Introducing Little Willow

I've been searching for an image to accompany my conversation with Little Willow, and at last I have settled on this—a girl with the whole wide world in her hands, a bastion of yellow. For that, in my mind, is who Little Willow is, an unusually supercharged cultural sprite who reads a book a day while designing web sites and listening to music, her dance shoes by the door, her cats and what I imagine to be a pup milling about by the window sill. Little Willow's industry—as a critic, as a performer, as an encourager—is astonishing, but more astonishing, and important, is the quality of what she produces, the consideration she gives to the work at immediate hand. Visit her web site, read her blog, her reviews, her interviews, and you'll see what I mean.

http://www.slayground.net/yourgirl/

You have published non-fiction, published music, appeared on panels, sat on editorial boards, designed masterful web sites and icons, referenced an absolute love of musical theater, talked about dancing, and published more book reviews on sites like GoodReads and Amazon than anyone I know. What do you count as your greatest achievement?

Being a good daughter, a good sister, and a good friend, and being true to myself.

Your second greatest achievement?

I am not certain. There are many things I'd like to achieve, and I'm looking forward to making those things happen.

How do you focus on the pace, flow, feeling of a book (because most books I know take a while to read, and a silent place in which to read them) while keeping your finger on the pulse of so many other things?

I've always moved at a rapid pace: I think, read, speak, and walk quickly. On average, I read a book a day. Unless I am asleep, I am constantly multi-tasking.

Early in your career you took an exquisite interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? What was it about that series that so thoroughly captivated you?

I've always enjoyed supernatural stories and shows that were thoughtful and creative, such as TheTwilight Zone and The X-Files, rather than those which were gory and free of substance. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a lot to say about the world and about people, using monsters as metaphors for very real fears. I feel as though it was strongest and most poignant in seasons two and three. The show - along with the aforementioned series and additional works - left an impression on me, and fueled my already-present (lifelong!) interest in both the genre and in making my own television series (and other stories).

Is Little Willow a brand? An idea? A sign?

Little Willow is my screen name online. The first day I signed online was in early 1997, shortly after BtVS started airing. When I visited the BtVS website and saw the posting board there, I realized that I needed an online handle. (I knew that, for safety's sake, people used screen names rather than posting real names online.) I quickly decided upon Little Willow, with Willow being the name of a character on the show, adding Little simply because I was younger and shorter than the actress who portrayed her. At that time, I was glad to see a character who celebrated book smarts and school smarts and embraced her intelligence rather than being ashamed of it. Sadly, Willow took what I felt was a downhill course in later seasons. Though I no longer related to the character, I kept the username because I was known for it by that point, and everything I'd done online was associated with it.

What is art to you? What is the perfect song, the perfect story? For what do you preserve the five-star review?

Art cannot be qualified nor quantified definitively. It comes in so many different forms, and means different things to different people. To me, art is many things, including the forms I pursue, such as singing, dancing, acting, and writing, and those I appreciate but don't engage in (or haven't had the chance to really try yet), such as photography and painting. I salute anyone who is creative, original, especially those who see or think of things that others don't initially perceive or understand, then do something to enable the world to see it or learn it - Talent, enthusiasm and knowledge are gifts meant to be shared.... If I give a book, an album, or a film five stars, I found the piece meaningful, I enjoyed it from start to finish, and I think it is truly good.

You have such a broad range of favorites listed on your site—fascinating touchstone works. Talk a little bit about music who you love to listen to, and why.

My favorite contemporary singer-songwriters are the Duncan Sheik and Jonatha Brooke. My favorite Duncan song: She Runs Away. My favorite Jonatha album: Ten Cent Wings. I'm musical theatre girl, as you know. I'd much rather watch Singin' in the Rain than listen to mainstream radio. :) Oh, I'll stop myself now, because if I don't, I'm just going to keep rattling off bands and artists like Velvet Chain (best album: Moody Groove Music), Jimmy Eat World, Nickel Creek (first album), Holly Brook, Ricky Nelson (now THERE's a truly Best of album), Amy Studt, John Barry (I still can't find the album I want, his soundtrack to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), Bernard Herrmann...

Where have you never been that you want to someday be?

In order to work with Gene Kelly during the heydays of MGM or visit Ancient Egypt, I'd need a time machine. Perhaps I'll run into the Doctor and take a trip on the TARDIS. (Or perhaps I'll just appear on the show Doctor Who. I would love that!) Realistically, I don't have a big desire to travel. If I make it as a singer, perhaps I'll tour. Though I'm not a big city girl and couldn't see myself living in New York for fun, I could be there for business, as I hope to have the opportunity to perform on Broadway someday! I want to work in film and television in addition to appearing in plays and musicals, so I'll go where those take me, but home is where the heart is, I think.

Where would you never go?

Any place that compromised my morals, comfort, or health, or that of others.

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Out Stealing Horses

Took Per Petterson's OUT STEALING HORSES with me on the train to New York and I didn't want to move an inch when the train entered that long tunnel. What a mesmerizing book this is, how technically brilliant, a textbook lesson in the use of time and haunt, so that I began to scribble in its margins, sketch out a diagramming code. The story itself is extraordinary; take that as a given. The simple chunking of simple words into long, breathtaking sentences. The ridiculously perfect last line. The transitions: seamless, emotionally true.

