WANDERING IN THE AMERICAN DESERTS
Saturday December 14th, 2024 — 2 PM
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
After more than a decade of wandering with writers around the globe, editors and workshop leaders Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Joanna Biggar and Laurie McAndish King bring their contributors home to the salt basins, the shifting sands, the sunbaked plateaus, the starry-starry nights of American deserts.
What they find—shamans, fault lines, bird singers, and both hidden and not-so-hidden treasures—is sometimes mystifying, often satisfying, and always surprising as landscapes slip, slide and shape-shift around them. It may not be settling, but it certainly sets the stage for a deeper understanding of what the American desert and, by extension, the planet we inhabit have to teach us about ourselves and our place in our rapidly changing, sometimes confounding world.
In this volume, readers visit the Joshua tree, a strange plant the Mormons named after the armies of the biblical Joshua marching in the desert. They see odd natural formations, such as rock caves fit for shamans; earth reshaped by the force of earthquakes; an ancient sea brought to life by human folly; the night sky as it was in the beginning. They encounter birds, coyotes and lizards. We hear the power of silence.
And they meet people of every type: members of the present-day Cahuilla tribe who share their music and culture; pop singers and cowboy poets; inventors and artists; and eccentrics who thrive in the desert air: a wizards, a drop-out, a misfit who finds salvation in painting a mountain.
The anthology includes work by: Madeleine Adkins, J. R. Barnett, Daphne Beyers, Hugh Biggar, Michael J. Fitzgerald, Peg Wendling Gerdes, Cyndi Goddard, Thomas Harrell, Naomi Lopez, Mary Jean Pramik, Anne Sigmon, Tatum Tomlinson, Maw Shein Win, Judy Zimola and more …
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Editors Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Laurie McAndish King, and Joanna Biggar have travelled the world and written about it in novels, short stories, essays, poems and articles for many publishers and publications. They’ve also edited stories in numerous collections and series. This is the 9th book of the “Wandering”.