Literary Update for June 1, 2010

Posted by: literaryfolk | June 1, 2010

Literary Update for June 1, 2010

In Remembrance of Joe Armstrong

Sadly, Sonoma County has lost yet another member of our literary community. Our good friend from Healdsburg, Joe Armstrong, passed away on May 13.

Joe had many lives, from his days as a Navy pilot, to his academic careers at San Jose and Sonoma State, to his passion for architecture and landscape design. The literary community will remember how Joe and his wife Karen brought many writers, artists, musicians, and performers together at their home in the Healdsburg hills. There he hared his music, his jokes, and the tales of his adventures with a remarkable gusto and joy.

I met Joe at a screening of a film about Tillie Olson a few years ago. He introduced himself and then invited me and my brother, a painter, to share our work at one of his salons. A gathering and potluck picnic to remember Joe will be held on Saturday, June 12th at 2:00 p.m. at Andolsen Vineyards, 779 West Dry Creek Road, Healdsburg, CA.

You can learn more about Joe’s career, his accomplishments, and his passions at this link:http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/pressdemocrat/obituary.aspx?n=joe-edwin-armstrong&pid=142957959.

The Future of the Literary Update

June marks the end of my time as editor of the Sonoma County Literary Update. It has been quite an honor to offer this monthly forum for the literary community, one which has brought me many new friends. Regarding the future of the Update, I have some good news to share.

New Editor The Literary Update will take a break for the month of July, but will resume in August with a new editor and a support committee. The new editor is Tim Nonn. Here’s a little background information: Timothy Nonn, an eight-year resident of Petaluma and the father of a ten-year old boy, has worked as a writer and community organizer for more than four decades. During the 1980s, he was a national organizer for the Sanctuary Movement, which provided safe haven to tens of thousands of civilians fleeing death squads in Central America. From 2004 to 2008, he was a national organizer for the Darfur Movement, which provided humanitarian assistance to displaced persons and refugees fleeing genocide in Darfur, Sudan. He graduated from San Francisco Theological Seminary and received a Ph.D. from Graduate Theological Union. He was an editor with Thomson-Reuters for seven years, and has published articles, essays and poems on topics such as gender, poverty and genocide. He is currently working on a book about spirituality and activism.

I’m so grateful to Tim for stepping up to this task. Tim and I will collaborate to produce the August Update, and I plan to continue to co-host the Sonoma County Literary Update website, adding occasional posts of interest to the literary community.

I know you will all make Tim welcome. He has set up a g-mail account especially for Literary Update communications. Please send all future announcements to this address: sonomacountyliteraryupdate@gmail.com. You might want to send you personal welcome to him there, too!　

Literary Update Support Committee

Last month, the Poet Laureate Support Committee met at Sebastopol Center for the Arts to discuss, among other issues, the future of the Update. An ad hoc committee was formed to work with Tim through the transition, and thereafter to meet quarterly for support and advice. The committee members are Jo-Ann Rosen, Toni Wilkes, Nancy Dougherty, and Dixie Lewis. Many thanks to all of them for their dedication to keeping the Update alive as a communication resource for the literary community. I’ll be setting up the first ad hoc committee meeting at my home in the coming weeks. If you are interested in receiving news of the Literary Update committee’s meetings, please send me an e-mail and let me know: tehret99@comcast.net.

Literary Update Online/Collaboration with Poetry Flash

The Sonoma County Literary Update website will continue uninterrupted as an ongoing resource for you all. I’ll be moving information about my readings and workshops to another site to free up some page-space.

Our friend Joyce Jenkins at Poetry Flash has graciously added a link on her website. When you send your announcements of readings, events, contests, and workshops for inclusion in the SoCo Literary Update, please cc Poetry Flash for inclusion in the news from Northern California (E-mail: info@poetryflash.org.) That way your announcements will reach the Flash’s broader base of readers. And you can use the Poetry Flash website for easy access back to the SoCo Literary Update as well.You’ll find the new link on the right-hand side of Poetry Flash’s home page: http://poetryflash.org/.

New Protocol for Announcements

There will be a new protocol for sending your announcements which I will send to you all as a separate e-mail later this month. You will also find the new protocol posted on the website page “How to Send an Anouncement.”

Click on any of the pages below or choose from the menu at the top of the screen to view the other pages of the Literary Update

Monthly Calendar of Events

County-Wide News (Including News from East, West, and North County)

Calls for Submission

Sonoma County in Print

Local Workshop Leaders and Writing Consultants

Current and Upcoming Workshops

Writers’ Connections

Ongoing Writing Groups and Open Mic Readings

How to Send Announcements to the Literary Update