Flamingos Converge in Gualala: A Conversation with Nine Women Writers

Every year I have been so blessed to sneak away on writing retreat with eight other actively publishing women writers on the northern California coast. Finally, this year, we are breaking our monastic routine to join the community, to give back in a sense, by appearing for a Meet and Greet as a form of thank you for the beauty of our surroundings, to show our support for the local bookstore, Four-Eyed Frog Books, and to meet other writers in the area. 

I hope you'll come out to join us; we have planned an informal conversational afternoon, during which we will take turns addressing how we met initially on a retreat hosted by A Room of Her Own Foundation, what makes a writers group a success,  and to hear from you regarding what might we offer in terms of writing workshops in the future if there's interest.

Meet and Greet will be held at Four-Eyed Frog Books
39138 Ocean Drive, Gualala 95445
Saturday June 18 at 4 p.m.

The Flamingos:

Jayne Benjulian began writing as a young girl, leaving letters under the mattress to read years later and see who she had been. She has been an Ossabaw Island Project Fellow; a teaching fellow at Emory University; and a Fulbright Teaching Fellow in Lyon, France. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. Her first collection, Five Sextillion Atoms will be published in June 2016. Find out more about Jayne and her work at

www.jaynebenjulian.com.

Sandra Hunter’s short fiction collection, Small Change, won the 2016 Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize and was published in June. Her debut novel, Losing Touch, was released in July 2014. She’s currently finishing a novel-in-progress, The Geography of Kitchen Tables. Favorite dessert: rose-flavored macarons. www.sandrajhunter.com.

Marcia Meier’s poems have appeared in Sage Trail Poetry Magazine, Prime Number, and the anthology Knocking at the Door, Poems about Approaching the Other. She is the author of two published works of nonfiction and a memoir, and holds degrees in journalism and creative writing. She is a book consultant at www.marciameier.com.

Tania Pryputniewicz: A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tania Pryputniewicz is a co-founding blogger for Tarot for Two and Mother Writer Mentor. Saddle Road Press published her debut poetry collection, November Butterfly, in 2014. Recent poems appeared or are forthcoming at Extract(s), NonBinary Review, One, Patria Letteratura, and TAB. She lives in San Diego, California with her husband, three children, a blue-eyed Husky and one portly house cat named Luna. She can be found online at www.taniapryputniewicz.com

Lisa Rizzo is the author of In the Poem an Ocean, a chapbook (Big Table Publishing, 2011). Her new poetry collection Spelunking is forthcoming from Saddle Road Press. Her work also has appeared in such journals as 13^th Moon, Calyx Journal, RiverLit and Naugatuck River Review. Two of her poems received 1^st and 2^nd prizes in the 2011 Maggi H. Meyer Poetry Prize competition. She blogs at Poet Teacher Seeks World and can also be reached at www.lisarizzopoetry.com

Barbara Rockman teaches poetry and memoir at Santa Fe Community College, Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families and in private workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies including Askew, Calyx, Bellingham Review, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, bosue and Taos International Review. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poems have received the New Mexico Discovery Award, Baskerville Publishers Prize and The MacGuffin Poet Hunt Prize. She is editor of the anthology, “Women Becoming Poems,” and author of “Sting and Nest,” which received the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award and the National Press Women Poetry Book Prize. Barbara holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Additional link: Mom Egg’s review of Barbara’s “Sting and Nest”.

Ruth Thompson is the author of three books of poetry: Crazing, Woman With Crows, and Here Along Cazenovia Creek. Woman With Crows was a finalist for AROHO’s To The Lighthouse Prize, and includes poems that won the New Millennium Writings, Harpur Palate, and other prizes. Ruth has performed her poems with dancers Shizuno Nasu and Jennifer Eng. She owns and operates Saddle Road Press. See more at www.ruththompson.net, on YouTube,  and at The California Journal of Women Writers. 

