12/17: Holiday Dirt: fecund new erotica! A benefit for writing ourselves whole...

Please help to spread the word! xoxoxo


Writing Ourselves Whole presents
~Holiday Dirt: fecund new erotica~
a benefit reading and celebration!


With special guest Carol Queen!
Featuring Alex Cafarelli, Lou Vaile, Amy Butcher, Renee Garcia, Jenn Meissonnier, Blyth Barnow and Jess Katz!

Burlesque! Sweet treats! Chapbooks!

When: Thursday, December 17, 7:30 SHARP
Cost: $10-50: sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds
Location: Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission Street (between 11th and South Van Ness), San Francisco, CA 94103

Your winter holidays shaping up to be a bit too wholesome? Never fear -- join Jen Cross as she presents these fierce new works from the Writing Ourselves Whole workshops, sharp and sexy writing that will delightfully sully your holiday spirit and open your mind to all sorts of new reindeer/dreidel games!

Celebrate risky writing and readings -- let us inspire your erotic imagination.

~~ Can't make the reading on 12/17? You can still help writing ourselves whole! We are raising funds to pay for our workshop space: whatever you can give will help! Click the link/button below to use PayPal to send your donations. Thank you so much!

A fundraiser for Writing Ourselves Whole (Declaring Our Erotic/Write Whole workshops), which exists in the service of transforming trauma and/or struggles around sexuality into art, and creating spaces in which individuals may come to recognize the artist/writer within.

We are family?

Thursday night at the phenomenal Girl Talk: A Cis & Trans Woman Dialogue, curated by Julia Serano and Gina de Vries, Ryka Aoki de la Cruz talked about family, about how if we're family how can we 'outreach' to each other? Families who've been separated have reunions, not outreach -- it was brilliant (as were each of the other performances shared at that show) and of course there were many more points she made and images she shared in her piece...

And this one, though, sticks in me -- sticks in my troubles -- the way performers talk about family sometimes, how we should treat each other more like family, meaning we should treat each other better, more kindly, with more open hearts, right? I guess that's how my inside hopeful heartsick places interpret that phrase.

But I think we do treat each other like family, already, unfortunately. 'Cause what are our experiences of family? We drop one another when it's expedient, we shut each other out and off. We take sexual advantage and then turn our backs. Isn't that family?

I get tired (and by tired I mean heartbroken-sad) of hearing about family like it should be understandable, like by referencing family as a metaphor for unconditional-yet-complicated love and acceptance, I will understand what that means. But I don't. My history of family is retracted love, pure and unabashed abandonment, extremely painful attempts at reconnection across severed ties -- and now we're supposed to make family together, you and me, we in these queer communities, and family, to me, looks like the horrifying inbred, yes, incestuous (and I use that metaphor deliberately) difficult raw puritanical stuff we have created and find ourselves struggling against.

'Cause I understand what she's talking about (how we don't outreach to family -- so how are you going to talk about 'outreaching' to queer folks of color, for example, to transwomen, to the others who are 'underrepresented' at the mainstream white queer gatherings that many of us find ourselves participating in), and I love it with all the inside webs of my heart.

But/And, also -- we need a different word.

I understand about needing replacements, about using and reclaiming 'family' to mean queer sisterbrothers and brothersisters, but we bring with that word all the baggage that shaped us crooked and raw and bent and ashamed and scarred. We carry into that word, and this new collection of people we're trying to connect with, all the pain that that word learned to bear, all the while we were learning to keep ourselves alive within its bounds, until it was gone.

How do we make 'family' good? How can we engender that word into something worthwhile, settle into it with a sense of hope instead of trepidation? You say we are family -- to me that means there is no hope between us, no common language, a warped tongue, an indelible severing. That's where I grow out of.

Not outreach but reunion. Maybe this truth of family is the way of all of us, and reunion will be painful alongside possible, as much as when I return to my blood family and see the shapes that crafted me and feel cup around my face each pair of arms and every set of hands that released me into the grip of a monster. Is that how we feel each other -- that we sisters and brothers and others haven't stood up for each other enough, haven't protected each other enough, haven't sent enough letters or enough I Miss You cards, or called enough to hear how your life is, to hear how he blessedness flows and hear how the hurts hit you and how can I share in both?

I don't do those parts very well, I'll admit it, the reaching out. She says we don't outreach to family, and I get her meaning, and and and -- I always feel like it's an outreach when I try to touch anyone with a tie to my insides: old friends, blood family -- a tentative feeling those lines: Are we still connected? Have you dropped me yet?

