Wide Open Writing:
Embrace Your Creative Genius
Wide Open Writing, the book, is designed as an experience of the powerful magic that can happen when you take the time and space for your essential writer to emerge, and when that time and space are skillfully guided.
It is written in the fashion of the reliably transformative in-person WOW retreats and tailored to writers at all stages who want to dive more deeply into the heart of the work. Chock-full of prompts and life wisdom, one reader calls it “an encouraging refuge… wise, loving, and often revelatory.” Another declares, “this is the one book I need for writing!”
Nancy Coleman, PhD, is a writer of songs, poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, and two full-length fiction manuscripts in consideration for publication. Her work has been published in The Sun, Minerva Rising, and the compilation, Maine Voices.
Nancy has been a practicing psychologist for more than thirty years, earning her PhD from Columbia University. She’s studied mindfulness, body-mind integrative practices, writing as therapy, yoga and EMDR. She’s fascinated by how new discoveries in the science of psychology weave together with ancient Eastern wisdom to inform our journeys to full-blown creativity and health.
2022 Nautilus Silver Award winner
2022 INDIE Book Awards Finalist
All the Things: Mountain Misadventure, Relationshipping, and Other Hazards of Off-Grid Living
After surviving the usual debacles of adulthood (marriage, taxes, divorce), Ammi Midstokke does what any sensible single mom would do: She purchases an off-grid fixer-upper perched on a granite hilltop in rural Idaho. Underprepared and overcaffeinated, she embarks upon a series of seemingly inadvisable activities from getting lost in the mountains after dark to dangling on a rope with a chainsaw to relationshipping with bearded woodsmen and falling in love.
In her hilarious yet sage debut essay collection, Midstokke demonstrates that battles with freeloading varmints, clogged stove pipes, childhood trauma, and one surprisingly aggressive boulder are unexpected, if not wonderfully entertaining, pathways to personal growth and joy. All the Things delivers the irreverent, fearless, and brilliant voice of a woman who laughs in the face of failure and soothes her wounds by splitting wood, often in her skivvies.Ammi Midstokke grew up in the mountains of North Idaho, where spring trilliums and fall firewood left their mark on her soul. After over a decade of global adventures that often included the luxury of electricity and running water, she returned to her hometown of Sandpoint. She lives off-grid with her husband, their two children, and a fluctuating animal-to-human ratio. Ammi is a columnist for the Spokesman Review and regular contributor to various publications.
Nikki Kallio’s creative work has appeared in Minerva Rising, Midwestern Gothic, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2014 Mill Prize for Fiction and her work was recognized in 2015 and 2019 by the Wisconsin People and Ideas fiction contest through the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. Her manuscript “The Fledgling” was shortlisted in the 2018 unsolicited novella contest hosted by Brain Mill Press. She has an MFA from Goddard College. Her passion is constructing authentic worlds, whether they’re set in the backyard or outer space.
Finding the Bones: A father tries to explain to his daughter what Earth was like, a boy believes his mother has been abducted by aliens, a ghost hunter wonders if her absent father is a deceased serial killer, and in the near future the sun makes people go insane. Weaving science fiction, gothic storytelling, and paranormality into nine stories and a novella, Nikki Kallio establishes herself as a fresh, innovative, and compassionate voice in speculative fiction and magical realism.
Nikki Kallio
“I write what’s real. I write in as close as I can to simple daily truths. I hope to be present with you in a heart space that can hold both joy and disease or dis-ease. I hope you will gain your own personal insights and find here a resting place, a refuge.”
Susan Lebel Young
Grandkids as Gurus
The essays in this book were inspired, and often edited, by four children as they grew from about age 2 until about 10.
Food Fix
A new book that helps you find peace with food, body, weight, and body image by teaching you a new relationship with food.
Lessons from a Golfer
A book of lessons from a Dad to his daughter told in the language of golf.
Getting her start in journalism at the radical independent Lees Other Paper/Northern Star, Tina has worked as an award-winning writer and editor specializing in the arts and books for The Big Issue and Metro, and her journalism has appeared in many publications including the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the Mail on Sunday. She is now Assistant Editor of Writing Magazine.
The Beloved Children
Three young women; Chrysanthemum, Rose & Orage are thrown together performing as The Three Graces on the stage of Fankes’ Theatre during the closing days of the Second World War.
Set in the dying days of vaudeville theatre and laced with mysticism, fortune tellers, ghosts, and evocative descriptions of the closing days of the War — The Beloved Children will literally make you laugh out loud and perhaps even shed a tear.
The Beloved Children is wise, funny, heart-breaking, joyous, poignant, and entirely enthralling.
Tina Jackson
“One of the big themes that has emerged in my life after forty is a sense of joy and peace—a “coming into my own.” This is one of the things I wanted to explore the most in this project, because I feel strongly that peace and joy together make the difference between being fulfilled, centered, and satisfied with our lives versus feeling disempowered, overwhelmed, and frustrated. They also help enrich our relationships with others and our overall well-being.”
A practical guide to help women over 40 live their best life.
Are you stuck in “autopilot”? Do you go through each day putting one foot in front of the other with little thought about why? Are you happy and fulfilled in your life? If not, what would you do differently? Through journaling and self-reflection, Just Do You! uses life lessons to challenge women over forty to confront their limiting beliefs and open the door to a more peace, joyous life.
Falling Awake
A Heroine’s Journey
This is a memoir about how we continue to re-create our early experiences throughout our lives, util we can wake up enough to realize and set ourselves free.
The story is told in three parts - revisiting my early life and the events that shaped me, recalling how I then (often painstakingly) repeated the patterns that had been set, then finally integrating my learning from 20 years as a psychotherapist to set about healing the past and attempting to move forward in a new way . The result is a raw and honest, often funny, often sad, tale of introspection and growth.
