Riddle Brook Publishing

In the recent issue of Horn Book, Christopher Myers, writes about the importance of story (Young Dreamers). Myers writes:

Literature is a place for imagination and intellect, for stretching the boundaries of our own narrow lives, for contextualizing the facts of our nonfictions within constellations of understanding that we would not be able to experience from the ground, for bringing our dreams and fictions into detail, clarity, and focus. '

Myers is commenting on the value of literature to disrupt misinformed beliefs about self and other...To broaden narrow understandings.   He wonders:

if the man who killed Trayvon Martin had read A Snowy Day as a kid, would it have been as easy for him to see a seventeen-year-old in a hoodie, pockets full of rainbow candies and sweet tea, as a threat? What might have been different if images of round-headed Peter and his red hood and his snow angels were already dancing in his head?

Read More at: http://maryannreilly.blogspot.com/2013/08/troubling-narratives.html?spref=fb

Write Meditation Retreat   

Friday,  October  4, 2013  to Sunday,  October  6, 2013

At the Write Meditation retreat, we will delve into the creative writing process within the context of Buddhist meditation practice and explore how the qualities of mindfulness and compassion can enhance the generative flow of creative writing.

This retreat has much to do with Listening. . . listening with the heart, mind and senses to what arises from the stillness of our being; listening for the voice and narrative that yearns to be expressed through writing.

We will use techniques and skillful means that help bypass our tendency to inhibit or self-edit the creative impulse and help identify the themes and images we most want to explore in our writing. We will also work with methods for revising and revivifying works in progress.

The schedule will include interspersed meditation and writing sessions. There will be writing exercises we do as a group and plenty of time for individual writing as well. Participants are encouraged to regard the structure as simply a suggested guideline and will have the freedom and space to tailor the retreat to fit her or his unique writing process.

This retreat is open to writers and meditators at all levels of experience. The format works well for both aspiring writers who are looking for a supportive environment to kick-start their writing practice and experienced writers who are looking for the time and space to dive deep into their ongoing projects.

Be sure to bring plenty of paper and pens, and your notebook computer, if you like. And bring comfy clothing for sitting practice and wandering the beautiful environs of Wonderwell Mountain Refuge.

For you, a bookstore is a sacred space. It's quiet. Your fellow patrons, who share your faith in words on paper, move like monks through a labyrinth.

Everyone's gotta teen sometime.

It's an interesting relationship that book lovers have with the Internet: most would rather read a physical book than something on an iPad or Kindle, and even though an Amazon purchase is just two ...

In 1936 -- perhaps the darkest year of his life -- F. Scott Fitzgerald was convalescing in a hotel in Asheville, North Carolina, when he offered his nurse a list of 22 books he thought were essential reading.