SCN members make the news by publishing books, articles, essays, poems, dramas, and art. They also make presentations, lead workshops, facilitate groups, and organize programs. Below are some of our members’ achievements this year.
If you’re an SCN member who has news to share, please let us know by filling out the form found here. If you’re not a member, why not join us? Maybe you’ll soon be able to post your news on this page!
Marilea Rabasa’s “Stepping Stones” Named Semi-finalist
“I am thrilled, and humbled, to be recognized as a semi-finalist in the 2020 Chanticleer International Book Awards, The Journey Award. It’s an honor to be recognized with all these talented authors.” ~Marilea Rabasa
A retired ESL teacher, Marilea’s travels in the diplomatic service provide the backdrop for her second memoir, full of humor and pathos, on how she’s overcome her lifelong depression and found her key to happiness. More at www.recoveryofthespirit.com.
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Winners of the LifeWriting Contest Announced
Congratulations to the winners of Story Circle Network’s annual LifeWriting Contest. They are:
First place: The Forty Year Journey by Cynthia F Davidson
Second place: Infertility in Three Acts by Carrie Steckl
Third place: Winning the Losing Battle by Sara Etgen-Baker
Third place: Jungle Jaunt by Suzanne Adam
Please watch our website for next year’s competition dates and guidelines.
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Sara Etgen-Baker published in Chicken Soup anthology
Sara’s story “From A Distance” is being published in Chicken Soup’s latest anthology, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Eldercare and Dementia. The story highlights her rather unconventional way of dealing with her parents after her father had a stroke and her mother developed dementia. She hopes her story will encourage others not to feel guilty when they also chose unique ways of dealing with eldercare and dementia.
Sara Etgen-Baker retired from teaching in 2010 after a lifetime as a professional educator. She began her writing journey and since that time has had many of her memoir vignettes and personal narratives published in a host of anthologies, books.
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“Reading the Rings” feature article by Susan J Tweit
Susan J. Tweit’s article on what tree rings tell us about hurricanes, pirates, and snowmageddons—among other things—was featured on the cover of the spring issue of WILDFLOWER Magazine. One of the scientists featured in the article bragged about it on Twitter!
Susan J. Tweit is an award-winning writer and botanist. Her thirteen books include the memoir Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying, which author Craig Childs said left him “awed and shaken.” http://susanjtweit.com
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Linda Wisniewski Interviewed on Grab the Lapels: Reading Women
Linda Wisniewski was interviewed by the blog Grab the Lapels for its “Meet the Writer” feature. Read the interview here.
Linda is the author of the memoir Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, & Her Polish Heritage. On her website, she describes herself as a writer, memoir teacher, knitter, quilter, and happy trail walker. Wisniewski is a longtime member and former board member of Story Circle Network. Her work has been widely published online and in print, and her debut novel, Where the Stork Flies, is forthcoming in May 2021.
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Connie Spitler Featured on NPR
Connie Spittler, Omaha Nebraska author, was invited to read her essay “Pink Moments” on NPR’s Bob Edwards Show. Her essay was selected for the This I Believe: 100 Essays list. She appears with the likes of John Updike, Pearl Buck, Albert Einstein, Isabel Allende, and Dr. Anthony Fauci. The link: https://thisibelieve.org/essay/11439/
Connie Spittler, long time Tucson, Arizona, essayist and author of two novels, now lives in Omaha, Nebraska. She currently is writing and editing a coffee table nature book entitled Turkey Creek Preserve: A Sacred Journey, to be published summer 2021.
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Sara Etgen-Baker Published in Good Old Days Magazine
Sara’s story “The Thornback and the Red-Headed Man” appears in the February 2021 (Valentine’s) issue of Good Old Days Magazine. The story tells the tale of how her husband and soulmate of 38 years met–a magical, synchronistic moment in the autumn of 1983. Another story by Sara, “Long Live the Landline,” is also published in that same issue. That story is a remembrance of the thrill of having a landline in her home in the late 1950s–a time when many folks didn’t have phones in their homes. Hard to imagine in today’s world! 
Sara Etgen-Baker began her writing journey shortly after she retired from a 25-year career as a teacher and counselor. Her manuscripts have been published in anthologies and magazines including Chicken Soup for the Soul, Guideposts, and Good Old Days Magazine.
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Lynn Goodwin and Her Memoir Featured on the Tamron Hall Show
B. Lynn Goodwin and her husband have been invited to do a Zoom interview for the Tamron Hall Show, featuring Goodwin’s memoir, Never Too Late: From Wannabe to Wife at 62. They were interviewed by Tamron Hall on February 11 and the epidsode aired on March 8. View her clip, which demonstrates that it’s never too late to find love, here: https://twitter.com/TamronHallShow/status/1369080851942768641. If you haven’t read Goodwin’s story, copies of her memoir are available through https://writeradvice.com/
B. Lynn Goodwin owns Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com. Her YA book Talent, republished in November 2020 by Koehler Books, won some awards, and she’s editing the sequel, Ground Rules. Her memoir is Never Too Late: From Wannabe to Wife at 62.
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Margaret Spence Releases JOYOUS LIES
Maelle a shy botanist, follows the utopian beliefs of her grandparents’ commune, on which she was raised following her mother’s early death. When her new lover Zachary claims her mother and his father died together in his father’s medical research lab, Maelle investigates, forcing her to confront the commune’s secrets, its possible complicity in her mother’s death, and to ask, if plants can protect their young, why can’t humans do the same?
Margaret Ann Spence is an award-winning writer of essays and women’s fiction. Her debut novel, Lipstick on the Strawberry, is followed by Joyous Lies, published by The Wild Rose Press, which launched on February 15, 2021.
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Marilea Rabasa featured in Writing It Real
Sheila Bender is featuring my new memoir, Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation, in an article titled “Writing in Vignettes Can Generate a Book Length Memoir” for Writing It Real this month. I’m happy to share this selection of vignette excerpts, an illuminating example of how this structure works. Take a look: https://bit.ly/3ruKY6p.
Marilea and her partner live on an island in Puget Sound where they enjoy grandchildren, boats, and salt air. Her travels provide the backdrop for her award-winning second memoir.
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“Floating in the Neversink” by Andrea Simon Wins Award
Andrea Simon’s Floating in the Neversink has won the 2020 New York Indie Author Project award.
The novel-in-stories follows a sensitive and impressionable young Jewish girl, Amanda Gerber, through the evocative world of the Catskill Mountains, interspersed with life in Brooklyn, from 1955-1961, a time of veiled innocence and impending turbulence.
Learn more at https://www.andreasimon.net/.
Andrea Simon is a writer and photographer based in New York City. Her three published works include: Bashert: A Granddaughter’s Holocaust Quest, now in paperback; and her award-winning historical novels Esfir Is Alive and Floating in the Neversink.
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Writing by Story Circle Network members featured in 2020 anthology, “RWW: Living on COVID Time”
The Story Circle Network 2020 Real Women Write anthology, Living on COVID Time, has been released. This is Volume 19 of our annual anthology of prose and poetry, all by members of Story Circle Network. The 52 authors of the 80 pieces in this collection were writing in response to an unprecedented global pandemic.
Story Circle Network is a nonprofit organization supporting women writers and asserting the importance of women’s stories.
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