Michelle Wing is a poet and writer of creative nonfiction. She is the author of Body on the Wall (poems) and editor of Cry of the Nightbird: Writers Against Domestic Violence. Michelle lives in New Mexico with her wife and a houseful of animals, and is aided in all her creative endeavors by her service dog, Ripley. www.michellewing.com

Barbara Yoder: Barbara Ann Yoder has worked as a writer and editor for more than thirty years. Former director of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, she teaches online as an adjunct professor for the New England College School of Professional Writing. She authored The Recovery Resource Book and is currently developing a collection of linked stories. She keeps a blog about writing and the writing life at BarbaraAnnYoder.com and lives in northern California.www.barbaraannyoder.com. Image © Larissa Kulik, 2013, licensed from Shutterstock.com

April Tarot Writing Prompts and a June Themed Poetry Workshop for you....

Theme, Set, Go: Monthly Poetry Workshop at SDWI

I know you have some magic words...we all do. Would you like to shrine them in poems? This is an ongoing in person workshop that will meet the first Tuesday of every month starting in June at San Diego Writers, Ink at Liberty Station from 10 am to noon; the first six months of themes, offered as touchstones here, and open to a wide range of interpretations, include: 

June: Mothers and Fathers

July: Travel

August: Harvest

September: Animals

October: Music

While the poetry we write starts as a conversation with the Self, it inevitably becomes a conversation with Other Poets. If we are lucky, that conversation extends itself in front of an audience of Enthusiastic Readers. Come up out of your basement, down from your gable, or away from that crowded coffee shop you frequent. Bring paper, pencil, and your device. Let’s partake of all three conversations and write together!

While we will read and write poems based on a particular theme each month, I invite you to rebel and write the poems hunting you if the themes don’t suit you (though I believe out of the bedrock of resistance emerges some of our most feral, inspired poetry).

Expect to read poetry out loud, write and workshop poems, share ideas for potential submission targets, and grow as a poet. You will come away from each of our classes with enough assignments and started drafts to keep you busy during the month apart til our next meeting. I'll post a link once the course is Here's the link to the course description at SDWI where you can sign up; cost is $30 for members per month or $36 per month for nonmembers. Keep it in mind for keeping your summer writing practice robust; for more information about my relationship to writing poetry, check out this interview conducted by SDWI's Casey Cromwell.

Tarot Tuesday

Here are the latest in the series of Tarot writing prompts I am offering on Tuesdays on my main website. I am working my way through the deck, one card per week. We have moved into the Suit of Disks. I invite you to write to the prompt and share it with us on the Tarot Tuesday Facebook page or in comments on the site:

The Ace of Disks, or the Gift of Preparing to Receive

The Two of Disks, or the Unconscious Juggler

Tarot for Two

Writer Mary Allen and I continue to co-blog at Tarot for Two. We share our reflections on the card we lived with for the month prior, connecting our daily lives to the symbolism of the cards. This month we wrote to Hierophant and  Art/Temperance Cards:

Excerpt from The Hierophant (Tania’s card of the month):

Knowing there were multiple incarnations made this one seem optional, mundane. Traipsing around on our various field trips, I wondered: Why learn about fertilizer for seed crops or butchering methods at the slaughterhouse or chemical mixtures for sewage? Why would we, the chosen children, need to know these things, if we were once Lemurians or Atlanteans? Why did we fall from grace? How was it possible to skin a knee? To lose a cat to a car on a hot tar road in summer? And how am I to know which past incarnation’s work I need to complete in this incarnation?

Excerpt from The Art card, or Temperance (Mary’s card of the month):

This is a beautiful card with many strange and arresting images:  a circle in the woman’s chest holding a clutch of celestial blue balls, a large oval of pale yellow light behind the woman, with writing in it (what does that writing mean? I don’t even know what language it’s in), the woman’s green dress decorated with bees….When this card comes up I think it’s talking, not so much about art as we think about it but about the art of life, the alchemy of mixing things together—a little of this, a little of that, sorrow, happiness, darkness, light, and what you do with all of that—to create a life. 

We invite you to read the rest of both card of the month reflections at Tarot for Two; we'd love it if you dropped us a comment about the writing. I hope this post finds you thriving and taking time to reflect on the moments that brought your joy, or that you find your way back to joy through writing about the challenging moments. Tarot blessings, as I like to say these days.

Photo Credits: Artwork in the top photo is by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie; the remaining three photos are hers.