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!
“Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation” Wins Best Book Award
Marilea Rabasa’s second memoir was named the Winner of the Best Book Awards of 2020 in the Health: Addiction and Recovery category. In addition, Stepping Stones is on the Long List of the Chanticleer Journey Awards, the CIBA’s. Marilea is honored to be recognized among so many talented authors.
Marilea Rabasa’s journey to the Pacific Northwest is an interesting tale. For several years, she was a teacher in Virginia. Before that, she lived overseas in the Foreign Service. Now she and her partner live on an island in Puget Sound.
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Winners of the LifeWriting Contest Announced
Congratulations to the winners of Story Circle Network’s annual Susan Wittig Albert LifeWriting Contest. They are:
First place: Waiting in Transition by Joyce Boatright
Second place: The Lessons of Solitude by Marilea Rabasa
Third place: How I Became a Radical, an Engaged Jew, and a Writer by Lisa Braver Moss
Third place: Prison Pen Pal by Patricia Daly
Please watch our website for next year’s competition dates and guidelines.
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“Dignity in Death” Released by Barbara Frandsen
The truth is, none of get out of here alive, and few of us avoid the anguish of living through a loved one’s death.
- How does the death of a parent impact families?
- Is it more courageous to fight for life or to accept death?
- What words and actions tend to comfort?
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How can we prepare for an end on our own terms?
Dignity in Death is an invitation to release fear and embrace acceptance. Read more.
Barbara Frandsen spent most of her life as an educator. Following work with children and teens, she became a teachers’ teacher at a small urban university where she spent 33 years working with pre-service teachers. http://barbarafrandsen.com/
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Susan Tweit Receives Advance Recognition for Upcoming Memoir “Bless the Birds”
Author Kathleen Dean Moore wrote: I loved this book. I needed this book. I drank it in huge gulps. I shouted at the book, and I hugged it to my chest. Above all, I learned from this book: Courage comes only to those who are afraid. Grief comes only to those who love deeply.…Grace comes only to those who give themselves up for lost.…Bless the Birds is a rare gift.
Writer and plant biologist Susan J. Tweit turned to writing when she realized the loved telling the stories in the data. She is the award-winning author or twelve books, and is passionate about reconnecting humans with nature. http://susanjtweit.com
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Sarah Byrn Rickman Releases “Betty Gillies WAFS Pilot: The Days and Flights of a World War II Squadron Leader”
October 15, was launch day for Betty Gillies WAFS Pilot. Betty’s voice dominates this story as excerpts from her WWII diaries tell about her many flights across the skies of wartime America in the Army’s fastest fighter aircraft. She led a squadron of women pilots who “ferried” (flew) these critical warplanes from factories to the docks to be shipped abroad. The work these women did is still the best kept secret of WWII.
Sarah Byrn Rickman currently writes books about the women pilots of World War II for today’s young women, age 11 up. She is a former Sarton contest winner in both nonfiction and young adult categories. “Betty Gillies” is the third in her WASP Pilot series and her tenth woman pilot book. https://www.sarahbyrnrickman.com
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B. Lynn Goodwin Releases “Talent”
After the original publisher closed its doors, Koehler Books accepted B. Lynn Goodwin’s YA Talent. Their lovely edition launches November 1. Please show them they made a wise choice. If you know a teen, a military family, a theatre family, someone seeking acceptance, or a library that might like a copy, give them a present or pass the word along. https://writeradvice.com/books-by-lynn/
B. Lynn Goodwin owns Writer Advice, www.writeradvice.com. She’s written two award-winning books, Never Too Late: From Wannabe to Wife at 62 (memoir) and Talent (YA) and published many articles and flash fiction and memoir pieces.
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Susan Albert Releases “The Darling Dahlias and the Voodoo Lily”
This is the 9th book in the Darling Dahlias series. It’s 1935, and the small Southern town of Darling, Alabama, has a new radio station, a new bakery. and a couple of new mysteries to solve.
Susan is the NYT bestselling author of mysteries (Pecan Springs series, Darling Dahlias, Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, Robin Paige Victorians), biographical fiction, memoir, and nonfiction. Her website: https://susanalbert.com/.
