Happy news!

I received amazingly good news this week, as those of you on Facebook may have seen. My memoir, Face, was shortlisted for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Award grand prize, and won honorable mention in the memoir category.

This is a wonderful honor, and I’m so grateful to all who have contributed to the success of this book, especially Editor Ruth Thompson and designer Don Mitchell of Saddle Road Press.

And in other good news, my essay “Skin Craft," which is derived from Face, was shortlisted for the 2021 Fish Publishing Short Memoir Prize and appears this month in Reed Magazine.

If you’d like to read Face, you can find it online and through your independent local bookstore. I also recommend that if you buy it online, you purchase it from bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores.

If you have a book club and would like to read Face and talk with me about it, please reach out. I’d love to chat with you and you book friends! I’m also available to talk to groups interested in overcoming trauma. Thanks for all your support and encouragement!

A New Vista

This is the view from my new home in Santa Fe, NM. I moved here a week ago and I am thrilled to be in the land of perpetual sun, Georgia O’Keefe, and artists and writers of all stripes. Santa Barbara was home for 35 years, and home base for even longer, since I moved there with my parents when I was in high school in 1974.

But it was time to move on to a new life, and I have loved (and visited) Santa Fe for many years, and have many wonderful friends here. I feel like I am finally home. So, here’s to a new adventure! If you’re ever in The City Different, let me know. Happy new life to me! (And my kitty, Cleo, who is finally relaxing after a three-day trip across the country).

Get Started on Your Memoir this Saturday!

Last call for my new two-hour, Zoom-based workshop, Get Started on Your Memoir! It’s this Saturday, June 6, from 10:30 - 12:30 p.m. Pacific. Link to register is below. Here’s the description:

You've always wanted to write a memoir, but you just aren't sure how to get started. This two-hour workshop on Zoom will give you the tools to begin, with step-by-step instruction that will provide the motivation and oomph you need to move from idea to book. Includes a detailed handout and list of resources to keep you focused and on track long after the workshop ends. Cost is $75.

Let me know if you have any questions.

You can sign up here.

Ciao from Lucca, Italia!

Greetings from beautiful (and, today, rainy) Tuscany. My colleague, Helena Hill, and I arrived two days ago with one of the eleven women joining us on this writing and painting adventure for the next ten days. All but one of the rest of the group are expected within the hour. 

We are at a 400-year-old villa run by the inimitable Karolina Lenart, a fabulous chef, and her husband and family. We were welcomed warmly with a lovely pasta lunch and wine. 

Yesterday morning I walked down from our rented flat in Lucca (we came two days before the retreat) to the cafe below to be greeted by Boris the bulldog and the friendly, and, thankfully, English-speaking staff.  I gobbled a sticky and sweet rice pastry with my cappuccino as I wrote. Boris was friendly but not so much that you were assured he liked you. Coincidentally we encountered another bulldog this afternoon at the villa— Bonito. See if you can guess which is which.

The overnight flight from LAX was uneventful and I even managed to sleep about five hours, though fitfully. I was pleasantly surprised to find I had the entire row of three seats to myself. I also watched two movies and listened to almost four hours of my audio books—Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow and Pam Houston’s new memoir, Deep Creek, Finding Hope in the High Country. I finished Pam’s book early this morning when I awoke at 2:30 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Honestly, every human being who cares about the natural world—and perhaps more importantly those who don’t—needs to read this book. It is a lovely treatise on the value of hard work amid the reality of nature and death and grief and loss, humanity and animals and the environment, human folly and hope and despair. It’s funny how someone whose life experiences are so vastly different from your own nevertheless can feel like a deeply connected sister or best friend. 

Our flat in Lucca was vast by European standards—three bedrooms and two bathrooms in the heart of Lucca town. Lucca is a medieval walled city filled with colorful buildings, fine leather shops, boutique clothing and pottery shops, restaurants and gelateria. Oh, and churches, towers and cathedrals. 

Tomorrow—Casa Fiori, painting and writing, on our Call to Adventure.  

Wishing You a Wondrous Holiday Season

Haven’t written much on this blog this year. My only excuse is work and life have taken more of my attention. But I didn’t want to let this season of love and peace go by without expressing my gratitude for all of you who are (or have been) clients, family and friends. You sustain me throughout the year.

I will be taking on new projects in the new year, and I’m excited about what will come into my life. I am so grateful for the clients I have had over the years, and especially those who have become friends, as well. If you have a book you’ve been working on that’s ready for an experienced development editor, or you would like the little nudge that comes from working with a writing coach, I would love to hear from you. May the peace and promise of this season settle upon you. May the love of family and friends surround you. May the abundance of the natural world visit upon you the nurture of nature. May you feel the love of the people who hold you in their hearts. Happy Holidays.

A Post Thanksgiving Poem

Origins

My maternal grandmother’s grandfather

was a butcher—he was Fleischman.

I am a poet

who knows the dreams

of my mother dwell in my sister

My paternal grandfather’s grandfather

was a farmer—he was Meier.

I am a poet

whose song is sung in

graphite and ink

They left Europe

for a similar place of cold and

want. Where gray covers the earth

for months on end, and frozen air

sears the lungs.

I am a poet

whose truth rises on

ice-bound floes

I am the voice of my mother

a rock of disbelief, her

hope a crumbling house, my

birth her bitter denial. My chilled

moment of delusion lasts a year,

or a lifetime.

I am a poet

my sea-weapons

incantations of change

I am like and unlike my grandmother.

She certain of her place and lineage, her

favors and grievances, my grandfather’s

acquiescence validating her at every turn,

every slight, every diminishment. Ice

infusing our lungs, our breath.

I am a poet

who dreams of snow

gracing a Michigan hillside

My mother, her daughter, adoptive

stranger. She who fled the snow

for the warming coast.

An insult my grandma never forgave.

I am a poet

whose voice courses through

the blood of German strangers

I am the scribe, recording the reasons we hold

ourselves to impossible expectations.

Retelling the tales—ghost stories

that reside in our bones.

I am a poet

whose words infuse mitten state

apples hawked from a rusting truck