Nancy Bruning of Nancercize

Join the conversation on blogtalk radio Thursday, January 28th at 9a.m. PST with Nancy Bruning, creator of Nancercize, and author and LCW founder, Linda Watanabe McFerrin. They’ll be talking about Great Getaways.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day: The discussion is on some of the best getaways going. Here or there, long or short—studies show that the getaway break is good for your health. Why and where are the questions Nancy and Linda will be chatting about. If you have want to recommend a lovely getaway or share your thoughts on the matter, just call.

Nancercize is hosted by Nancy Bruning, best-selling author of 25 books and renowned wellness coach and expert. Nancy and her guests reveal how you can quickly and easily take control of your health and body and re-capture your self-confidence through fun and simple lifestyle changes. Her unique approach to fitness helps excess weight melt away and your spirits soar.

Nancy Bruning of Nancercize

Join the conversation on blogtalk radio Thursday, December 17th at 9a.m. PST with Nancy Bruning, creator of Nancercize, and author and LCW founder, Linda Watanabe McFerrin. They’ll be talking about family travel … pain or paradise? Is it like herding cats? Is it a three-ring circus? Let’s chat about family travel — the bad and the good, better, best. Tune in as popular travel writer and novelist, Linda Watanabe McFerrin calls in from the road to share her secret to the best-ever family vacations.   Listen to Nancy Bruning’s “Nancercize Blogtalkradio Show” Thursday, December 17th at 12 noon EST, 9:00 AM PST. Go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Nancercize and call in your questions at 347- 324-3322.  The show will be recorded and available soon.

Byron says ...

We had a full house Monday when Byron Belitsos explored the dance of publisher and author at the Literary Salon in a talk that addressed literary matches: Made in heaven? . . . Or hell?

Belitsos, founder of Origin Press, publisher of books on practical spirituality, entertained the group with wild tales about the authors who populate his dreams and nightmares. In addition to an interesting look at some of his list, past and present, he shared his evaluation of what makes a book succeed commercially. Here’s Byron’s test. It’s easy and enlightening. You might want to note that while it applies primarily to non-fiction, fiction writers might want to consider his points as well. We’re sharing it with his compliments.

SEVEN ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESS: (10 points each–70 points total)

• King content
• Mind meld
• Rich platform
• Funding flow
• Auspicious timing
• Inspired stamina
• Shared adventure

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

This time last week I was still in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I was a workshop leader and panelist at the 31^st Nimrod Literary Awards Conference for Readers and Writers 2009 at the University of Tulsa. Other Faculty included Peter S. Beagle (a past LCW Presenter), Marvin Bell, Robert Olen Butler, Marie Howe, W. Scott Olsen, James Ragan, and Nimrod International Journal Editor in Chief, Francine Ringold. The judges for the 2009 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry were novelist Robert Olen Butler and poet Marie Howe. The winners were Alicia Case (fiction) and Mike Nelson (poetry).

The theme of this year’s Awards Celebration was “Words at Play,” a topic that award winning poet and Iowa’s first Poet Laureate, Marvin Bell, tackled creatively. Here’s an excerpt:

I like ideas to have a little dirt on their shoes. Therefore, I was not just delighted but downright giddy when the astronomers came up with the term “dark matter” to refer to what they can’t see that lies between what they can see. In other words, “dark matter” is the stuff between the stuff. Meanwhile, the quantum physicists decided to refer to what holds together the smallest recordable elements of the atom as . . . what else?, ”sticky stuff.” How better to refer to what we can’t see and can’t escape? I may not be able to follow Einstein’s theory of relativity, but I feel I understand in my bones the concepts of “dark matter” and “sticky stuff.” I have not traveled in outer space, I do not leave my body, I have never–not even once–been abducted by aliens, I am not in touch with spirits from the past, I am neither a psychic nor a seer, but I have been living with dark matter and sticky stuff my whole life.

Think about it. Writing is about . . . dark matter and sticky stuff. So are philosophy and religion. Morality, ethics and anything sociopolitical are about dark matter and sticky stuff.

How, then, in a universe of dark matter and sticky stuff, can we encourage—indeed, even validate–an idea of writing as “words at play?” Well, writers to whom the very language matters–which is to say, any writer one would wish to reread–such writers do not so much express in their work what they knew beforehand as what they didn’t know they knew. When you think about it, that’s not so strange. We all do this in conversation, confidently dogpaddling forward without quite knowing where we will end up. To anyone who insists that we “get to the point,” or “cut to the chase,” we might respond, as a frustrated writing student said to the novelist E. M. Forster, “How do I know what I mean till I see what I say?”