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Linda Wisniewski Receives Honorable Mention In Art of Creative Unity Award
Linda C. Wisniewski received an honorable mention in the 2020 Art of Creative Unity Award, presented by the International Human Rights Art Festival, for her essay “Notes From an American Island,” about a senior citizen visit to the Gulla Geechee of Sapelo Island, Georgia. The awards highlighted work on aspects of human unity and positive cross-pollination between groups, ethnicities, religions and/or nations.
Linda C. Wisniewski lives in southeastern PA and teaches memoir workshops at the home of author Pearl S. Buck. Her memoir Off Kilter was published by Pearlsong Press. Linda’s novel Where the Stork Flies is forthcoming in 2020.
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Rhonda Wiley-Jones Has Short Story Published
Flash Fiction Magazine worked with Rhonda Wiley-Jones to publish her flash fiction story The City that Stole His Daughter. Wiley-Jones says the magazine helped take her writing to the next level. Read her story here.
Rhonda Wiley-Jones self-published her coming-of-age travel memoir, At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away. Her short stories, essays, poetry and travel memoirs are published in several sources. She writes a travel tips column and travel stories for two local lifestyle magazines in the Texas Hill Country. Her website: https://rhondawiley-jones.com/.
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“Mermaid Dreams” by Janet Lucy receives 2020 Children’s Book of the Year Award
Award-winning children’s book author Janet Lucy was interviewed and featured in the Santa Barbara News Press on August 8, 2020. The article describes her inspiration for “Mermaid Dreams,” her partnership with Seven Seas Press, and their fundraising campaign to gift 173 copies of “Mermaid Dreams” to the girls from Girls Inc. Read more at https://newspress.com/mermaid-dreams/.
Janet Lucy, M.A., is the author of “Moon Mother, Moon Daughter—Myths and Rituals that Celebrate a Girl’s Coming of Age,” “The Three Sunflowers,” and “Mermaid Dreams.” She is the Founder/Director of Women’s Creative Network in Santa Barbara, CA.
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Eve Kahn’s “Forever Seeing New Beauties” Receives Award of Merit
My biography of the 19th-century artist Mary Rogers Williams (Wesleyan University Press, 2019), winner of a Sarton Women’s Book Award, has received an Award of Merit from the Connecticut League of History Organizations and is a finalist for a Spirit of Connecticut prize in the nonfiction category from the Connecticut Center for the Book (results to be announced in October). My Sarton trophy is by my side keeping up morale in Covidian times! https://ctcenterforthebook.org/2020-ct-book-awards-finalists/
Eve M. Kahn, former weekly Antiques columnist for The New York Times, is an independent scholar who regularly contributes to the Times as well as to Apollo magazine and The Magazine Antiques. For more info: evekahn.com
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“Shrug” by Lisa Braver Moss Wins YA Gold in IPPYs
Lisa Braver Moss’s most recent novel, “Shrug” (2019, She Writes Press), has won the gold medal in YA Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs). The book also won the silver in General Fiction in the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, and the gold for Historical YA Fiction in the Moonbeam awards. A coming-of-age novel that takes place in 1960s Berkeley, “Shrug” was a finalist in Historical Fiction in the Sarton Women’s Book Awards. Learn more about “Shrug” at lisabravermoss.com.
Lisa Braver Moss is the author of the novels “The Measure of His Grief” and the award-winning “Shrug,” as well as several nonfiction books. Her work has appeared in Yahoo News, the Huffington Post, Parents, Lilith, and many other publications.
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Pat Anthony releases “Between Two Cities on a Greyhound Bus”
Pat Anthony invites you to rise with her Between Two Cities on a Greyhound Bus, and share journey as metaphor for what lies within. She still has vivid memories of a bug-spattered windshield warm beneath the glare of westering sun as she stood beside the driver and watched the highway unwind, taking her away from her beloved grandmother back to her other more complicated homelife waiting in the distance.