Victoria is a fully-qualified Counsellor and Psychotherapist (B.A Hons) with over 20 years’ experience. She has trained for 5 years at the Centre of Mindfulness Research & Practice, attainign a Post Grad Diploma in Teaching Mindfulness Based Approaches, gaining over 10 years’ experience of teahcing mindfulness courses and workshops.
Victoria is a skilled group faciliatotr and certified Qoya teacher. www.victoriasmisek.com
My Piano Hands
In this flash memoir of impressionistic scenes of a happy life, Kathryn Atkins questions the source of her ‘Piano Hands,’ her uncanny ability to play any music by ear, a gift from her biological parent she will never know. Her loving adopted family cultivates her love of music, which follows her through a busy family life, haunted by whether she is worthy of this gift.
Kathryn Atkins
Kathryn is a freelance business writer and owner of Writing World, LLC, which she founded in 2004. A Huffington Post blogger, she has been published in many places online and has authored two books: “10 Reasons to Hire a Professional Writer” and “Giving My Self to the Wind,” a literary collection in a regional magazine.
See more and buy her books at kathrynatkins.com
Kavita A. Jindal is an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist. She is the authro of Manual for a Dcent Life, which won the Brighthorse Prize and the Eastern Eye Award for Literature. She has published two poetry collections to critical acclaim: Patina and Raincheck Renewed. Reviewers have said of her recent writing": “witty and wry, with a steely heart” and of the novel: “the book’s boldness, beauty and courage are utterly seductive.”
India, 1996, Waheeda, a principled and spirited young woman from Uttar Pradesh sets her sights on becoming a member of Parliament. But her romance with the scion of a Delhi business dynasty threatens that dream. Manual for a Decent Life plays out against the backdrop of a tumultuous time in Indian politics in a world where nothing is what it seems and danger lurks at every turn.
Invincible Summers by Robin Gaines
Invincible Summers follows Claudia Goodwin through eleven summers, from the age of six through twenty-three, as she adjusts with varying degrees of success to what it means to be a daughter, a sister, friend, and lover in a world of loss, betrayal, and bad judgment. Set in a middle-class suburb outside of Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, the novel shows Claudia’s pursuit to find a purpose as she struggles with feelings of rootlessness in a world torn apart by assassinations, riots, and the Vietnam War.
It is a coming-of-age story of one woman’s journey through the guild and the responsibility she feels for her father’s death, her mother’s career-altering disfiguration, and her brother’s downslide into drugs and alcohol. Invincible Summers weaves a tale about grief and forgiveness and the indelible heartbreak of all the things left unsaid.
Robin earned an MA in Journalism from Michigan State University. She worked as a research intern at Rolling Stone magazine. In 2016 her debut novel was published by ELJ Editions and was awarded a Shelf Unbound Best Indie Notable 100 Book…
Read more and buy the book at robingaines.net.
All God, If God There Be by Linda Carleton
Linda Carleton has published her memoir All God, If God There Be. Its subtitle is A Journey through Incest into Incarnate Light. In it she explores the impact of what she once considered “benign” childhood sexual abuse on her personal and spiritual development and the healing brought about through an eclectic variety of spiritual paths, including the practice of mandala journaling.
Dulcie Witman writes of the book:
”Linda Carlton’s spiritual memoir, All God, if God There Be, is an astonishing opening. This is not to suggest that the topics of incest and PTSD have not been addressed extensively in women’s (and men’s) memoirs. Nor is it uncharted territory to read of the process of healing being a spiritual process. But the reader would be short changed if they did not allow themselves to be with the story Linda is presenting, to be with it and in it enough to feel the tangled web of betrayal and deceit and psychological disorder that emerges from such a story. What feels rich and new in her memoir is the depth to which she takes us into her exploration; down deep inside the young girl and then the grown woman who, despite all the cultural and religious forces that push her to turn away and get on with her good life, she does not abandon herself mid-journey. And she takes, us her reader, with her. Tender, intelligent without being intellectual, sensitive but not maudlin, Linda’s story will be a gift to anyone who reads it looking for answers to the questions of what makes our injured lives livable once we’re the ones living it.”
Linda hopes that you will spread word about the book to those who might benefit from it, including incest survivors and the spiritual leaders who often unknowing work with them.
Linda Carleton dares to hope that her writing and mandalas might become such a source of magic for you, her readers. A former teacher of history and comparative religions and retired U.C.C. minister working in refugee resettlement, she now teaches, writes and offers mandala journaling workshops in Portland, Maine.
Read more and buy the book at lindacarleton.com
Philanthropy isn’t just about billionaires, giving pledges, and black-tie fundraising galas. This book demonstrates how every single person can make their community a better place—large novelty checks and tuxedos not required!
In Philanthropy for All, Tammy Day shows that philanthropy really is for everyone, not just the wealthy, and challenges the perception that giving back is just about money. A call to action, this book outlines practical strategies that make impactful giving back achievable for anyone. Discover how to use give-back strategies—like building relationships, engaging youth, and creating a culture of giving—to foster change and create a brighter, more hopeful future. In a time when our communities, country, and the world face challenges that leave many feeling helpless and uncertain, this book helps you expand your toolset and take action to make things better.
For the past twenty years, Tammy Day has helped businesses, organizations, and individuals do more good by connecting people, ideas, and community assets. As an owner of Daycos, Inc., one of a handful of Nebraska B Corps, she knows how to balance profit with purpose and use business as a force for good. A published author in Reclaiming We: Twenty Everyday Acts to Strengthen the Common Good and Defend Democracy (April 2021) and other publications across the Midwest, Tammy continues to share her expertise as a mentor, speaker, writer, and trainer.