More and more thinking on this to come ... so many thanks to you, Ryka, for these considerations, this possibility, your words!

National Assoc of Memoir Writers FREE teleconference tomorrow!

Visit the NAMW conference site to sign up for tomorrow's telesummit and to get more information. It looks to be packed with amazing information and connections!

-Jen

-------
2009 Second NAMW Virtual Conference

We’re inviting you to sign-up for A FREE teleconference sponsored by the National Association of Memoir Writers to be held on April 23rd starting at 10 AM PDT. You will receive the conference call information after you register.

Schedule of calls are as follows (please note that the times are in PDT):

10:00 AM Kay Adams Writing Through Troubled Times
11:15 AM Dr. James Pennebaker Putting Emotional Experiences into Words
12:30 PM Lucia Cappachione Re-Membering Your Self: Creative Journaling for Memoirists
1:45 PM Christina Baldwin The Spiral of Experience—How Story Changes Over Time
3:00 PM Marina Nemat Writing and PTSD

Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D., President of The National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW) is host and director of the 2009 Virtual Conference.

Guest Speakers for this year’s conference:

Kathleen “Kay” Adams, LPC, RPT
10 AM PDT | 11 AM MDT | 12 PM CDT | 1 PM EDT

Writing Through Troubled Times:

Journal Your Way from Chaos to Calm

Anxiety is the new pandemic. Our workplaces, families, campuses and communities teem with overload and uncertainty. We’re exhausted by the demands on our personal resources. Money shrinks, conflict swells, and stress shatters our confidence and clarity.

Dr. James Pennebaker
11:15 AM PDT | 12:15 PM MDT | 1:15 PM CDT | 2:15 PM EDT

Putting Emotional Experiences into Words
In this virtual conference Dr. Pennebaker, world-famous psychologist who conducts research on how writing heals, will teach us how expressive writing—writing true experiences with emotional content– creates positive change and promotes the healing of trauma.

Dr. Lucia Capacchione Ph.D., A.T.R.
12:30 PM PDT | 1:30 PM MDT | 2:30 PM CDT | 3:30 PM EDT

Re-Membering Your Self: Creative Journaling for Memoirists

In this teleconference Dr. Lucia Capacchione will discuss the relevance of art, collage, and non-dominant hand writing and drawing in the context of a journal for memoirists. Tapping into rich stores of memories using right-brain techniques, which she originated,

Christina Baldwin
1:45 PM PDT | 2:45 PM MDT | 3:45 PM CDT | 4:45 PM EDT

THE SPIRAL OF EXPERIENCE–How Story Changes Over Time

The power of story allows us to interpret experience in ways that potentially transform facts and events into meaningful insights. It is from the stories we make out of experience that we create the lives we lead and the people we are.

Marina Nemat,
3 PM PDT | 4 PM MDT | 5 PM CDT | 6 PM EDT

Writing and PTSD

Marina Nemat is the author of Prisoner of Tehran where she chronicles her harrowing experience as a prisoner in the famous Evin prison in Tehran. Marina was only 16 years old when she was arrested. She was tortured and came within minutes of being executed.



We are excited this year to present the top writers, researchers, and mentors in the field of therapeutic writing, all of whom were gave us a huge amount of inspiration and information at the 2008 Journal Conference in Denver. Kay Adams, one of our guests for this important telesummit, was the director of this important and first ever conference that brought together for the first time the important people in the memoir, journaling, and therapeutic writing world.

Some of you may want to know the definition of therapeutic writing. Dr. James Pennebaker, one of our guests and the premier researcher in the field of writing to heal, has done many dozens of studies with hundreds of people that demonstrate all the ways that writing helps to heal—the body, the mind, and the spirit. The work of Kay Adams work and Christina Baldwin for the past three decades has been in the area of writing from soul, listening to the inner spirit, and using writing as a way to more deeply know the self. When we are connected with our deepest inner self, we are able to be authentic, to tell our truths, and free ourselves from some of the constraints and pain of the past.

Writing is a way to listen to ourselves, to give voice to what we deeply know about ourselves, our society, our planet. All the presenters at this very special telesummit will help to give us guidance, inspire us, and evoke the desire to use writing as a regular technique in our lives to create wholeness and even happiness.

Please join us for this wonderful and inspiring telesummit. You can also join us by phone for FREE. Sign up here, and you will receive more details about the telesummit, including new presenters and details about the conference, as time draws near.

