California Wildfires: An Apocalyptic Scenario

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Wildfire Red Dawn

California Wildfires

California Wildfires, September 9, 2020

A Red Dawn

Lowry and I woke early this a.m. to an apocalyptic dawn and messages from our niece. She and other friends and family have had to evacuate their homes because of the raging California wildfires. We can’t help but feel that current events reflect warnings about changes to our planet that date back decades.

Climate Change

Clearly these wildfires, along with ice shelf melt, are a result of long-predicted climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

An Apocalyptic Vision

Even before writing my “zombie” novel Dead Love, I’d studied post-apocalyptic scenarios in non-fiction and science fiction, which often mirrors the newest science. This morning I witnessed a world channeled by my half-zombie heroine, Erin Orison, back in 2010.

Barbeque Sky

In this bloody barbeque of a sunset

gulls sweep over the salt sea

where it has turned pink—

a chemical pink, not like flamingos,

like iron.

There is a smell in the air like sulfides.

The lake has a head on it, foaming and poisonous,

and the skies brood over us, a simmering cauldron,

red at night,

yellow madder by day.

—Erin Orison

A Darkening Vision

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National Association of Memoir Writers Teleseminar with Linda Watanabe McFerrin

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Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Linda Watanabe McFerrin
The Shape of Memoir

Friday, April 24, 2020
11 AM PDT  |  12 PM MDT |   1 PM CDT  |   2 PM EDT

From literary to commercial; from personal to political to historical to celebrity; from journalistic to fictionalized; from essays to articles to poetry to books—your memoir can take many shapes.

Finding the form most suitable to your particular story, style, and voice is essential in assuring that you and your readers will be happy with the results. Clarifying why you are writing, how to keep writing and what final form(s) you’d find satisfying are key to your success in completing and sharing your memoir.

In reviewing your many options, you’ll discover some of the questions you need to be asking yourself about your memoir project—questions that will help you solve for the answers you need to abolish obstacles and take yourself—and your readers—on a unique and exciting journey.

In the session we’ll talk about:
  • Determining the shape of your memoir
  • Advantages and disadvantages of various forms
  • Abolishing obstacles
  • Finding the joy in your project
  • Knowing when and how to let go

If you are not a NAMW member, you can join in with this link: https://namw.org/2020/04/april-2020-member-teleseminar-presenter/?fbclid=IwAR1WMWz4WIllx9-NgEYH9SHAuq_77F6ZIfxCYwVApfTJbNjBVs3xzrXw5wA

Bio:

Popular poet, travel writer, novelist and longtime contributor to newspapers, magazines and anthologies Linda Watanabe McFerrin (www.lwmcferrin.com) has mentored a long list of award-winning writers and best-selling authors toward publication. Linda has judged the San Francisco Literary Awards, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and the Kiriyama Prize, served as a visiting mentor for the Loft Mentor Series and been guest faculty at the Oklahoma Arts Institute. A past NEA Panelist and juror for the Marin Literary Arts Council and the founder of Left Coast Writers, she has led workshops in Greece, France, Italy, England, Ireland, Central America, Indonesia, Spain, Cuba and the United States. Linda has authored two award-winning novels, a short story collection, poetry collections, a northern California guidebook, and her latest book, Navigating the Divide (Alan Squire Publishing, 2019).

As Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird says, “I have loved everything I’ve ever read by Linda Watanabe McFerrin. Her prose and poetry are filled with amazing women, charm, wisdom and light. She is both soulful and precise, eloquent and full of life.”

(more…)

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A Reading at Copperfield’s Books

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Linda Watanabe McFerrin CopperfieldsNavigating the Divide at Copperfield’s Books in Novato

It almost didn’t happen at Copperfield’s Books Novato Saturday night, and I’m surprised anyone came, but diehard and daring friends did brave the loss of electricity engendered by fire danger fears.
Thankfully no new fires to add to those already raging, but there were blackout conditions in the end, and I am soooo grateful to all who showed up to hear me read from my new book, Navigating the Divide, just out from Alan Squire Publishing.

The Aftermath

Afterwards we rolled through dark, spookily post-apocalyptic streets, trying to find a place to gather for an after-event drink. At Hilltop Restaurant where so many Novato residents had hunkered down to weather the eerie scene below, Lowry, Laurie, Marisa, Jim and I settled and gazed down on the bizarre patchwork of lit and unlit parts of town while sipping wine and cocktails, including my very appropriately named Corpse Reviver #2, which included both gin and absinthe, of course.

 Linda Watanabe McFerrin
I did enjoy my brief zombie transformation, courtesy of the bookstore.
Strange night and, in spite of the missed announcements, police and fire marshall warnings, and subsequent blackouts, a very special time with super good pals. Thanks also to Robin for bringing the wine and to Mitch, Charles, Nicola and more for your courage and incredible support. Some of you went home to blackout conditions, but we did have fun on our night craw through those darkened streets, and we did managed to find a new way to navigate the divide.

