Self-Promotion, Bellingham-Style – Children’s books for various holidays – and an interview with Catherine Brady

All right, Bellingham-ians! We need a few more people to sign up for the Jeannine Hall Gailey/Martha Silano tag team Village Books Workshop or we’re going to have to cancel!!
You have til Feb 5 to sign up – but the sooner the better – here’s a description of the workshop:
Time: Tuesday, February 6, 2007 6:00 PM
Location: VB Readings Gallery
Memory & Mythology: Transforming the Personal into Poetry.
Join poets Jeannine Hall Gailey and Martha Silano for a night of workshopping (one poem by each participant will be discussed), two short generative writing exercises, and the sharing of work by poets (such as Louise Gluck and Li-Young Lee) who transform personal experience into powerful and moving poetry. Jeannine Hall Gailey is the author of Becoming the Villainess and Martha Silano is the author of Blue Positive.

Call Village Books today at Tel: (360) 671-2626 to reserve your spot!

A thought-provoking interview with Catherine Brady (bringing up such salient post-MFA worries as: how can I get a job teaching if I have no teaching experience if no one will let me teach because I have to teaching experience? And what about the state of book publishing today?) on the After the MFA blog.

I’ve been a little blue since my Aunt passed away on Monday night. I realized that even though I believe in an afterlife, it doesn’t always help – I still can’t visit my Aunt any more, or call her on the phone, or see her IM ID pop up on my computer. My husband G took me out to cheer me up, since I won’t be able to go to the funeral, to celebrate her life. My most vivid childhood memory is when my Aunt flew my whole family out to visit her in Colorado, the first time I’d been there, for Easter. This was when my Dad was a struggling assistant professor with four kids and my mom was still in school, so we would never have been able to afford a trip like this. The sky was beautiful and clear and the mountains were so unlike the low, tree-covered Smoky Mountains that I was used to. She bought me and my brother these amazing sugar-eggs, with little scenes inside, just like my favorite Easter children’s book, “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes.” (It’s a story of feminism, hope, struggle, and ultimately, love. Check it out if you have kids, or even if you don’t!)
This reminds me: For Valentine’s Day, go out and get a copy of the beautifully-illustrated children’s book, “The Valentine’s Cat.” It’s about a starving artist whose life is changed by a chimney-sweep cat with a curious mark on his forehead. And no, it’s not the mark of the beast. Here’s a link to The Valentine Cat on Amazon

More mini-reviews in the next few days…