As an advocate for living successfully with bipolar disorder, she explores poetry with its many boulevards and backroads as a means of simultaneously exploring the self. She hopes readers come to a deeper understanding of both the mania and the crash that frequently inspire her poems as they travel. https://amzn.to/31cBQJs
Pat Anthony writes the backroads, mining characters, relationships and herself. A recently retired educator and former poetry editor, she holds an MA in Humanities, poems daily, edits furiously and scrabbles for honesty no matter the cost.
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Susan J Tweit presents “Who Knew Writing Bios Could Be Interesting and Fun?”
Susan J. Tweit’s recent webinar on writing compelling bios as true stories was a hit with scientists and science communicators from the Austin chapter of SciComm. “I didn’t know a bio could be interesting!” commented one participant. As Tweit said, “Everyone needs a bio. They’re the story of who we are, and should leave readers wanting to know more.”
A plant biologist in love with this Earth, Susan J. Tweit’s books and other writings have won awards and lifelong fans. Her next book, Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying, comes out in April 2021. Read more about Susan and her work at http://susanjtweit.com.
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Sara Etgen-Baker published in Anna Living Magazine
The article “Where Cardinals Fly” by Sara Etgen-Baker was recently published in Anna Living Magazine, a new monthly magazine for residents who live in Anna, Texas. The story highlights how she and her husband discovered after moving to Anna that they both had ancestors who lived in the town…perhaps explaining their inexplicable draw to the community.
Read the article here, and continuing here.
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, and magazines.
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Julie Sucha Anderson published in Next Tribe
Julie Sucha Anderson’s story of meeting her English PenPal after 55 years of correspondence was published in Next Tribe magazine on August 13, 2020. That the connection occurred during the current Coronavirus pandemic made for an even more poignant union. Next Tribe is an online magazine for women over 45 who choose to age boldly. Check out the article here: nexttribe.com/international-pen-pals/.
Julie Sucha Anderson (Julianne Anderson) is a writer of personal essays, short stories, and two novels. She is an editor and contributor to many publications including Grrl Talk – Sass, Wit, and Wisdom from the Austin WriterGrrls. Visit her blog at midlifejobhunter.blogspot.
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Linda Hoye releases “The Presence of Absence: A Story About Busyness, Brokenness, and Being Beloved”
When we use busyness to fill a void, being busy can become an addiction. Busyness helps us feel better—or feel nothing—but the benefit doesn’t come without cost.
Adoptee Linda Hoye used it to ease the ache she felt over the loss of her first mother’s love. When she retired, slowing down to pursue creative activities, she found herself stuck. So accustomed to being busy, she had forgotten how to be anything else.
This is a spiritual memoir about a longing many of us have for something we struggle to articulate. It’s about fear, brokenness, and the mystery of stillness, solitude, and silence. It is the story of a sacred journey to a lost mother, a found family, and an encounter with divine love.
Learn more at https://lindahoye.com/thepresenceofabsence/.
Linda Hoye lives in British Columbia, Canada with her husband and their doted-upon Yorkshire Terrier but will always be a Saskatchewan prairie girl. She is the author of The Presence of Absence: A Story About Busyness, Brokenness, and Being Beloved and Two Hearts: An Adoptee’s Journey Through Grief to Gratitude.
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Marilea Rabasa releases “Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation”
Marilea’s first memoir, A Mother’s Story: Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, begins the story of generational substance use disorder in her family of origin. But it was watching her daughter grapple with the same illness that catapulted her into a recovery program that changed her life. She Writes Press recently released her sequel memoir, Stepping Stones: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Transformation, and Marilea feels honored that it was selected as a Finalist in the 2020 International Book Awards.
Marilea’s first book was a gut-wrenching exposé of what substance use disorder had done to her daughter. But if that book was a “memoir of recovery,” then this sequel digs much deeper, exposes more, and gets to the heart of her story. Time—and all the perspective it offers—is an invaluable tool as she has sought to unravel her own life in search of answers to important questions.
Learn more at https://www.recoveryofthespirit.com/.
Marilea grew up in Massachusetts. For several years, she lived overseas in the Foreign Service, and later taught ESL in Virginia. She published an award-winning memoir in 2014 in New Mexico, then published a sequel memoir in June. She and her partner live on an island in Puget Sound where they enjoy boats, grandchildren, and salt air.
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