—Linda

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Grace Cavalieri Reviews Linda Watanabe McFerrin’s “Navigating the Divide”

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A Really Great Review

Every month for the Washington Independent Review of Books, the Maryland Poet Laureate, Grace Cavalieri, author of Other Voices, Other Lives, does a round-up style review of the best recently released independent books of poetry and books about poetry.

June 2019’s review features fourteen books including two of ASP’s upcoming releases, Reuben Jackson’s Scattered Clouds and Linda Watanabe McFerrin’s Navigating the Divide. Featured also are the likes of Tina Chang, Dobby Gibson, and rising star Sri-Lankan poet Indran Amirthanayagam.

Check Out Grace Cavalieri’s Review of Navigating the Divide

McFerrin is author of poetry, travel essays, prose, and stories excerpted for this compendium.

The travel essays got me started. The first that I read, “Strangers,” was the hook. McFerrin has the gift of dialogue and character. She’s also a sexy writer, and a good soul wrapped in a hot body. Her characters are the kind of humans who seem to travel just to meet, and every paragraph is a psychological encounter in visual explorations; also, some social norms get destroyed. This is a compelling edge to the stories. We feel every word she says, because she knows that the details we can taste, smell, and see, are impossible to turn away from. Each essay is a relevant cultural experience with all the intriguing values of a foreign place. I read her as I often watch TV in search of sights I’ll never see otherwise. The added pleasure with McFerrin is she’s “Sex and the City abroad” — fun, chic, with special effects. It’ll take a while reading this book and so it goes on vacation with me — nowhere as fantastic as where McFerrin takes us, however. She’s mastered her art. To be a beautiful hypnotic writer is not a bad thing. She’s a front runner. Check it out.

Alan Squire publishers had a terrific idea here. Why not publish a kind of book no other literary publishing house (more…)

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Writing and Publishing II

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Join Linda Watanabe McFerrin and agent Andy Ross for a Writing Workshop Intensive in Santa Cruz

Award winning novelist, poet, travel writer, editor, and teacher, Linda Watanabe McFerrin and literary agent, Andy Ross are conducting a 7-day writing workshop for fiction and creative non-fiction. The workshop will focus on craft and, where it’s appropriate, getting your project ready for publication. The workshop will run from August 17 – August 23, 2019.

Past participants have this to say about the experience:

  • You guys are the best. I loved the structure and location of the workshop. Your input and the input of other attendees was so valuable. Your recommendations were concrete. I appreciate you offer of ongoing contact. I’ve made some great friends here.—Stephani Franklin
  • Linda and Andy are a GREAT team. Each brings a unique perspective to the writing/publishing process. I found this workshop invaluable.—Victoria Lilienthal
  • Linda and Andy are more generous with their time than any other workshop leaders I’ve ever experienced. —Cindy Brady
  • Andy knows the publishing business inside and out, and Linda is an expert at teaching the craft of writing. Equally important is the opportunity to share your work with other writers in a supportive and collegial environment. This is by far the best writers workshop I have attended.—Harry Deering, Author The Leonowens Verandah

Registration in now open. See details below. To register or get more information, email Andy at andyrossagency@hotmail.com or Linda at http://lwmcferrin.com/services/.

The Workshop:

Mornings after breakfast you’ll attend workshops from 9 am to noon devoted to literary craft. Be prepared to bring portions of your writing projects. We will discuss them in group and individually with Linda and Andy. Afternoons will consist of exploring your environment, sampling the local fare, and finding the best spots to linger and write.

Workshops will be directed by Linda and Andy. We will conduct classes and workshops on:

  • Finding your literary voice
  • Creating irresistible characters and centers of interest
  • Creating spellbinding plots and strategies for structure
  • First pages
  • Best literary bells and whistles
  • Taking your craft to the next level: dialogue, point of view, backstory, and scene
  • Steps to getting published (final self-edits, effective query letters, book proposals, how agents evaluate submissions, researching the right agent for you, elements of the book contract, self-publishing)

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

Linda Watanabe McFerrin is an award-winning novelist, poet, travel writer and popular workshop leader, and contributor to numerous newspapers, magazines and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry collections, past editor of a popular Northern California guidebook and a winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. In addition to authoring book-length fiction and an award-winning short story collection (The Hand of Buddha), she has co-edited twelve anthologies, including the Hot Flashes: sexy little stories & poems series. Her latest novel, Dead Love (Stone Bridge Press, 2009), was a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel.