Note: If you have signed up for last year’s NAMW Telesummit, then you’re automatically added to the list and you need not sign-up for this teleconference.

San Francisco tonight!

If you're going to be anywhere near the Mission District tonight, or can get there, you won't want to miss this reading!

Tonight!
January 14, 2008, 7pm
Achy Obejas & Dorothy Allison
READING IN SAN FRANCISCO

Where: Galería de la Raza, 2857 24th At (at Bryant), San Francisco, CA 94110
Cost: $5-10 donation

Pulitzer prize winner, Achy Obejas (Days of Awe, This Is What Happened in Our Other Life) and Robert Penn Warren Award winner, Dorothy Allison (Trash, Bastard Out of Carolina), start the new year with a special, exclusive reading at Galería de la Raza. Born in Havana, Cuba, Achy Obejas is an award winning journalist, novelist, translator and poet. She is currently the Sor Juana Writer in Residence at DePaul University. Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. A self described “working class story teller,” Allison was a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award for her novel Bastard Out of Carolina which won the Ferro Grumley Prize, an ALA Award for Lesbian and Gay Writing, and was made into an award winning movie.

Podcast Answers - Day 4: Has writing been healing for me?

Last Monday I committed to posting longer, more well-thought-out answers to the questions that Britt Bravo posed to me during our Arts and Healing Network podcast conversation a couple weeks ago. Welcome to day four!

4. Has [art/writing] been healing for you personally? If so, how?

Writing saved my life. Isn’t that true for so many of us? If I hadn’t had that outlet back when I was 20 and 21 and trying to figure out what had really happened to me, trying to come to a new sense of myself in relationship to words like ‘woman,’ ‘sexuality,’ ‘incest,’ ‘gay,’ and more, I wouldn’t have had any outlet at all, and I think I would have slipped fully into the word ‘crazy.’

I was someone who’d been trained out of the ability to be a friend, had been instructed to trust no one, did not open my deepest thoughts to even my significant others. The person who knew me best in the world, during my adolescence and very young adulthood was the man who’d been sexually abusing me, and even him I didn’t tell everything, despite his very thorough attempt to convince me that he could read my mind, so I might as well tell him what I was thinking since he knew anyway and thus could tell if I wasn’t – it was a measure of my trustworthyness, right?

(On a side note, I recently found this semi-satirical video about mind control "made easy" via bOING bOING and it felt weirdly familiar, even through my wincing laughter.)

The only safe place, I figured out, was the page. I came to realize that he couldn’t get in there (nor, really, could he get into my mind), and so everything came out, messy, jumbled, exploratory, raging, sorrowful, desiring, lusting…


Writing helps me to figure out what I know, what I think. I follow the philosophical lineage of Natalie Goldberg, freewriting daily, following any surprising or ridiculous though, getting it down onto the paper, moving on, not stopping to analyze or decipher, just writing, just writing, just writing. It’s exercise and meditation, it’s possibility and dreaming, it’s sometimes just working my way through the mire.

Writing also has brought me back into a sense of possibility around my sexuality. I initially started writing sex stories “for” my stepfather, but continued it for myself.



This is something I wrote in an (as yet unpublished) essay called “Blame it on Macho Sluts,” about how sex writing has been transformative for me:

When writing, however, I find it easier to get around the boundaries of my sexuality, because I am not directly confronting my own issues. Instead, I sit behind my character’s eyes and come in through the back door to the safety and power of my sexual self. I find solidarity with others, and their troubling desires, their struggles to break through the confines of particular identities. I am able find a home for their desire. In so doing, I may open a door for a reader who had no name for her desire, but felt it or thought it nonetheless. Hell, I might find a home for that desire within myself! When I first read “Jesse” in Macho Sluts I felt [Califia] had presented a mirror to me in the form of my damp and squirming thighs as I read (and reread). In the privacy of my little dorm room, a voice inside my head was saying, “Look at yourself. There’s something here you ought to pay attention to.” No one was around to laugh at me, to scorn or ridicule me, so I could consider this new aspect of my desire that had revealed itself to me. I had language to use, later, when discussing my reaction to the story (and others) with the aforementioned friend, as well. This is what smut writing can do: Help us, as readers and writers, to know ourselves better.

Often, writing smut in and of itself is sexual, is sex, for me. When I am writing well, porn writing brings me into the heart of my own [sex], brings me into my power and fear and lust and desire, and simultaneously into the core of ones I have loved enough to know intimately. This writing is a means through which I continue to heal myself: when my body feels broken and unredeemable, when I am afraid that I will never again be wildly and joyfully sexual, I remind myself that I am wildly and joyfully sexual when I write. I take steps to bring the scenes I imagine (some of them, at least) into the reality of my bedroom.

