Book Turns One (Month) Old!

The flurry leading up to the book launches in Phoenix and Berkeley has subsided. I’ve spent the past month doing interviews, knitting and cleaning up the mess the house had become while I was busy with the By the Forces of Gravity.

By the Forces of Gravity Book Cover

Not that I do much house work. I don’t. Basically, I bought another vacuum robot and threw out old food.

baby gift I knit for two expecting musicians

Below are links to interviews about making the book, By the Forces of Gravity, including the experience of drawing, writing, and finding my voice. At the end of this blog post, I link info about readings, presentations and workshops I’m doing this Fall:

Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O’Meara, episode 106. It was so fun doing the podcast. I was in my SCUBA diver friend Barb’s dining room in the Berkeley Hills the morning of the Berkeley launch and Brendan was up in Eugene while we chatted via Skype. Now I’m hooked on podcasts and have listened to a bunch of CNFPod and more.

Drawing Out Grief, New memoir explores girlhood friendship, hippie parenting, and buried grief. Interview by Ariel Gore for Psychology Today, posted June 18, 2018

It took years for author to find the voice with which to write her memoir, article by July 15, 2018

Lancaster founder of online literary magazine ventures into book publishing with a ‘unique beast,’ article by July 15, 2018. I love that my book is a ‘unique beast’!

These articles ran in the print version of the newspaper, which was so awesome to see.

in the Lancaster Newspaper, July 15, 2018

It’s been super fun seeing reviews by readers, doing interviews. I love getting to talk with people about crafting the poems and cartoons, and working with my amazing publisher, Donna Talarico, and her new imprint Books by Hippocampus. I’m so happy to have By the Forces of Gravity be the press’s first single-author book. Keep your eye out for the next one, Dig: A Personal Prehistoric Journey by Sam Chiarelli. Check out this cover!

Next Up:

Guest Authoring for The Debutante Ball, a blog celebrating up and coming authors and their books. There will be a book giveaway with this, so click on over on July 28 to see how to win a signed copy of By the Forces of Gravity and a pencil. (update, link now goes to the interview)

I’m the new Books with Pictures columnist for DIY MFA, a website listed in the 100 Best Website for Writers by The Write Life. I’ll provide links as my articles post on diymfa.com. We just had a big group meeting via Zoom, 14 women from all over talking about the site and writing. DIY MFA is Gabriela Pereira’s brainchild. I met Gabriela at HippoCamp 2017, the creative nonfiction writer’s conference created by Donna Talarico and her team at Hippocampus Magazine.

Speaking of Hippocamp, I’ll be reading from By the Forces of Gravity and leading a session called Doodling for Wordies. I’m 100% in love with helping writers let drawing into their writing life.

There are a few more irons in the fire, including a reading at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe this September, tabling in October at Phoenix Zine Fest, being on a panel  at NonfictioNow called Nonfiction Graphic Narratives: A Diversity of Approaches and doing an Off the Page workshop at Wasted Ink Zine Distro, both in November.