Sonoma County Literary Update

Sonoma County Writers Published in 2014

Clara Rosemarda–Naked Branches

Clara Rosemarda’s poetry chapbook Naked Branches was published by WordTemple Press, Small Change Series, December 2014. Book launch to be announced. To order a copy, contact Clara at 707-579-2081 or rosen@sonic.net; www.clararosemarda.com

Centa Theresa Uhalde–The Illuminated Field: cultivating a small world

The Illuminated Field documents the births of Centa Theresa Uhalde’s two children — their earliest words, foods and curiosities, through which the reader becomes a fly on the wall to the emergence of their young identities. Fragments of dialogue illuminate an ever-shifting backdrop. Early on, the children experience the deaths of a Great Grandmother, then a Grandfather, and finally the separation of their birth family. With these events and the dawning of separateness, come surprisingly mature questions concerning death. Who makes people? When you die is it forever? Does all of you die? Through dedicated journal entries, Centa Theresa Uhalde has given us an intimate, lyrical and poignant portrayal of her particular experience of motherhood through the childhood years

ISBN: 978-1505283167
168 pages, perfect bound, 17 photos, 8.5 x 8.5 inches, $14.95
To purchase this book: https://www.createspace.com/5138540

Michael David Fels – The Queen of Kansas

It’s 1935 and Charlotte Albert has recently graduated from New Utrecht High in Brooklyn.  She has a small part in a Broadway play and hopes to start college.  But when she falls for a charming, older, British-born actor, she shelves her plans and the trajectory of her life is changed forever.  Played out against the years preceding, during and immediately following the Second World War, The Queen of Kansas treats themes of love, friendship, loyalty, family and betrayal with a combination of humor and heartbreak.

Sebastopol writer, Michael David Fels, is the author of two collections of short fiction (Gone to Ground and Fetching Molly) and a memoir (Sometimes I See You).  The Queen of Kansas is available from Amazon.com and more information about Michael and his writing can be found at www.michaeldavidfels.com.

Carmel Morgan – “Some Bad Girl Wisdom on How to Transform Heartbreak into Heart-power with a Heart Chakra Make Over”

Chapter 19 of Amazon International Best Seller Rapid Change For Busy Heart Centered Women, compiled by Loretta Mohl
www.amazon.com/Carmel-Morgan/e/B00LOW88YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_4

Now available in 33 Selected Whole Foods Markets in Northern California

• Rapid Change for Busy Heart Centered Women who want to be their best version is leading the way for women to transform in the 21st Century.
• The heart heals all, allows for patience, gratitude, emotion, simplicity, generosity, grace, understanding, awareness, life force, and meaningful intention that allows for letting go.
• In this book, 30 women, all experts in their field, have come together to take the complication out of complicated change.
• With their proven methods and models of success, each woman is given the tools to transition herself from everyday surviving to everyday thriving, being the best version of herself.
• The benefits and empowerment of collaboration are endless; in this book you will tap into the knowledge of 30 extraordinary women who will broaden your horizons, raise your consciousness, and lead you to better living through sharing their own experiences.

Petaluma author Carmel Morgan C.M.T, 500 E-RYT, C.M.R.C, is a Transformation Teacher, Storyteller & Artist. She has spent the past two decades devoting herself professionally & personally to studying how to heal our whole body from emotional stress & sexual trauma. She was determined to discover how to eliminate stress habits from our whole being with holistic health, chakra yoga therapy, quantum learning, dance & art therapy and bodywork. And she has dedicated her life to teaching women how to raise their emotional intelligence with a chakra yoga practice, release stress habits that tear down our immune system and live daily in our heart power. Bad Girl Wisdom is her authentic brand of teaching and storytelling. More at: www.carmelmorgan.com

Phyllis Meshulam, editor – Poetry Crossing: 50 Lessons for 50 Years

In honor of its 50th anniversary, California Poets in the Schools has published a lesson plan book, Poetry Crossing. A great many celebrated poets have donated rights to include their poems, so these lesson plans come with examples of Gary Snyder’s, Bob Hass’s, Brenda Hillman’s, Jane Hirshfield’s, Juan Felipe Herrera’s, Ellen Bass’s, Al Young’s  (and many others’) work embedded in pages suitable for copying and putting into the hands of kids — or in the document reader. Along with great student examples. Prompts are inspiring to adults, as well! This project was successfully funded by a Kickstarter Campaign.