Yes, writing has been healing for me, and continues to be healing for me! Writing in community, as a last point, is consistently transformative, particularly when I’m writing in an AWA method workshop space: not only am I free to write openly, to follow my writing wherever it seems to want to go, but after I write, I know I’m going to get to read the brand new, heart-just-set-to-beating, piece of writing aloud, and I’m going to have folks tell me what stays with them of what they heard.

This is a powerful experience, every week, of a deep hearing: I tell my story (whatever bit of story got written, fiction or non-fiction, regardless!), I am witnessed (uninterrupted) in that telling, and then folks say what they heard and liked – often I am surprised by what someone liked, “Really? That? Huh…” And then I get to participate in the same sort of hearing for other writers/artists. In my own life, I find that there are so few opportunities to really completely focus on someone else, with no interruptions or distractions, or to be so attended to. For those of us who are survivors—or, truly, for anyone who has felt unheard in their lives, this experience can be terrifying at first, at second, at third (or, you know, at least it was for me!), and, simultaneously, a powerful gift: Oh. I am worth listening to. There’s good stuff in what I have to say, think, create.

This experience can change everything. And has. So, yes, writing (and writing community) is healing for me, still and always.

What about for you?

12/1 - World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day.
AIDS is not over.

I know we're more than ribbons, that it takes more than that little flip of red material pinned to your sweater or shirt to bring about change in the world -- and still, those ribbons mean something to me. They mean bravery and risk, the willingness to call attention to something that the larger community didn't want to face.

We need to keep talking. Folks are still contracting HIV, offering it to others knowingly sometimes, and there's no vaccine.


If you're in/around San Francisco today:

The 15th Annual National AIDS Day Observance at the National AIDS Memorial Grove located in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

When: Monday, December 1, 2008 - Program starts at 12 Noon

Where: AIDS Memorial Grove, Golden Gate Park. (click here for map and directions)

The 15th annual World AIDS Day remembrance ceremony will be held on Monday, December 1st from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the National AIDS Memorial Grove in the Golden Gate Park. This year’s event marks the 27th year in the fight against AIDS and commemorating all those whose lives have been touched by the virus. The theme, Coming of Age with AIDS, focuses that
people of all ages are affected by HIV/AIDS, and the greatest risk for infection is amongst 18 to 26 year olds.

This year’s guest speakers are members of the Stirling Family, four of five whom are HIV- ositive. The Stirlings will speak about their family’s struggle with HIV-AIDS, their “coming out” and how these realities have changed their lives, including their adoption of an Ethiopian orphan who was also HIV positive. The family has been featured on Good Morning America and in the cover story of POZ Magazine this past January.

With respect to the Stirlings, Gina Gatta, 2008 World AIDS Day co-chair and NAMG board member said, “The Stirlings’ story is that of Ryan White’s challenges times four. Their story is powerful and inspiring for anyone facing challenging health care issues.”

In addition to Gina, co-chairs this year include Thom Weyand, NAMG board member, and 13 year-old Annie Wilson, the first teenager to ever co-chair the Memorial’s World AIDS Day.

This program will commence with a moment of coming together, led by Reverend Jim Litulski, pastor of the New Spirit Church in Berkley, followed by a musical interlude performed by the Hamlin School Choir. The observance will include a brief period at the end of the ceremony when visitors will be invited to move to the Circle of Friends, where the recently engraved names of those honored in the Circle will be read aloud.

The National AIDS Memorial is a seven-acre dell in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, a living tribute to all those whose lives have been touched by AIDS and where people gather to heal, hope and remember. Passage of the National AIDS Memorial Grove Act in 1996 bestowed national significance upon the memorial, which began as a grassroots effort by local residents searching for a positive way to express grief in a community devastated by AIDS.

The Grove is the only federally designated AIDS Memorial in the United States.

For more information about the Grove Award and World AIDS Day at the National AIDS Memorial, please call (415) 765-0497 or visit AIDSMemorialGrove.org


(from Sam Spade's San Francisco)

Nov 19: Your words and art are needed!

from http://www.stopcsa.org/talktostop/:

Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, Inc. (Stop the Silence, www.stopcsa.org), in collaboration with Art for Humanity (South Africa) and The Global Lesson Foundation (Canada) and other collaborating organizations (Survivors Healing Center, Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence) request your input for the first annual "Stop the Silence: Talk Around the Clock" marathon to stop the silence about child sexual abuse (CSA). On November 19, 2008 we will start talking and presenting art and information through the Web from people around the world who want to add their work and thoughts to this movement, and we will not stop for twenty-four hours. We can present your work (e.g., we can air a clip of your poetry) or you can present it live through a special Web program that will allow others throughout the world to see and/or hear you.

