CIENTO: 100 100-Word Love Poems Nominated For Northern California Book Award for Poetry! Lorna Dee Cervantes at Awards Ceremony TODAY!

I'll be at the Northern California Book Awards, 2012, ceremony TODAY at the San Francisco Main Library, Koret Hall, 1-4 pm! My book, CIENTO: 100 100-Word Love Poems has been nominated for an award for Best Book of Poetry! Michael Pollan will be accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award. One of my favorite poets, Jane Hirshfield is also nominated for an award for poetry; I don't expect to win.

Will I see you there?

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31st Annual Northern California Book Awards

Sunday, June 10, 2012

1:00-2:30 pm: Awards Ceremony
readings & remarks by this year's award-winning authors

2:30-4:00 pm: Book Signing & Reception

San Francisco Main Library
Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, Civic Center, San Francisco
Reception follows in the Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room
Nominated books on sale by Readers Bookstore at the Main
Fred Cody Award presented by Jonah Raskin
Event emcee Sedge Thomson, "West Coast Live"

The Northern California Book Awards are presented by Northern California Book Reviewers, Poetry Flash, Center for the Art of Translation, Red Room (redroom.com), PEN West, Mechanics' Institute, San Francisco Public Library, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, and Readers Bookstore at the Main.

For more information: Poetryflash.org, 510.525.5476, NCBR@poetryflash.org

FRED CODY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
in COMMUNITY & LITERATURE
Michael Pollan, author, journalist, food activist & cultural critic

NCBR RECOGNITION AWARD
Everything Is Its Own Reward, An All Over Coffee Collection,
Paul Madonna, City Lights

FICTION
Sequoia Gardens, Ernest J. Finney, Southern Methodist University Press
A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion, Ron Hansen, Scribner
Turn of Mind, Alice LaPlante, Atlantic Monthly Press
Lola, California, Edie Meidav, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
We the Animals, Justin Torres, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

CREATIVE NONFICTION
A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet, Eavan Boland, W. W. Norton
Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife, Philip L. Fradkin, University of California Press
The Left Coast: California on the Edge, Philip L. Fradkin, photos by Alex L. Fradkin, University of California Press
Rereading Women: Thirty Years of Exploring Our Literary Traditions, Sandra M. Gilbert, W.W. Norton
Maya Roads: One Woman's Journey Among the People of the Rainforest, Mary Jo McConahay, Chicago Review Press

GENERAL NONFICTION
Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, Barry Eichengreen, Oxford University Press
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Shah, Abbas Milani, Palgrave Macmillan
Natural History of San Francisco Bay, California Natural History Guides, Ariel Rubissow Okamoto and Kathleen M. Wong, University of California Press
Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942, Ian W. Toll, W. W. Norton

POETRY
Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Wings Press
Come, Thief, Jane Hirshfield, Alfred A. Knopf
Sugar Zone, Mary Mackey, Marsh Hawk Press
When I Was a Poet, David Meltzer, City Lights
Thread, Michael Palmer, New Directions

TRANSLATION
Fiction
The Twelve Chairs, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, translated by Anne O. Fisher, Northwestern
Tyrant Memory, Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine Silver, New Directions
Poetry
After Many Autumns: A Collection of Chinese Buddhist Literature, editors John Gill and Susan Tidwell, translated by John Balcom, Buddha's Light Publishing
The Changing Room, by Zhai Yongming, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, Zephyr Press
My Naked Brain: Selected Poems of Leopoldo María Panero, translated by Arturo Mantecón, Swan Scythe Press

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Young Adult
Instructions for a Broken Heart, Kim Culbertson, Sourcebooks
Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler, illustrations by Maira Kalman, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Clean, Amy Reed, Simon Pulse
Younger Readers
Seabird in the Forest, Joan Dunning, Boyd Mills Press
A Dazzling Display of Dogs, Betsy Franco, illustrations by Michael Wertz, Tricycle Press
Far from Shore: Chronicles of an Open Ocean Voyage, Sophie Webb, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP W/ Lorna Dee Cervantes at MALCS Conference, UCSB, July 18-20!