Linda has judged the San Francisco Literary Awards, the Josephine Miles Award for Literary Excellence and the Kiriyama Prize, served as a visiting mentor for the Loft Mentor Series and been guest faculty at the Oklahoma Arts Institute. A past NEA Panelist and juror for the Marin Literary Arts Council and the founder of Left Coast Writers®, she has led workshops in Greece, France, Italy, England, Ireland, Central America, Indonesia, Spain, Japan and the United States and has mentored a long list of accomplished and celebrated writers and best-selling authors toward publication.

Andy Ross

Andy Ross opened his literary agency in  2008.  Prior to that, he was the owner of the legendary Cody’s Books in Berkeley for 30 years. His agency represents books in a wide range of  non-fiction genres including: narrative non-fiction, science, journalism, history, popular culture, memoir,  and  current events. He also represents literary, commercial, historical, upmarket women’s fiction, and YA fiction.

For non-fiction Andy looks for writing with a strong voice, robust story arc, and  books that tell a big story about culture and society  by authors with  the authority to write about their subject.  In fiction, he likes stories about real  people in the real world.

Andy is the author of The Literary Agent’s Guide to Writing a Non-Fiction Book Proposal. He has participated in writers’ conferences throughout the country and has taught classes about writing book proposals, composing query letters, working with agents, and getting published. His popular blog,  “Ask the Agent: Night Thoughts About Books and Publishing”, has received over 500,000 unique views.

Authors Andy represents include: Daniel Ellsberg, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Alisa Valdes, Anjanette Delgado, Elisa Kleven, Tawni Waters, Randall Platt, Mary Jo McConahay, Gerald Nachman,  Michael Parenti, Paul Krassner, Milton Viorst, and Michele Anna Jordan. (more…)

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Writers Retreat and Hawaii Book & Music Festival in May 2019

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Mokule’ia Writers Retreat 2019

Please join me again in May on Oahu for the Hawaii Book & Music Festival and the Mokule’ia Writers Retreat

 

Hawaii Book & Music Festival
May 4 – 5, 2019

Mokule-ia Writers Retreat
Nā Wahi Ho‘oulu (Places That Inspire Us)
May 5 – 10, 2019

The Mokulē‘ia Writers Retreat is an annual gathering that brings writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essays, and memoir to the North Shore of O‘ahu for a week of intimate workshops and coaching. The retreat is high-level and professional — but also low-key and tuned in to the beauty of the surroundings.

With the Waianae Mountains behind us and the open ocean in front, we’ll eat, write, and play together. The theme, nā wahi ho‘oulu, acknowledges that this sacred spot will inspire us to embark on inner and outer exploration.

The retreat is the creation of North Shore native Constance Hale, the author of five books, the editor of more than three dozen, and a journalist whose stories about Hawai‘i appear on CD liner notes, as well as in publications like The Los Angeles Times and Smithsonian magazine. (Her most recent book, The Natives Are Restless, is about the hula.) A mix of talented writers, editors, and agents from both the islands and the mainland to lead various workshops and appear on panels. Lowry McFerrin might actually be giving early morning lessons in Tai Chi!

Camp Mokulē‘ia, is a 40-acre facility stretching along a remote beach in northwestern Oahu. One of the missions of the nonprofit camp is to raise ecological awareness and bridge Native Hawaiian and Western ideas of sustainability. It’s inspiring terrain and writers are encouraged to draw from the environment in their meditations and literary work whilst at the camp.

If you decide to join us, I also encourage you to check out the Hawaii Book and Music Festival, happening in (more…)

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Poem for April

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“April is the cruellest month,” wrote T. S. Eliot in Part I of The Waste Land, and I agree. This month has been a really difficult one for me with its shadowy ruff, “breeding” as Eliot says, “Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/memory and desire …”

So in that contemplation I am offering up this poem—not in the collection of my selected work coming out from Alan Squire Publishing this Fall, but certainly in keeping with its title and theme: Navigating the Divide.

It is a poem of hope, which I believe is the essence of this month’s meaning and of the many celebrations that illuminate it, and it is a poem of promise, a reminder that in dark times faith diminishes the great void, leaving us with the riddles written in its reflection.

Winter

 Twig-end of winter—

black sticks poke through

the icy ruff,

old grudges buried under.

I am a tired woman with a hoe.

Nothing grows,

rocks and frozen water stubbornly separate.

Over and over again this cramping earth

convulses, giving birth

as my friends give birth, teasing

the new life out with promises that, no,

death will not happen again.

I’d like to believe in

a world that’s always green,

but the set line of my jaw

betrays me;

the way my bones take over flesh,

insisting on angles.

I am not the woman I used to be.

More dead are locked in earth’s

hard coffin. My fingernails are shorter.

 

Let me unfold the thin red cloth of my hysteria,

spread a picnic for us,

here, in the midst of all my worry

and exhilaration,

a place where we can talk beneath new sunlight.

I long for that first fingertip of heat.

And, let me think, for a moment,

that one small, shining rivulet

can be worm its way into winter’s tough core,

blow it wide with warmth

like an old pear splitting.