We need your voice, art, and information.

* We need your voice if you are a survivor, a bystander, and/or a supporter of the prevention of child sexual abuse.
* We need your voice to help celebrate the courageous efforts of past victims, survivors and those who have supported them.
* We need your voice if you are an individual, organization or celebrity who believes that no child, regardless of geography, culture or heritage or economic status, should have to endure any form of sexual abuse.

Let Your Voice Be Heard!!

HOW to get involved?

Click here on the talktostop.com link to upload your on-line abstract and your art, your poetry, your presentations, your dance clips, and/or your plays.

WHAT can you contribute?

We will review submissions and most submissions will be included in the 24-hour period (we will vet for appropriateness). Many different types of information can be submitted. Here is a sampling:

* Art stills (paintings, drawings, sculpture) created by survivors or those who have supported survivors of CSA to be presented during the 24-hour period.
* Art to donate, display in our marathon and to be put on the sell4change auction site. All proceeds will go to further the education and prevention of CSA.
* Poetry, dance and theatre by survivors or supporters of a change in how societies deal with CSA. You can upload a video or audio clip for presentation, or you can submit your work to be reviewed but then present it live within the 24-hour, Nov. 19th marathon.
* If you are a celebrity you can offer your voice and opinion by uploading video clips or monologues about your story, history, experience or view of child sexual abuse. These clips will be aired through the marathon. It is possible for you to present your views live if you so desire.
* Formal presentations (e.g., speaking live from your computer and/or PowerPoints).

Submit your presentation for review and let us know whether you intend it to be shown by you in a live format or presented on our end through an available tape or other materials.

If you are an individual or an organization combating this silent epidemic, we encourage you to upload your presentation regardless of the type of media (e.g., PowerPoint, video clip, audio clip) – note whether you want to present it live or “taped.” We ask that presentation not exceed 45 minutes from start to finish to allow a 15-minute interactive question and answer period. If submitting a presentation, we ask you to identify whether you would like conduct it live or if you would like to pre-record it and let us air it for you.

All presenters will be given an in depth tutorial and manual on how to use the collaboration software developed for The Global Lesson and this online event.

"Shedding the Skin of Shame, Bearing Our Bodies' Truths"

Call for Artists -- Please Forward Widely!

ARTISTS AGAINST RAPE:
"Shedding the Skin of Shame, Bearing Our Bodies' Truths"
October 18th, 2008
This dynamic event features local poets, artists and activists, speaking out against sexual assault and offers a unique supportive space for expression and community building. We are seeking volunteers help to make this event happen. If you are interested in volunteering for the event, our first meeting will be in July 2008. Check website for updates on meeting times.

SUMBISSIONS:
* To submit poetry, prose, flows, songs, and music, artists must send in a cassette or CD of their piece, along with a written copy of all words/lyrics. If work is received in written format only, the piece may not be considered for inclusion.
* Visual artists may submit work in the form of high-resolution (300dpi) digital images in the following formats: TIFF, JPEG, JPG.
* To submit dance pieces, please send a VHS, DVD or weblink of the entire piece.
* All performance pieces (i.e. poetry, dance, music/songs, dramatic sketches, etc.) must have a total running time of 5 minutes or less. The suggested length for performance pieces is 3-5 minutes.

Please include a short biography (300 words or less) and contact information with your submission. Pieces must be related to healing from and/or speaking out against violence, sexual violence and gender and/or sexual oppression. Due to space limitations, not all submissions may be accepted, and selection is at the discretion of the artistic committee. Performers will receive a modest stipend. All SUBMISSIONS due no later than AUGUST 15th. No exceptions!

For more information or questions, please email janetuphadye@sfwar.org or visit the SFWAR website at www.sfwar.org!

Metaphysical Fitness -- Classes start soon!

Jen's Note: Sista Nau*T is my dear friend and compatriot in the work of transformation & healing -- she's deeply invested in the work of helping us remember the importance of our bodies and connect back into these selves we sometimes forget to take such good care of:

---

Doshe Healing Arts in collaboration with Bushmama Productions present:
Metaphysical Fitness Training

Come explore practical solutions for common obstacles to health and wellness.
Learn to work out anytime, anywhere engaging in small daily activities that have profound life long impacts.

