Book Launch: Reclaiming the Apple by Adrienne Amundsen

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Reclaiming the Apple: Poems from Afghanistan by Adrienne Amundsen

Adrienne Amundsen

Saturday, January 25th, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

We have an extra launch event for you this month! Please do not miss this extraordinary celebration. Profits go to support Afghans 4 Tomorrow, a local NGO that supports women’s rights and girls’ education.

Poetic, journalistic, a call to transformation, Adrienne Amundsen’s new collection of poetry, Reclaiming the Apple: Poems from Afghanistan, will take you on a journey in which tragedy becomes hope, journey that enlightens and enriches.

Her poetry describes a country devastated by war, but people determined and resilient in impossible circumstances. Both Afghans and American soldiers are depicted in this journey  into a modern war zone. Adrienne’s poems transport us with their musicality, their sensuality,their mythic span and their political passion. She is mother, lover,“one of the Rock People.” She is Cassandra—the towers of Troy burning behind her—prophesying catastrophe. She is in love with the world she laments. Her poems are full of the energy of growing things—vines, desire, women’s bellies, and furious at endless wars, at “machines parading as men”, at “Gaia’s ruined body.”

Hers is a poetry that excites the senses, opens the heart, raises blood pressure. Beginning with song, ending with prayer, we the readers are with her all the way.

“Adrienne’s images are fierce and soft, alluring and alarming. They ask nothing and everything from the reader. They (more…)

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Ferry Plaza Book Party: Jester by Grace Marie Grafton

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  Jester by Grace Marie Grafton

Grace Marie Grafton, photo by Michael Grafton

Monday, January 13th, 2013 || 6pm
Book Passage || San Francisco
1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Author Mary Macky says of Grace Marie Grafton’s book, Jester, it “links us to a communal imagination which transcends the conventional limits of both poetry and the fine arts. Jester is more than a collection of poetry. It’s a powerful, lyrical, on-going conversation between the personal and the universal.”
The book performs the function of the jester, helping the reader, via humor and irony, to recognize and acknowledge the more disturbing, woeful aspects of human life as well as the beautifully ridiculous. (more…)
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Book Launch: Dream Affimals by Elaine Bond

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH: Dream Affimals, Affirmations + Animals, Inspiration to Fulfill Your Wildest Dreams  by Elaine Bond

Elaine Miller Bond

Saturday, January 11th, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

What if a puma could spring from the grass and motivate you to ”Get more pounce to the ounce?” Or what if an electric eel could somehow zap you with the mindset to ”Be positive”? Such is the concept behind Dream Affimals–that animals can uplift your spirits, simply by doing what comes naturally. Forty animals share their wisdom in this book, from the snow leopard to the honeybee to the frillfin goby (a small jumping fish). And their affirmations come alive through beautiful illustrations and heartening, well-researched tales of the wild, like the loggerhead sea turtle, which hatches in a cramped pit dug into a Florida beach, then scampers by moonlight into the surf. The sea brings possibilities and the hope of reaching deep water, the Atlantic’s hiding place for tiny reptiles starting life with a journey covering thousands of miles. Intrepid little turtles and all the animals in this book make us feel good about our wildest dreams, as reachable, perhaps, as the nearest ocean.

”Animals can teach us so much, whether they are caring for their young, exhibiting altruism, communicating with each other, or just surviving. Elaine Miller Bond’s Dream Affimals is an inspiration and a lesson–from all creatures great and small to all readers young and old.”

—Michael Markarian, Chief Program and Policy Officer of The Humane Society of the United States (more…)

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Literary Salon: Phil Cousineau

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Phil Cousineau, author, filmmaker and speaker

Phil Cousineau

Monday, January 6, 2014 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

You have a treat in store in January. Author, filmmaker and Renaissance man, Phil Cousineau, opens the year for us at our first salon of 2014 with a look at the creative process and how and why writers write.

In Burning the Midnight Oil, word-wrangler extraordinaire Phil Cousineau has gathered an eclectic and electric collection of soulful poems and prose from great thinkers throughout the ages. Whether beguiling readers with glorious poetry or consoling them with prayers from fellow restless souls, Cousineau can relieve any insomniac’s unease. From St. John of the Cross to Annie Dillard, Beethoven to “The Song of Songs, ” this refreshingly insightful anthology soothes and inspires all who struggle through the dark of the night. The night writers in Cousineau’s vesperal collection range from saints, poets, and shamans to astronomers and naturalists, and tells of ancient tales and shining passages from the most brilliant (albeit insomniac) writers of today. These poetic ponderances sing of the falling darkness, revel in dream-time, convey the ache of melancholy, conspire against sleeplessness, vanquish loneliness, contemplate the night sky, rhapsodize on (more…)

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Book Launch: One American Woman Fifty Italian Men by Lynne Ashdown

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  One American Woman Fifty Italian Men by Lynne Ashdown

Lynne Ashdown

Saturday, December 14th, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

 When Lynne Ashdown, her new lover, and more than fifty Italian male cyclists departed Italy in June of 1990, no one had yet ventured into the long-closed reaches of Eastern Europe since the falling of the Iron Curtain more than forty years before. They would be cycling almost a thousand miles from Verona, across Northern Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Warsaw, in just ten days. Ashdown hadn’t realized she would be the only woman cycling with the fifty-four men.
One American Woman Fifty Italian Men tells not only of a sweeping journey of adventure, romantic disaster, and cultural collision, but also of a revelation of Ashdown’s identity, forged by her will in the constant pain of trying to (more…)
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Literary Salon: Douglas Cruickshank

LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON:  Douglas Cruickshank, photographer and author of Somehow: Living on Uganda Time 

Douglas Cruickshank

Monday, December 2nd, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

This month’s salon speaker is  Douglas Cruickshank, journalist, travel writer, essayist and author of numerous opinion pieces for magazines, newspapers and websites. Doug has worked in radio, television and film-making. He’s been a photographer for more than four decades, a columnist, and an editor for Salon.com. He was also the co-founder and editor of The Fessenden Review, the noisiest book review in the known world. Later, he was features editor for The Readerville Journal and editor of Edutopia.com, the website of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. In 1965, his sheep, Lambchop, was awarded the Grand Champion ribbon at the Alameda County Fair.