We at California Poets in the Schools “…do our best to create a home for children of every age, to help them feel safe to discover and to allow their soul and heart to venture forth in words in a realm where there is no judgment and no grades, only encouragement and enthusiasm. You will sense this in Poetry Crossing, a far-reaching offering of poet-teacher lesson plans, student poems, and sample poems by student poets, poet-teachers, and some great poets from around the world. And you will learn some of our secrets…

…in these fifty inspiring and clearly laid-out lesson plans, including “Mind of Tumbling Water,” “Glorious Color Odes,” and “The Heart’s Book of Records.” Each lesson provides a framework or structure that allows students’ creativity to find form. I like to call the outcome “controlled abandon”: inner discoveries shaped in a poem that can be read by others. In this sense, all of our poems – adults’ and students’ – can be our “heart’s book of records.” Our poems allow us to experience the joy of hearing and being heard. We find our needs and longings are all the same, and we develop new love and respect both for ourselves and for each other.

Welcome, enjoy, dive in, and partake of this book, which celebrates fifty years of the collected wisdom of California Poets in the Schools. Live with us in the immense kindness, where children lead the way.”
—Susan G. Wooldridge, author of poemcrazy: freeing your life with words (Random House, 1996)

Available at www.cpits.org

Susan Bono – What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home

For writer and small press publisher Susan Bono, the last thirty years have mostly been about trying to stay ahead of a husband, growing kids, aging parents, and an eccentric old house, in spite of detours, deadlines, unexpected changes, and inevitable losses. But through it all, she’s been taking notes. In her collection of short essays, What Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home, Bono is drawn to the mystery, tenderness, and humor at the core of everyday experience and the ever-shifting nature of the place she calls home.

Available at Amazon

For info: www.susanbono.com

Renée Owen – Alone on a Wild Coast

Renée’s newly released debut, Alone on a Wild Coast, was awarded an international prize for unpublished book-length collections in the annual Snapshot Press Book Awards. This compelling collection offers a modern take on the traditional Japanese genres of haiku, sequences and haibun (short prose poems).

“I have long been a fan of Renée’s work, some of the most beautiful being written today. She manages to be both classical and modern at the same time, using fresh images and engaging, human-oriented themes. It’s wonderful to have a full-length collection of her haiku, sequences, and haibun.”
– Charles Trumbull, Editor emeritus, Modern Haiku

“Renée’s compelling collection… draws the reader into the interplay between a dynamic landscape and an interior coast, between our environment and intuited feelings. As if the world collaborates in her perceptions, the tumbling of one thing into another creates anticipation for each next step in her vision.”
–Susan Diridoni, Editor of Half the Moon, Half of Me

“Renée’s haiku and haibun connect deeply with the quiet mysteries of nature. Alone on A Wild Coast is an articulate and resonant guide to the heart’s transcendent moments. Her ability to embrace the moment and simultaneously let it go allows her to share her poetic experiences and perceptions so as to enrich her readers’ lives.”
–John Thompson, Co-author of The Unlocked Gate

October 2014 ~ 72 pages ~ $16.95 ~ paper ~ ISBN 978-1-903543-34-4

Available from the author, at reneeowen@sbcglobal.net (for $14 + $2 shipping) or directly from the UK publisher at www.snapshotpress.co.uk/books/alone_on_a_wild_coast.htm

Charles Markee—María’s Beads

Middle Grade Fiction: In this story of magical realism, a mysterious old woman gives María Cortez some strange, very pretty beads. She has no idea they came from mara’akame Spirits. When her best friend, Hannah, becomes deathly ill and Hannah’s parents refuse medical treatment, María desperately tries to save her friend. Adults won’t intercede, so she turns to the magic beads, but they can’t do it alone. María must find and use her own inner strength, passed down to her through her ancestral Huichol culture . . .  or watch Hannah die.

Moonview Press. Available at at www.charlesmarkee.com.

Patrick Fanning—Rejuvenation

Like most people his age, fifty-year-old Dr. Ben Rasmussen would like to be younger. Unlike most people, he might actually pull it off. He is the creator of Rejuven, the new drug from Kalimer Pharmaceuticals that promises to stop the aging clock and start it running backwards, rekindle the flame of sex, smooth skin, sooth joints, pump up muscles, regrow lustrous hair, and restore youthful vigor.

Ben is on top of the world. But with great power comes great danger. His bosses want to parlay Rejuven into serious political power. His colleagues want to steal credit. His wife wants to be rich. All Ben wants is to be young again and to offer others the opportunity to reclaim their youth. Is that too much to ask?

