Boston.
IMG DESCR: Card with Moxie Road logo on white table flanked by yellow flowers
Photo credit: Kim Thompson Steel
What's Now?
New Year, New Moxie!
Saturday, January 25, 2020
For four years in a row, I have been saying the same thing: this retreat has everything I want for myself as a writer.
We've got breakout sessions with lit agent Anna Ghosh, a yoga class (I'll teach that one), social media primer from my work-wife Tarja Parssinen, and a keynote from Leslie Carol Roberts. And most of all, time and space to write.
But wait! There's more! This day-long writing retreat takes place at the gorgeous and serene Hivery in Mill Valley. We'll feed you, give you wine from Belden Barns, and books from Sausalito Books by the Bay.
IMG DESCR: Two fabulously funny women on stage at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley
Photo credit: Gina Risso
What's Next?
Moxie at the Mic!
The upcoming highlight is definitely this Valentine's Day reading, Moxie at the Mic: Naked with Strangers—An Evening of Storytelling for All Hearts, featuring a rock-star lineup with Dr. Jen Gunter (The Vagina Bible), Mary Ladd (The Wig Diaries), Alvin Orloff (Disasterama), Ayesha Mattu, (Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women), Pamela Alma Weymouth, Hilah, Schutt, and Kori Reid Stevenson. Book sales courtesy of Readers Bookstore.
IMG DESCR: yellow book cover with the Statue of Liberty in blue silhouette
Cover illustration by Alison Kolestar
Cover design by Anna Bauer Carr
LOVED IT:
America is Immigrants
by Sara Nović
Illustrated by Alison Kolesar
Wow. Just wow. This tidy little book is actually 280 pages of biographies of 250+ prominent figures who either immigrated to the United States or have spent significant portions of their lives living here and contributing to what we think of as "American culture."
photo credit: Alan Caras
Divided into sections such as pioneers, builders, creators, defenders, movers, explorers, and thinkers, there is at least one bio from each of the 193 UN members states as well as from nations such as Palestine, Tibet, Taiwan, and Kosovo.
America is not a melting pot; it's a mosaic and this book is like an elegant stained glass window.
This is one of those books that I keep on hand for birthday present, school library donations and Little Neighborhood Library boxes.
Available at an indie near you.