What we love about Doug is his devotion to excellence, his interest in community, and his sense of humor. He’ll be sharing his experience in online publication and new publication models, including crowd funding, as well as the work he has done in Africa. His newest book-length work, Somehow: Living on Uganda Time, contains dozens of essays and powerful photographs. The writing ranges (more…)

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Wandering in Paris at a Great Good Place for Books

The Paris Wanderland Writers are going to be reading from Wandering in Paris: Luminaries and Love in the City of Light at A Great Good Place for Books in November! Join us for delicious bites and delightful tales. The reading will take place on November 22nd, at 7pm at A Great Good Place for Books at 6120 La Salle Ave., Oakland, CA 94611. A Great Good Place for Books is a small independent bookstore in the Montclair district of Oakland. It is a general bookstore, but what it specializes in is literary fiction and children’s books.

about the book:

“At last I have come into a dreamland …” famed Abolitionist and American author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, once said of Paris.

There is, indeed, a dreamlike quality to Paris. A crossroads of time, culture and personality, it seems a place where the layers that separate us from our imaginings become permeable. The glamour of the past and the promise of the future, merge in the present moment,  just as Gil Pender, the aspiring writer-hero of Woody Allen’s 2011 romantic comedy, Midnight in Paris, discovers. Gil encounters Alice B. Toklas, (more…)

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Event for California Society of Printmakers book, edited by Maryly Snow

Left Coast Writer® Maryly Snow has a great event coming up for California Society of Printmakers: 100 Years, 1913–2013, of which she recently was the editor.

The San Francisco Center for the Book will host, 100 Years in Print: California Society of Printmakers Centennial Celebration.  Attendees will have the opportunity to print their own 6-color print commemorating the event. The Center’s exhibition space will display CSP members’ artwork representing etching, woodcut, lithography, mezzotint, silkscreen, and hybrid prints. Thursday, November 7, 6:30-8:30 pm, 375 Rhode Island Street, San Francisco.

The book, California Society of Printmakers: 100 Years, 1913–2013, will be available for purchase at the Oct. 21st Book Club of California event and at the Nov. 7th San Francisco Center for the Book. Essays in the book are by Karin Breuer, Curator in Charge of the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, on the relationship between the Achenbach and CSP; Daniel Lienau, owner of The Annex Galleries in Santa Rosa on dealing with early 20th c. fine art prints; Art Hazelwood, artist and curator, on the period of the WPA to the present.

In “Digging The Archives: The Documented Origins of CSP’s Origins,” Maryly Snow, artist and librarian emeritus, the University (more…)

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Ferry Plaza Book Party: The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK

LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:  The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK by Mark Shaw

Mark Shaw

Monday, November 11th, 2013 || 6pm
Book Passage || San Francisco
1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com

Focusing for the first time on why attorney general Robert F. Kennedy wasn’t killed in 1963 instead of on why President John F. Kennedy was, Mark Shaw offers a stunning and provocative assassination theory in his latest book The Poison Patriarch that leads directly to the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Mining fresh information and more than forty new interviews, Shaw weaves a spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Jack Ruby (Lee Harvey Oswald’s killer); Ruby’s attorney, Melvin Belli; and, ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.

Shaw addresses these tantalizing questions: Why, shortly after his brother’s death, did a grief-stricken RFK tell a colleague, “I thought they would get one of us . . . I thought it would be me”? Why was Belli, an attorney with almost no defense experience (but proven ties to the Mafia), chosen as Jack Ruby’s attorney? How does Belli’s Mafia connection call into question his legal strategy, which ultimately led to the Ruby’s first-degree murder conviction and death sentence? What was Joseph Kennedy’s relationship to organized crime? And how was his insistence that JFK appoint RFK as attorney general tantamount to signing the president’s death warrant? (more…)

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Book Launch: Bolinas Bongo by Nicola Trwst

LEFT COAST WRITERS BOOK LAUNCH:  Bolinas Bongo by Nicola Trwst

Nicola Trwst

Saturday, November 9th, 2013 || 7pm
Book Passage-Corte Madera|| 51 Tamal Vista Dr. Corte Madera ||
www.bookpassage.com

The second book in Nicola Trwst’s Briana Kaleigh mystery series, Bolinas Bongo is set in our own Bay Area. Reporter Briana Kaleigh finds the body of a man while investigating a series of shark attacks. However this man was not done in by a shark, but by a serial killer on the loose in … Marin County! Briana sees the opportunity for a good story and tries to investigate, only to be blocked by local detective, Dusty Arkansas, with whom she has previously worked. Unfortunately, before long Dusty himself gets captured by the deranged killer, leaving Briana to find the detective before he ends up with the same grisly fate as the rest of the victims. (more…)

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