May Member News

Alethea Williams, Western historical Náápiikoan Winter is partially based on the writings of Canadian explorer and mapmaker David Thompson. The novel follows an abducted New Mexican woman and a Hudson’s Bay trader and their entanglements with the Piikáni people at the base of the Rocky Mountains in the final years of the eighteenth century. 

Sarah Byrn Rickman, WASP of the Ferry Command, (University of North Texas Press). The little-known story of 303 Women Airforce Service Pilots who initially were employed to move small aircraft from the factories to the flight training bases. By the time the war ramped up as 1944 began, the women had proved themselves and they began to ferry single-engine, single-seat pursuit (fighter) aircraft to the docks for shipment abroad to the battlefront. Forty of these women relate bits of their own experiences, bringing a personal touch to one of World War II’s lesser known but critical chapters.

Jennifer J. Lawrence, Soap Suds Row: The Bold Lives of Army Laundresses, 1802-1876. Not camp followers, but officially on the rolls of the U.S. Army, laundresses were unorthodox, spirited women in the midst of military action. Heroines, eccentrics, saviors, spies, prostitutes, cross-dressers, wives, mothers—they are a side of the military you’ve never read about.

AWARDS

Janet Jensen, Gabriel's Daughters, won the Body, Mind and Spirit award from Southwest Book Design and Production. It received a silver medal from Readers Favorites. It was also a finalist in Religious Fiction and Cultural Fiction in Foreword Magazine's IndieFab contest.

Sarah Byrn Rickman received two awards from the 119-year-old National League of American Pen Women, Inc. She was awarded First Place in the Vinnie Ream Letters Competition for her forthcoming WASP biography Finding Dorothy Scott, the story of a 23-year-old pilot who died in a midair collision while flying for the WASP in World War II. Sarah also won first place in the Eudora Welty Memorial Award for Fiction for her WASP novel Flight to Destiny, published 2014. While still a manuscript, Flight to Destiny won First Place in Historical Fiction at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in 2000.

Penny Rafferty Hamilton has earned a Bessie Minor Swift Foundation grant to partner with the Grand County Historical Association on the creation of a new children’s history book called A to Z: Your Grand County History Alphabet. Hamilton is the author of two Grand County history books, Granby Then & Now 1905-2005 and Around Granby. All profits from the new book will benefit Grand County historic preservation projects. 

 

Susan Tweit has been awarded a fellowship at the Women’s International Study Center in Santa Fe to work on her next book, which includes a one-month residency at the historic Acequia Madre house. 

Andrea Jones' Blog, "Between Urban and Wild" won top honors in the blog category of the 2016 Writing Awards sponsored by the Colorado Authors' League (coloradoauthors.org). Comments from the judges praised the site for "Delicious writing, gentle and deep." Andrea blogs about people and land, gardening, wildlife, weather, horses, and writing from her home place in central Colorado.

Write &Retreat in my own Backyard

by Judith Grout

“Are you…Craving creative inspiration? Looking for new insight to fuel your words? Searching for the heart of your work?” 

Those enticing words written by WWW member Susan Tweit popped into my email inbox early last fall. I had some questions about my current WIP and this prescription of “Write, Workshop, Relax, Repeat…” sounded like my solution. Soon I committed to attend and had a reservation at the Murray Hotel, described as “Classic Art Deco Elegance in Downtown Silver City” in the Big Burro mountains of New Mexico – a short drive from my Glendale, AZ home.

The long weekend started with (oh my!) homework:

·                 A two-three minute reading from my current work as an introduction

·                 A token from home i.e. rock, photo, map…

·                 A book that currently inspired my work

From there our group of eight students, encouraged by Susan and her co-teacher, Dawn Wink (also a WWW member), worked our way through writing mission statements and intention words, “mother tongues” relating language and culture to landscape and our writing, mapping narratives, writing through dark places, beginnings and endings….

To keep our muscles toned, the group attended several Chair Yoga sessions, hiked along the Big Ditch Trail, toured a town filled with vintage homes catering to “Lungers and Miners” sent there to breathe the pure mountain air to cure tuberculosis and lungs diseases during the Great Depression.

Evenings found us dining in gourmet restaurants serving shrimp and fish marinated in citrus with yucateca spice steamed in banana leaf at Café 1zero6, duck confit at Tre Rosat Restaurant (the name means three ducks in Albanian – guess I better brush up on my Slavic languages), and Jalisco’s Silver City Mexican Restaurant. Pinch me – is this really Silver City, NM?

The Murray Hotel is in the final stages of a massive renovation. The building is made of solid concrete walls, the latest in electrical and heating systems, and Wifi to keep us in touch with our electronic life support.

 

What an experience. But the most valuable thing was my one-on-one conference with the group leaders to evaluate, encourage, suggest, question, answer, and inspire. I came away with my bag packed with writing “tools” and a double-sided, single-spaced “Selected Readings and Other Resources” list. I have my work cut out for me.

Dawn and Susan are already planning next year’s Write & Retreat workshop, also in Silver City at the Murray Hotel, on the same weekend, February 17-20, 2017. Join us there!

***

Judith’s first career launched her into the fun and fact-filled science of healthcare. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. degree in Clinical Laboratory Science with specialties in chemistry, hematology, microbiology, transfusion medicine, and pathology. Retired after 40 years, she’s begun a second career writing fiction, non-fiction, and freelancing. Her debut novel, Chasing the Strawberry Moon, Hitchhiking (for girls) was published in February of 2014.