The book is available at the Sebastopol Copperfields, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com.

More info: www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org/book-launch-fanning

Maureen Jennings—One Too Many

Rose Leary writes murder mysteries, but she never wants to see another real corpse. She tends bar to buy time to write in 1980s New York City, until her gruesome discovery of a murdered colleague derails those careful plans. As threats escalate, Rose fears for her next novel, her safety, and even her trust in Detective Frank Butler. Work lurches into chaos as inexperienced new bosses mismanage the restaurant, making accusations and blame seem like daily specials. Questions about guilt and innocence contaminate more than the crime scene, while jealousy and suspicion swirl in the oppressive August air. Infidelity lurks around all the couples she knows, and temptation hovers everywhere. Nothing feels safe. Whose story should she believe? When cruel doubt poisons Butler’s accusations, Rose wonders whom he’s trying to protect. Danger edges closer. She won’t survive unless she can outwit the murderer and find the weapon she needs to save everything that matters most. Written with wit, intelligence, and a distinctive style, One Too Many serves another round of Maureen Anne Jennings’ signature mix of humor, murder, and suspense. And cocktails. Available from Tough Prose Press: http://toughprose.com/one-too-many-2

Pat Nolan—Your Name Here, New Poems

Never one to settle into a style, Pat Nolan has made of his poetry an exploration of other poetries and of the numerous ways a poem can be. As an adherent of the Philip Whalen Buddhist-inspired “mind moving” school, he holds to the idea that the poem is framed sentience. Just as the observed world is an occasion of subjectivity, it also mirrors the self in a way that reflects objectively. The poems in Your Name Here shuttle around that quantum axis with seemingly random discontinuities that do not pin down meaning but are left to mean themselves. Written to be heard by the mind’s ear, Nolan’s poetry enacts a sub-vocal monologue that is like the murmur of cosmic background radiation, noticeable only in its cessation or as pauses when the mind registers the sum of discrete moments in an instant.

“Pat Nolan is one of the poets, Ted Berrigan once said, that you have to always keep an eye on. . .because he can do unexpected startling things that leave you eating his dust.” — Andrei Codrescu, author of Bibliodeath: My Archives (with Life in Footnotes), and So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2012.

“. . .Nolan’s secret power. . .engages us in magical transformation and will not let us look away.”
— Maureen Owen, author of Erosion’s Pull and Edges of Water

November 2014 ~ 80 pages ~ $16 ~ paper ~ ISBN 978-0-9840310-0-9

Available at Copperfield’s Books in Santa Rosa and Sebastopol, and from the publisher at nuallainhousepublishers.com

Redwood Writers—2014 Anthology: WATER

The basis of all living organisms, water’s vital role is indisputable. Deeply connected to our humanity, in abundance or scarcity, water possesses the power to sustain life, to end life. From the literal to the abstract, water evokes imagery and emotion, movement and flow. Redwood Writers will officially launch its 2014 Anthology on October 11, 2014 at Copperfield’s Books, Santa Rosa, with 13 of the 60 contributing writers reading selections from the new book.

Cry of the Nightbird: Writers Against Domestic Violence

In Cry of the Nightbird: Writers Against Domestic Violence, thirty-eight writers speak out in more than fifty prose and poetry pieces of a hidden tragedy: violence in homes, living in fear, and forced silence. Authors from every walk of life and every aspect of this difficult issue raise their voices as one to end this silence, to bring freedom and release for themselves and others. These words will inform and inspire readers: give them eyes to see, a way to express, and motivation to act.

All of the writers are participants from Sonoma County YWCA’s Changing Hurt to Hope: Writers Speak Out Against Domestic Violence program. All proceeds benefit YWCA Sonoma County. To order, go the website at www.ywcasc.org and click on the “Online Store” icon.

Waights Taylor, Jr. — Kiss of Salvation

“Taylor’s dialogue is terrific…This book is a page-turner, and when the investigators finally close in on the killer, it’s impossible to set the novel down.”—KIRKUS Reviews

“I’m pretty sure the victim is a prostitute, and the MO looks just like the murder last month,” Joe McGrath said. “The victim was garroted, and the body was arranged like an X. Whoever is killing these women is leaving a calling card behind.”

