Center for Autobiographic Studies

Coming in 2008!

Tristine Rainer will be signing books at the USC Masters of Professional Writing booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA on April 26, 2008, 11:00 AM-12:00 PM.

Come by and say hello, talk with Tristine about your memoir and, if you wish, learn about the USC's two-year graduate creative writing program.

For more information on the L.A. Times Festival of Books go to: http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks

For more information on the Masters of Professional Writing Program at USC got to: http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/mpw

Tristine will be speaking at the Journal Conference in Denver, CO

Save the Date!

Journal Conference 2008
June 18-21, 2008
Sheraton Denver West
Denver CO

Together for the first time, four leading voices and theorists in journal therapy
Tristine Rainer
Author, The New Diary and Your Life as Story, et. al.
Christina Baldwin
Author, Life’s Companion and Storycatcher, et. al.
Dr. James Pennebaker
Research psychologist, author, Opening Up and Writing to Heal, et. al.
Kathleen Adams
Author, Journal to the Self and The Way of the Journal, et. al.

All in plenary session and panel, plus dozens of pre/post-conference
workshops and breakouts with other authors and experts, including:
Joy & Scotty Sawyer, authors, The Art of the Soul & Earthly Fathers
Dr. Beth Jacobs, author, Writing for Emotional Release
Judy Reeves, author, A Writer’s Book of Days, et. al.
Dan Wakefield, author, The Story of Your Life, et. al.
Beverly Kirkhart, author, My Healing Companion
Dr. Linda Joy Myers, author, Becoming Whole
Dr. Ellen Baker, author, Caring for Ourselves
Ray McGinnis, author, Writing the Sacred
Ann Linnea, author, Deep Water Passage
Charlene Geiss, author, Inner Outings
Sue Meyn, author, Journal Magic
Kate Thompson, co-editor, Writing Works
Normandi Ellis, author, Dreams of Isis, et. al.

with special guests, poet Michael Blumenthal* and performance troupe MUSE*
*final confirmation pending
and Rev. Dana Reynolds, Conference Weaver

Save the date for this never-before event!
Email JournalConf2008@aol.com to be on the notification list

www.journaltherapy.com 303-986-6460 888-421-2298 JournalConf2008@aol.com
Produced by the Center for Journal Therapy, Inc., Denver CO

Click here for more information.

Publication news on writers who have consulted with Tristine

Elyn Saks recently received an excellent reveiw in Publisher's Weekly for her upcoming memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. The review states:

"In this engrossing memoir, Saks, a professor of psychiatry at U.C.-San Diego, demonstrates a novelist's skill of creating character, dialogue, and suspense. From her extraordinary perspective as both expert and sufferer (diagnosis: "Chronic paranoid schizophrenia with acute exacerbation"; prognosis: "Grave"), Saks carries the reader from the early "little quirks" to the full blown "falling apart, flying apart, exploding," psychosis. "Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog," as Saks shows, becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on." Along the way to stability (treatment, not cure), Saks is treated with a pharmacopeia of drugs and by a chorus of therapists. In her jargon-free style, she describes the workings of the drugs ("getting med-free," a constant motif) and the ideas of the therapists and physicians (psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, cardiologist, endocrinologist). Her personal experience of a world in which she is both frightened and frightening is graphically drawn and leads directly to her advocacy of mental patients' civil rights as they confront compulsory medication, civil commitment, the abuse of restraints and "the absurdities of the mental care system." She is a strong proponent of talk therapy ("While medication had kept me alive, it had been psychoanalysis that helped me find a life worth living"). This is heavy reading, but Saks's account will certainly stand out in its field."

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness is available for pre-order through Amazon.com. Just click on the title.

Congratulations!

From Kirkus reviews:

The memoir Bill Cosby might have written if he were a clever Jewish girl from suburban New Jersey sent to summer camp in the Maine woods.

A brand-new teenager in 1974, humorist Schneider spent eight weeks at kosher Camp Kin-A-Hurra (a seemingly Native-American term that's actually Yiddish for "may no evil find you"). It was a dump, run by an amiable hustler who had added nothing to the ramshackle enterprise since 1922. There the young captive Mindy mouthed age-old folk songs with campmates Dana Bleckman, Betty Gilbert, Borscha Belyavsky and Autumn Evening Schwartz. The quick-witted girls played softball indifferently, hiked ineptly, baked challah and frequently visited the boys' encampment across the lake. Goofy parents showed up, much to their progeny's mortification. Mindy Schneider's short-term goal: getting popular and getting a boyfriend. Would it be Kenny Uber or Philip Selig? At summer's end, who would bestow her first kiss? The author winsomely recalls sleep-away dreams, growing into a training bra, struggling to control inconvenient rashes, and awkward hormones. She punctuates her droll entertainment with references to junk food and TV staples of a generation ago, embellished with songs and snapshots from old Kin-A-Hurra.

A sweetly humorous fugitive from the Young Adult category, playing dress-up for nostalgic adults.

Congratulations!

Words & Images of Belonging
Seeking Submissions for Proposed Anthology

Contributions sought that address legacies, generations (especially that of grandparents and grandchildren), family, a sense of home and identity (i.e. the pull between home and work, leaving your childhood home to start your own home or a sense of place within oneself). Reflections may include such forms as essays, short stories, diary entries, poems, memoir and play excerpts, letters--up to approximately 4,000 words per contributor. Visual art submissions are encouraged. For example, photographs, oil paintings may compliment print submissions or be submitted separately.

If accepted, contributors will receive a complimentary copy upon publication and a contributor's discount on additional copies.

No previously published or simultaneously submitted material.

For more information, please contact the editors: Cynthia at Cafpoet37@encirclepub.com, or to Carol at smallwood@tm.net.