Let me believe now, while summer

memories buzz before my closed eyes,

that rivers can run again, the

dry earth flood and inundate.

Let me wriggle hip and ankle

out of the hard calyx,

whole again, white soul ajar.

—Linda Watanabe McFerrin

 

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Wandering in Cuba Reading at Great Good Place for Books

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Wandering in CubaThursday, February 7th, 2019 || 6pm Great Good Place for Books || 6120 La Salle Ave, Oakland

Wanderland Writers introduces WANDERING IN CUBA: Revolution and Beyond … the 6th anthology in the prize-winning Wandering series …

Once again workshop leaders Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar take Wanderland Writers and head south to explore—this time to Cuba, an island country that has paid a high price for self-determination:  revolution, isolation and hardship. But somehow this nation and its amazing people continue to reinvent themselves and fascinate visitors with their marvelous creativity and vitality.

Contributors include Tania Romanov Amochaev, Adrienne Amundsen, Christine Berardo, Joanna Biggar, Sandra Bracken, Cyndi, Goddard, Douglas Hale, Thomas Harrell, Donna Hemmila, Linda Jue, Carol J. Kelly, Laurie McAndish King, Robert Markowitz, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Mary Jean Pramik, Anne Sigmon, Jonathan A. Taylor and Anne Woods.

Wander with the contributors from city to countryside, enjoying the history, the rhythms, the tastes, the sights, and the soul of this intriguing island nation. Everywhere, of course, they encountered its Revolution and recorded their understanding of its triumphs and failures. They met and wrote about traditional Cuba: its heroes—José Martí, Fidel, Che, Hemingway—and its enduring culture as found in food, music and its African-based religion, Santería. But they also experienced Cuba in its present reality, beyond the Revolution. They found poets, artists, filmmakers and a whole generation of young people who embrace and are shaping Cuba’s future.

“I hope that, as you read the stories in this collection, a sense of that infinite potential inspires you to make that very short flight to our very misunderstood neighbor. You’ll find nothing intimidating (except, maybe, some of the salsa dancers) and much that is pure magic.

—Jeff Greenwald, Author of The Size of the World and Snake Lake

Linda Watanabe McFerrin and Joanna Biggar have floated down the Canal du Midi in France, danced in the sunlight of southern Greece, toasted the best of times in Ireland, devoured the culture and countryside of southern (more…)

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Jason Rezaian in Interview with W. Kamau Bell: Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison

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Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison—Solitary Confinement, a Sham Trial, High-Stakes Diplomacy, and the Extraordinary Efforts It Took to Get Me So

Monday, January, 28th, 2019 || 7pm Angelico Hall|| Dominican University of California || 20 Olive Avenue, San Rafael California || www.bookpassage.com

Please join me, the folks at Book Passage, and a host of local writer Jason Rezaian’s friends and admirers at Dominican University, San Rafael for his interview with W. Kamau Bell.

Buy tickets here:  https://www.bookpassage.com/Rezaian

Some of us remember Jason from his halcyon days in the Bay Area before the ordeal. In the country of his ancestors, far from his Bay Area roots and idyllic childhood, this young journalist found himself in a nightmare straight out of a Kafka novel.

Working in Tehran he was suddenly arrested, imprisoned and held, sometimes in total darkness, in a high-security prison in Tehran for 544 days, a hostage trapped in a lethal web of politics and culture.

About the Book:

In July 2014, Washington Post Tehran bureau chief Jason Rezaian was arrested by Iranian police, accused of spying for America. The charges were absurd. Rezaian’s reporting was a mix of human interest stories and political analysis. He had even served as a guide for Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. Initially, Rezaian thought the whole thing was a terrible misunderstanding, but soon realized that it was much more dire as it became an eighteen-month prison stint with impossibly high diplomatic stakes.

While in prison, Rezaian had tireless advocates working on his behalf. His brother lobbied political heavyweights including John Kerry and Barack Obama and started a social media campaign—#FreeJason—while Jason’s wife navigated the red tape (more…)

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Writing and Publishing Workshop on January 26, 2019

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Writing and PublishingWriting and Publishing at Book Passage in Corte Madera

Saturday, January, 26th, 2019 || 10am to 2pm Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com

I hope you’ll join me for the first of a series of Writing and Publishing Workshops on January, 26th.

 

To Register: https://www.bookpassage.com/linda-watanabe-mcferrin-writing-publishing-corte-madera-store

Here’s what we’ll cover in this Writing and Publishing Workshop:
  • Is your book just for you, or does it have wider appeal?
  • What is a platform? What is a market?
  • Should you self-publish or go the traditional route?
  • What are the publishing options today?
  • How do you find a publisher?
  • What does a publisher do for you?
  • What do you do after the book is published?
  • How much money will you make on your book?

(more…)

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