Books

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Personal Essays About Topics Related to Your Book

Have you ever written a personal essay on the same subject as a creative book you’ve published? My upcoming book, Touch My Head Softly, is about my experiences with my partner who died of Alzheimer’s Disease. I learned a lot about Alzheimer’s when my partner had it. I also did quite a bit of research on it for the collection of poems that I wrote.

I’d like to write an essay about Alzheimer’s. It’s a terrible disease that needs to be highlighted. It affects more Americans than prostate and breast cancer combined. I’m also donating part for the proceeds from the sale of my book to the Alzheimer’s Association for research for a cure.

Do you have any experience with writing a personal essay on a topic related to your novel or poetry? Would anyone like to guest blog a post in exchange on this topic for a guest blog here on a topic related to your book?

My upcoming book, Touch My Head Softly is due out in early 2021;

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

Add me to your Bookshelf on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3609820860

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Reflections on Writing in an Extraordinary Year

I don’t know how writing this year has been for you, but I know that writing has sustained me through this difficult year. I have a new collection of poetry coming out in early 2021 by Finishing Line Press about my partner who died of Alzheimer’s. With so many issues affecting us this year, such as the pandemic, the 2020 presidential election, the struggle for racial justice, I wonder how relevant my poems about Alzheimer’s Disease are in the world. I am donating part of the proceeds from the sale of the book to the Alzheimer’s Association to try to create a positive effect from the publishing of the collection. I am also trying to reflect on what I learned about myself in these trying times.

You can check out my new book here:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3609820860

Do you have any reflections on your writing this year?

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Luisa May Alcott Lived Here Briefly, But it Affected the Rest of Her Life

Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a Transcendentalist who knew Thoreau and Emerson. He moved here, to Fruitlands Farm, to form a Utopian Society. it failed after 7 months, but it influenced Luisa May, his 10–year–old daughter, to write Little Women and Little Men. What has influenced your writing?

I had a partner who died of Alzheimer’s in his 60’s. It influenced me to writer Touch My Head Softly, due out from Finishing Line Press in January.

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

Add it to your bookshelf on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3609820860

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Some Nice Things People Have Said About Me ThisWeek

Hello from Amherst,MA.

It’s always nice to have your work appreciated so I thought I’d share some reviews I’ve received in the last week for my upcoming book, Touch My Head Softly, on Goodreads. , Thank you to everyone who continues to support my writing and I hope to share more positive reviews in the weeks ahead. Have a great day wherever in the world you are.

“In Touch My Head Softly. Eileen P. Kennedy has written an extraordinarily book about the death of a male lover taken in middle age with Alzheimer’s Disease.” —Preston M. Browning, Jr., Director, Wellspring House Writer’s Retreat.

Check it out:

finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen

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Gaining Control Through Writing

“Many people are now trying to become less helpless, both personally and politically, trying to claim more control over their own lives. One of the ways people most lack control of their own lives is through lacking control over words. Especially written words.” – Peter Elbow

So how do we gain control over our written words? I think it requires work, but it’s rewarding when the result is good. So many problems in the world incapacitate us: the pandemic, pollution, poverty. But learning to use writing as an empowerment tool can be liberating.

I have a new book of poems coming out with Finishing Line Press. Check it out:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

Add me to your Bookshelf on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3609820860

I will be making announcements on Tuesday and blogging on Thursdays.

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Join Straw Dog Writers Guild for its 10 Year Anniversary

Join Jacqueline Sheehan, Patricia Lee Lewis, and Ellen Meeropol
for “Wine and Chocolate with the Founders”
 

on Facebook from 6:30-6:55 p.m. 
Here is the link to the Facebook Event:  LINK

Stay for Writers’ Night Out/In at 7. 
 