There is a fair amount of improvisation in the arts, a good deal of flying by the seat of one’s pants and going on one’s nerve, lots of accident and a whole lot of dumb luck. Now I believe wholeheartedly in dumb luck. But you have to make yourself available to it. Hence, artists accumulate techniques, but they also trust their instincts. It’s hard to get writers, in particular, to fess up about how they make art because they fear that, if they tell you the truth, you won’t respect them in the morning.

Nor is it always possible to explain. The story goes that one of George Balanchine’s dancers asked him what the ballet they were rehearsing was about. In order to dance it, she said, she needed to know the story. But Balanchine wasn’t one of those choreographers who thought ballets needed to tell a story, and he said, “It’s not about anything; it’s just steps.” But the dancer said again that she simply had to know what the ballet was about, and Balanchine said, “Okay, then, it’s about time.” And the dancer said, “What do you mean it’s about time?” And Balanchine said, “It’s about fifteen minutes long.”

—Marvin Bell, excerpted from “Words at Play,” Nimrod Literary Awards Celebration 2009

The 32nd Nimrod Literary Awards competition begins January 1, 2010; the postmark deadline is April 30, 2010.

Roger Housden

Roger Housden has a new book out. And as we are huge fans of his collections, we want to mention it here. It’s a new anthology of 99 poems with his commentary. It’s available in November. Perfect for the holiday season.

“I hope Roger Housden’s wonderful work keeps reaching thousands, and helps to lift our world’s wing and heart. 
- Daniel Ladinsky, international best-selling Penguin author of poetry

“Roger Housden has done it again-provided us with a cornucopia of spiritual wonders, explained and commented on with elegance and wit and a clarity illumined by the wisdom of fervor.”
- Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope ]]> http://www.leftcoastwriters.com/illuminating-holiday-reading/feed/ 0 http://www.leftcoastwriters.com/kilimanjaro-mountain-high/ http://www.leftcoastwriters.com/kilimanjaro-mountain-high/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:14:09 +0000 Linda Watanabe McFerrin http://www.leftcoastwriters.com/?p=974

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

What is it about mountains—super-high mountains—that is so attractive? Is it the challenge they represent? The excitement they provoke? The wonder they inspire? Even if it weren’t the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro, rising 19,304 feet above the Great Rift Valley in northern Tanzania, would be awe striking. I remember seeing it from a distance on a long-ago trip to Africa when I was writing a story on the Lunatic Express for the San Francsico Examiner/Chronicle travel section. I was reading Ernest Hemingway’s classic The Snows of Kilimanjaro at the time. I’m crazy about mountains, but I never dreamed of climbing Kilimanjaro, so I was delighted to hear about the 2009 publication of Michel Moushabeck and partner Hiltrud Schulz’s book, Kilimanjaro: A Photographic Journey to the Roof of Africa (Interlink Publishing Group, Inc., 2009). If, like me, you are mesmerized by this particular mountain and have no immediate plans to scale it, you should get the book. Moushabeck’s pleasant, diaristic narrative and Schultz’s well-edited images make you feel as if you are along for the climb.

A few years back a dear friend, photographer Alison Wright, author of Learning to Breathe, decided to exercise the body she’d damaged in a major bus accident by climbing Kilimanjaro for her 40^th birthday. She called us at a Christmas party where we, her assembled friends, were celebrating many things, one of which was her big day. “Hey, I’m calling you from the top of Kilimanjaro,” she gasped over the phone. I think we were all dazed and impressed. It was hard to imagine her summit: the slow, slow (pole, pole) climb, the altitude sickness, the way your strength is sapped and every step requires tremendous exertion, the exhilaration of making it to the top. Now, thanks to Kilimanjaro: A Photographic Journey to the Roof of Africa, I get it … in great detail, in living color. The book makes “Kili” accessible. Enjoy the climb.

Other favorite books on mountain adventures:

• Coronation Everest by James (now Jan) Morris
• Into Thin Air by John Krakauer
• The Climb of My Life by Laura Evans
• A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

As of today, competition is light in the following categories:

* Animal Encounter

* Cruise Story

* Doing Good or the Kindness of Strangers

* Elder Travel

* Love Story

* Men’s Travel

* Travel and Healing

* Travel and Shopping

* Travel and Sports

* Young TravelerTr

All entries submitted before midnight, September 21 will be eligible. Entries submitted after that will be entered in next year’s competition.