1947 Birmingham, Alabama, cloaks many mysteries under its segregated shroud: glittering social soirées, secret sexual parties, a Machiavellian civic leader, and multiple murders of black prostitutes in dark alleys. Racist police chief, Big Bob Watson, reluctantly assigns Homicide Detective Joe McGrath to the case. The black community stonewalls the investigation. Joe teams up with Sam Rucker, the city’s only black private eye. Working across the racial boundaries of the day, they take us step-by-step to the city’s heart of darkness in search of an elusive vicious killer.

The book is now available on Amazon at $17.10, a 5% discount.

Greg Hayes — Earthsweats

Greg Hayes’s collection of poems, Earthsweats, was published in March 2014. In addition to being a ranger at Jack London State Historic Park for 25 years and president of the Valley of the Moon Natural Historical Association, which helped save the park from closing in 2012, Greg was a lifelong writer who wrote his first novel in college.  Beginning with “First Will and Testament” and ending with “Last Rites,” this collection of 28 poems spans a range of themes, including his deep connection with the natural world; his grief at its ongoing destruction; the death of his mother; the tension between the black and white sides of himself; love poems to his wife, Robin; and his cancer diagnosis.  Greg died of cancer on July 9, 2014.

The book is available for $9.00 through Amazon.com.

Sonoma County Writing Practice—Footnotes

Margaret Caminsky-Shapiro and the writers of Sonoma County Writing Practice have been gathering in an old Victorian on Cherry Street since 1999 to write the stories of their lives. Groups of writers meet weekly and sit with heads bowed, pens and notepads in hand to allow their ink memoirs, poems and narratives to spill onto the white pages. Writers read their pieces aloud, laugh, cry and remember their own lives deeply. All the while, without judgment each writer is heard and witnessed. All the while, writers claim the power of their own story. All the while, as we write together in circle, change happens.

Sonoma County Writing Practice puts out a newsletter three times annually to showcase the writing of Margaret’s students. They have also just published their second Anthology, FOOT NOTES, which showcases the writing of 55 of Margaret’s students. Please visit Margaret’s website… handwritingonline.net. The book may be purchased from her. Contact Margaret at harlmarg@sonic.net.

Phyllis Meshulam—Doll Moon

In these poems Phyllis Meshulam maps an often difficult road that runs from the doll and the inherited images of womanhood, to the moon, and its suggestion of a more fundamental sense of female empowerment and identity. What happens in this book, however, is not limited to women only. These beautifully crafted poems show us the real work of mindfulness. They teach us that the compassionate embrace of self and others is a light that emanates more from within ourselves than it does from the night sky.

—Fred Marchant, author of The Looking House (Graywolf Press)

Cynthia Helen Beecher—Send Me No Ants

Cynthia Helen Beecher’s forthcoming poetry chapbook, Send Me No Ants, is now available for pre-publication order at www.finishinglinepress.com.  Click on “Preorder Forthcoming Titles” or search for Beecher. Visit the Facebook page for more information: www.facebook.com/sendmenoants.

Michelle Wing—Body on the Wall

Published by Saddle Road Press, Body on the Wall ranges from eroticism (“confusing my lips with her lips/ her lips with my lips/sus labios, mis labios….”) to domestic abuse (“It is my body on the wall, bruised and battered,/and nobody, nobody can say they don’t see….”), from self-mutilation to Zen, from coming out (“The Coming-Out Waltz”) to domestic love (“we merge our two histories,/create a third that is ours, both bound and free….”). Untangling the many threads that make up a life, Wing writes about being a daughter, violence against women and girls, mental illness, her identity as a lesbian, her love for her wife, and the search for spiritual direction. Beyond this, in each poem, whether it is one of pleasure or pain, there is evident an underlying trust that language and the beauty of words can provide salvation.

Body on the Wall is available for sale at Levin & Co. bookstore in Healdsburg, online at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, and by order through any independent bookstore. You may also purchase copies by contacting the author directly at michelle@michellewing.com.

Redwood Branch of California Writers Club—And the Beats Go On: Redwood Writers Poetry Anthology 2014

The poets of Redwood Writers Branch have created a collection that transports our work out of scribbled secret notebooks and into our own anthology. We are poets of California and in this collection we honor the Beats because so many of us were influenced by poets like Di Prima, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Snyder. The poems in this collection capture the coast, the mountains and the city. We travel on the road and into our own eharts, indulge in a little lunacy, stroll along the edge of perception and society, and create the new, the mad, the insightful.

Catharine Brankamp, Editor
ISBN: 978-1496094612