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Today, let us swim wildly, joyously in gratitude. – Rumi

I’m grateful today for many things,

A lake in Western Massachusetts

I’ve canoed and hiked in beautiful places all over the Northeast this fall. The nature sustains me. Writing sustains me. I have a new book, Touch My Head Softly, which will be out from Finishing Line Press in early 2021.

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

My family, although, I haven’t seen them in some time, are all well.

I hope all of you have wonderful things to be thankful for, even if you don’t celebrate this American holiday.

I’ll continue blogging announcements on Tuesdays and my blogposts will post on Thursdays.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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REAL ESTATE by Kathryn Holzman to be Published Friday by Propertius Press

Set in the Santa Clara Valley during the turbulent sixties and seventies, REAL ESTATE, is the story of how a bucolic agricultural valley is transformed into the iconic Silicon Valley.

As acres of apricot orchards are converted into suburban subdivisions, families flock to the area. Air Force pilot Joe Jackson moves his family to Sunnyvale soon after the Hopkins build their dream house.  Harriet Jackson, her father’s eyes and ears, finds herself living next door to Bobby Hopkins, aspiring circus performer and math whiz. They share a side-yard fence, but the worlds they live in differ radically. A shared love of the Beatles and the loss of the inspiring young President Kennedy bring them together in an unlikely friendship, but their family’s differences soon tear them apart. While Harriet struggles to fulfill her family obligations, Bobby builds a computer in his garage. 

They meet again as adults, but by then everything has changed. In the electric valley, both Harriet and Bobby learn that family is not always destiny and houses are sometimes more than a home.

Order REAL ESTATE at: https://www.propertiuspress.com/our-bookstore/Real-Estate-by-Kathryn-Holzman-p252206509

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I believe that the world is beautiful, and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone

“I believe the world is beautiful
 and that poetry, like bread,
 is for everyone,
 and that my veins don’t end in me
 but in the unanimous struggle
 for life, love, little things,
 landscape and bread.”

-Graffiti on a wall in the Mission District of San Francisco

I believe poetry is for everyone. Although many people who read serious print matter and quality fiction do not read poetry, I think that this is their loss. The poetry coming out today is accessible, relevant and enjoyable in concept and sound. Take look at Billy Collins, Natasha Trethaway or even Louise Glück, the 2020 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

My book of poetry, Touch My Head Softly, is accessible. It’s about my experiences with a partner who died of Alzheimer’s. Check it out: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/touch-my-head-softly-by-eileen-kennedy/

Add me to your bookshelf on Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3609820860

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Jane McPhetres Johnson Publishes Maven Reaches Mars

MAVEN REACHES MARS: Home Poems and Space Probes in Four Fascicles looks
around at a world in crisis and asks, “Where am I?” and “How did I get here?” and by
the way, “Who am I?” The answers come wryly, ruefully, sometimes playfully, in
poems prompted by the day’s news, by fading family photos, by existential fears and
poignant twin grandchildren.
Johnson’s poetry reaches out in a conversational style and, like Robert Frost and
Emily Dickinson, she writes the reader into the poem. These were the poets her
grandmother and mother quoted so often in Kansas and Colorado, decades before
Jane moved to Amherst, where Frost and Dickinson are part of the local landscape.
But Johnson’s background is beyond fandom. Her early leadings coalesced in the
MFA writing program at Goddard College, where she learned from such mentors as
Stephen Dobyns, Thomas Lux, Louise Gluck, Robert Hass, and Donald Hall.
Jane McPhetres Johnson’s first published book is a life’s work—more than 90 poems
all in one place, painstakingly edited and carefully curated over a 50-year pursuit
that has largely been a solo flight. Now, with intricate drawings by Portuguese artist Maria Greene, Johnson’s compelling personal and political opus arrives.

Maven is available from Collective Copies/Levellers Press (www.levellerspress.com) in either Amherst or Florence, MA (curbside or mail order) and at Broadside Books (www.broadsidebooks.com) in Northampton, MA and Amherst Books (www.amherstbooks.com) in Amherst, MA