The Solas Awards are an annual competition to find the best writing being done about the world today. The Travelers’ Tales editors will choose winners in 21 categories ranging from adventure to humor, from destination to memoir, and everything in between. The grand prize category has cash awards of $1,000, $750, and $500; all other category winners receive a certificate and a copy of the most recent edition of The Best Travel Writing or The Best Women’s Travel Writing. Plus, winners may be published in Travelers’ Tales books. Check out BestTravelWriting.com for details of the awards and more.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin

If you didn’t make it to the Ferry Plaza on Monday, you really missed out. Four excellent writers shared stories of Wipe Outs. One of them was Paul McHugh, who used to be the Outdoor Editor for our local S.F. paper. Now he’s freelancing and he has a book coming out early next year. Since he’s one of us, we’ll be planning a launch event, you can be sure. Also reading was Joanna Biggar, who used to write for the Washington Post and who’s taught workshops with me in Greece, Ireland and Italy. We’ll be taking a group to Costa Rica in January. Still a little room; you’ll have to let me know if you’re interested. The brilliant, very talented Natalie Galli read as well. You can read her work in Italy, A Love Story and many of the Tavelers’ Tales Best Women’s Travel collections. Elisa Sawyer was also back with a performance piece.

You know, unpleasant experiences make for great stories. Paul McHugh actually selected one of my worst adventures for his Wild Places anthology. Here’s an excerpt:

When I was a blithely disobedient little girl, my father would threaten, with a malignant air, to throw me into the Okefenokee Swamp. He could not know then, and doesn’t know to this day, I’ll bet, how thrilling a prospect that seemed. O-k-e-f-e-n-o-k-e-e. The very name was magical, and I rolled it around in my mouth with other delicious words like “Ubangi” and “Kilimanjaro.” It is, in fact, possible that my unspoken desire for that forbidden place was the secret font of all my future misbehaviors.
Years passed, and I almost forgot about the Okefenokee and about swamps, in general, until I arrived one midnight at the Valdosta airport on a then all-important corporate job. Dead beat and cranky, I sarcastically asked my cab driver what sights there were to see in Valdosta.
“Well,” he drawled, “not far from here, there’s the Okefenokee Swamp.” He said this, I think, with the same tone that my father had used on his ill-behaved daughter, but the subtlety was lost on me at the time.
I had enough sense not to insist that we drive the 120 miles west so that I could try to wander into a swamp at midnight. But a flame had been fanned on a very old fire. A new Okefenokee fever consumed me.
My journey into the Okefenokee Swamp took place a few years later. Constant companion, Lawrence, and I rented a two-person canoe and paddled out into the web of narrow channels that flow through it. The world around us was a strange mixture of the dreadful and the sublime—a place in which 700-pound alligators cruise canals in which egrets, ibis, herons, and sandhill cranes gingerly wade. Regal flags of purple iris spring from the same mud that nourishes the hair-covered, liquor-filled basins of carnivorous pitcher plants; and lilies open like celestial white crowns next to the sticky tongues of bladderworts.
“Look, Lawrence,” I’d suggested before we got going, “shouldn’t you give me a quick canoe lesson or something?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Lawrence, “you’ll pick it up as you go along.” His confidence must have short-circuited my prudence.
A waterway filled with poisonous snakes and carnivorous reptiles is not the best place for canoe lessons. I kept trying to focus on improving my skills, on using the oars properly, on attempting to steer, but the surroundings proved too distracting. A wandering focus, however, was deadly. The embankments on either side of us were lined with alligators dreamily soaking up sunlight. In spite of my efforts, our canoe kept heading straight for those reptiles and the snarl of cypress knees that formed a natural canoe trap.
“Listen, Lawrence,” I said my voice dripping stress. “Let’s just stay in the center of the channel, OK?”
Lawrence complied and gave a mighty oar stroke that sent us around a bend in a new course toward center where a 14-foot alligator happened to be easing its way through the waters.
“Paddle back,” Lawrence barely breathed.
Paddle back? I hadn’t even mastered paddling forward.
The alligator watched us as we tried to maneuver past, submerging like an enemy submarine until only its eyes were above water …