Five Sextillion Atoms

I'm so proud and honored to share this book of poetry with you. 

The author, Jayne Benjulian, and I have know each other for about twelve years now. We met as next-door neighbors in Mill Valley, CA, under the redwoods we both love so much. Indeed, it seems we share a soulful appreciation of the same geography for we have separately lived in a number of the same places, including Bainbridge Island, WA, New York and France. We both earned our Master's degrees at Emory University and share a joy of the French language. It's uncanny the ways in which our lives have criss-crossed. Now, if I could just finish my book and get it published too!!

Of course, regardless of the uncanny ways in which our personal lives have criss-crossed, Jayne's official biography is much more intriguing . . . I mean chief speech writer at Apple?!!?

Jayne’s careers have been as varied and many as places she has lived: she served as chief speechwriter at Apple, investigator for the public defender in King County, Washington, and director of new play development at Magic Theater. She was an Ossabaw Island Project Fellow; a teaching fellow at Emory University, where she earned an MA; a lecturer in the Graduate Program in Theater at San Francisco State University; and a Fulbright Teaching Fellow in Lyon, France. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She lives in Massachusetts and hikes the Berkshire Hills with her long-haired German shepherd, Ophelia, but she misses her big, brash Pacific Ocean. Five Sextillion Atoms is her first collection.

Jayne has been on a book tour, and so I had the chance to see her read when she passed through NYC last week at the legendary "Cake Shop on the Lower East Side. As she said, this was probably her most funky reading venue, and it turned out to be a quintessential night out in NYC.

I hope you all check out her new book! You can learn more about Jayne on her website.

A New York Nana

Super, duper autumn weekend with my mom and the kids!

Howling at the Urban Moon

I have a lot of better-late-than-never posts to get out there, and I figure NOW is a good time--anything to keep my mind off yesterday's election results.

Halloween ran the gamut this year, from an upstate fall fair, to trick-or-treating in the concrete jungle, to a special screening at The Met of "The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown."

The school banned scary costumes on Halloween Day, and students were asked to dress as a character from a book. Love the literary nod, but what a nightmare for parents to facilitate two different costumes per child. Grrr. This was one of the more noteworthy PC moments in our return to the U.S.

The kids first trip to The Met was a delight:

Trick-or-treating at all the stores up and down Broadway . . .

A Little Hee Hee

This, and only this, made me smile yesterday.

Thanks for the pick-me-up, EB.