CFP: MALCS Creative Writing Workshop – ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response

June 6th, 2012 CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social calls for participation in the Creative Writing Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes at the 2012 MALCS Summer Institute at University of California, Santa Barbara, July 18-21, 2012.
DEADLINE: Postmark June 15, 2012

WHAT: Creative Writing from inception to publication with former professor and Director of Creative Writing, Lorna Dee Cervantes!

ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response is a Xicana creative writing workshop designed to be open to all levels, from no experience to very experienced. Writers of all genres and persuasions are invited to attend as what we will cover may apply to all types of writing. Learn how to go from no poems to a full-length manuscript in two days. Bilingual (Spanish) writers welcome. Please bring copies of one poem or short prose piece for workshopping with the group along with whatever we generate in class. Besides workshopping we may even find time to do a bit of works hopping.

This intensive workshop will be divided into four distinct phases of the creative/critical process: GENERATION, SELECTION, Re-VISION, and CRITICAL EVALUATION. We will participate in exercises designed to match each phase of the process We should come away with at least 5 new poems and a sense of our own patterns and patterning, a new toolbox of techniques and methods, a new confidence and playfulness, a new sense of our own strengths and weaknesses as writers, and maybe even become acquainted with our own inner critic as well as become accustomed to the sound of our voice as well as our own individual "Voice" as "Scribe." We'll also cover the nuts and bolts of "Po'Biz" such as how to prepare and edit a manuscript for submission, how to find publishers, how to maintain the inspiration (breath) for sustaining a work or book over time. How to perform our work in "Real Time". How and when to detach ourselves from our work and voice. How to criticize another writer's work. How to discover and foster a community of feminist writers — maybe even how to support, start and develop our own publishing resources and performance venues.

This workshop respects all and expects such from participants. Expect diversity. Expect to learn how to pleasure yourself - so to speak. Expect work.

This Creative Writing Workshop follows the spirit and mission of MALCS; its expressed purpose is to identify and develop creative writers for publication in Chicana/Latina Studies. Participants bring their work-in-progress and read and comment on the material of the other writers before and during the workshop within the context of Chicana/Latina feminist values: humility, collaboration, community involvement and justice. Attending both two-hour sessions (the first on Weds. July 18, and the second on Friday July 20) is required.

(Lorna Dee Cervantes will also be available for private manuscript consultation. Send hardcopy of manuscript.)

One Creative Writing Workshop will be offered this summer:
1) ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response, A Creative Writing Workshop, facilitated by Lorna Dee Cervantes, former editor/publisher of MANGO & RED DIRT, former Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder.

WHEN: July 18 at 4:00-6:00 p.m. and July 20 at 8:00-10:00 a.m.
Participants may arrive on Tuesday, July 18, but must contact the Site Committee to arrange housing.

WHY: A rare opportunity to study with an award-winning and critically acclaimed Xicana poet, Lorna Dee Cervantes: publisher (Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Victor Martinez, Sherman Alexie, Ray Gonzalez, Jose Antonio Burciaga, Luis Omar Salinas, ronnie burk, ...) and professor (Luis Alberto Urrea, Haas Mroue, Alan Gilbert, Simone Muench, Kristin Prevallet, Michael Robbins, Cody Todd, ....) with over 35 years of experience.

WHO: We encourage applications from writers at all levels, including tenured or mid-career professors.

HOW MANY: The workshop has space for 12 participants, who must register for the Summer Institute and be current MALCS members.

FINE PRINT: Acknowledge the labor of others.

HOW TO APPLY: ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response, A Creative Writing Workshop

DEADLINE: Postmark June 15, 2012.

WHERE: Postal mail documents to

Lorna Dee Cervantes
3181 Mission Street, PMB 16
San Francisco, CA 94110

WHAT TO SEND: Please submit a cover letter describing your experience as a writer, your contact information, and no more than 10 pages of creative writing, typed and double-spaced. Please identify all work-in-progress or published pieces. (Books welcome!)

Also send via email.

 EMAIL: Send the same materials in PDF to (LornaDeeCervantes) at (me) to the usual commercial suffix by June 15, 2012.

To register for the MALCS (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social) Summer Institute 2012 "Todos Somos Arizona: Confronting the Attack On Difference" at UC Santa Barbara, July 18-21, go to www.malcs.org; early registration by June 15, 2012.