Classes begin Aug. 2, 2008 at 10a
We offer the class at a sliding scale $10-$25 suggested donations NTAFLOF
Register now, space is limited.

For more information please visit our website
http://web.mac.com/sisnaut/iWeb/Doshe%20Healing%20Arts/Contact%20Us.html


Peace, Love, Guidance, Protection and Prosperity in Abundance,
Sis. Nau~T
Doshe Healing Arts
Founder and Executive Director

Telling (Our) Stories

On recommendation of someone at UCSF, I've been reading Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.'s book, Kitchen Table Wisdom. Dr. Remen, an accomplished physician, survivor of chronic illness, and therapist, began many years ago to think about how best one might work with patients who were facing chronic illness and death.

Stories are powerful instruments -- and they're as common and consistent for us as breathing. Just as the Tales Grimm or the old Parables or the Ananzi or Coyote tales are recognizable as telling us something about how our communities think we ought to live, we have individual/familial stories that we tell ourselves and one another very consistently every minute of every day. We, as literate and verbal culture, are ever immersed in story.

What's the definition of story? My online dictionary says it can be used as a noun or a verb. I loved multi-layered words like that. Anyway, one definition is "an account or recital of an event or a series of events, either true or fictitious." Another is "to decorate with scenes representing historical or legendary events; to tell as a story." (Circularity is always fun -- and the dictionary is fraught with it, but that's another story!)

We, many of us, have been told not to "tell stories" -- meaning: don't lie. So, we learn to tell different stories -- ones that, because they make the folks around us more comfortable, are called truth. it's hard work, once again, to retrain the grooves in our mind to accept the possibility that those early stories can come into the slot called truth.

We are a collection of our stories. the memories we lift out of our pockets to share with friends over dinner, or that we recite for ourselves in the thick of depression or in the bright morning of recovered joy --

Why are we talking about stories? In her book, a collection of anecdotes, stories, musings, recollections, retellings, Dr. Remen spins open the possibility of new knowings, new understandings of self and community and world and humanity. She tells of her own transformations throughout her life, many of these precipitated by truly being present with another person's stories.

What does all of this have to do with sexual abuse, with trauma -- or with sexuality? If we as a culture are immersed in story, then it follows (for me, at least) that we come to know, to understand, ourselves through story. When we allow ourselves to be, it's possible to be transformed by others' stories -- by others' ways of knowing the world, seeing the world, seeing possibility -- this require vulnerability, a willingness to be open.

We don't have to take on another's interpretations of life or experience -- but what happens when we are present with other people's stories is that we can recognize that there exist different ways of looking at the world, looking at ourselves, at pain and struggle, at desire and longing , than we ourselves have yet come across -- I notice this happening quite often in the writing workshops, a note of "I had never heard it described quite that way before -- it was so surprising!" And there's a shift, a splitting open, a new openness of our perceptions, and thus ourselves...

and what a way to move in to a new year -- or this new moment.

As always, of course, I'd love to know what you think. What's your relationship to story? If you're willing, I'd be happy to post your thoughts/responses/ideas/stories here...

Ending Child Sexual Abuse within 5 Generations

I am so sad that I missed the "Generations of Change" event honoring Staci Hanes last week -- Staci Hanes is the woman who began Generation 5, an organization devoted to ending childhood sexual abuse within 5 generations, through community education, public action, and survivor leadership. Join their mailing list, throw a house party, participate in a training and help out where you can!

http://www.generationfive.org/

Workshop forming for mixed race women

I received this note from Esther, a former workshop participant -- write to her at bionicfemme@hotmail.com if you'd like more information about hew new workshop:

"Hi Jen, Now that we have graduated from the Master's program at New College, one of my classmates, Monalisa and I are starting up a writer's workshop! This group is for all mixed race women of color who are interested in generating creative writing, memoir, and other multi-genre literary work to reflect their experiences as multi-racial women of color. Our concentration is on experimental lit, but linear, traditional narratives are welcome as well. We will also be performing as part of New College's local writer series at a public reading in the coming months. Please let me know if you have any workshop participants that might be interested, and tell your friends! We'd really like to get the word out and grow as a community. We submit our work to the group on the second weekend of every month, then meet up for coffee during the fourth weekend, to go over each other's work and in general, just bond as a community of mixed race writers. Hope you are doing well! -Esther"