When you write, you read; when you read you learn to write; and it doesn't matter how many of your own books sit on a shelf, how many unwritten books stir within, how many possibilities seem just within reach: a book like Petterson's throws you right down, out of yourself. It says, Start again. Work harder.

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Not Your Mother's Bookclub HOUSE Interview

So. I met her in Oakland at a dinner. She made me laugh. She told quasi-believable stories about family traditions, rattled off book after book that I just had to read, forgave lapses in my literary education, walked with me down a forsaken street while I confessed to books I've loved, books that, well, I haven't much adored (and worse).

She was Jenn. She was (I thought of her as) It. She was Not Your Mother's Bookclub, and I was just so glad to meet her in person. She said she'd interview me someday. Maybe. Said maybe she'd interview me someday. A few days ago, she removed the maybe from the equation.

She's easy to find. Indeed, most already know her (and for very good reason).

http://community.livejournal.com/notyourmothers/86468.html

Thank you, Jenn. You are terrific.

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All Ears

I'll be in the Big Apple tomorrow, leave the irises in their beds outside, the horses in their stables down the street, the big black birds in their angry dangle on the criss-crossed telephone lines. I'll leave in the dark and come home in the dark, and I'll be listening, looking, leaning far beyond me. Losing myself in that grand, essential mash of the not yet known or pondered.

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Introducing Miss Em

You've seen Miss Em's name strewn throughout my blog, and the reason is simple: I adore her. She's a bookseller in a far-from-me place; she's vibrant, reliable, multiply gifted. Her Miss Em's Bookshelf blog—rich with interviews, contests, insights; stoked with community; so not Emily Gould (see yesterday's NYTM)—has quickly emerged as a sun-blasted destination for readers of YA books. I've had the privilege of being interviewed by Miss Em twice, which means I've been forced to think about my own work and purpose in new and frankly rather thrilling ways, but the fact is: I have always wanted to be on the other side of the conversation; I've wanted to be the one asking the questions.

A few days ago, she agreed to an intervview. She even sent this adorable photograph along, which made me wonder, Miss Em, why the heck someone this ANTM-worthy would be represented by a photograph of her own (okay, they're great, but still) shoes on her blog.

One last thing: If Miss Em were posting this blog it would be full of fancy graphics. I have ZERO idea how that gets done. I can't even figure out how to bold and italicize the most important parts, working, as I am, within the limitations of Safari. I can just say, thank you, Miss Em, for making time for me here.

http://www.emsbookshelf.blogspot.com/

You love books, clearly, and you care about craft. Where does a passion that runs as deeply as yours come from?

I think I've always loved books. Back when I was a little girl and had a (very) limited world view, I told my parents that I was going to read every single book that had ever been printed. I eventually realized that it would be impossible to read all the books ever written, though that didn't stop my love of reading. A few years ago, I worked part-time at a bookstore. I think that is where I really fell head-over-heels in love with books and with helping other people discover great books. There are so many books that I am passionate about and it's fun to share that love with other people. That's why I enjoy blogging. I've gotten so many great recommendations from other bloggers.

Where is your favorite place to read, your favorite weather to read against?

I love rainy days and I'm currently living in a place where it never rains. So my favorite place to read would be in a comfy chair anywhere that rain is falling outside.

You seem to have an abundance of talents—as a writer, as a designer, as a dancer, even. If you were to design a perfect day for yourself, what would it look like?

I would want to start my day doing something outdoors. A few years ago I took up rock climbing so perhaps I would start out climbing with a few friends. Then, we'd have to pack it up because it started raining. Yes, there would definitely be rain in my perfect day. Then I'd spend the afternoon at the beach, enjoying a little swimming and a little reading. Dancing would be a perfect end to the day. Now if I had a perfect week, then I might try my hand at writing...

In your life, you have met many authors. Can you by now spot an author walking down the street? Is there always a hint of the writerly about such folks?

Ohh, good question. I would love to think that writers have a detectable air about them. But no, I can't tell writers from the rest of us. I've met enough authors to know that they are never what you would expect.

You mentioned once a yearning for writing something yourself. Is there anything you might tell us about a project that pulses within?

There's nothing concrete but I do know a couple of directions that I would lean towards. The first would be a novel about a mother and daughter. My mom has been the most influential person in my life. There's so much I can share with her and, as a result, I'm drawn to any story that has a mother and daughter at its center. The other would be a story about four unlikely friends. In college, I met three girls who were nothing like me and, quite honestly, it scared me that I had to live with them for a year. I ended up choosing to live with them for the rest of college and boy, the stories I could tell.

You are in a position to keep your finger on the pulse of readerly preferences and delights. What still moves readers' hearts? What do they come out to independent bookstores seeking?

I work at a very successful independent bookstore and what strikes me the most is that people are looking for a dialogue. They are looking for conversations. Not just between a customer and a bookseller, although those are often fun conversations. They are looking for a conversation with the author. I think we all want a book to entertain us and we also want it to connect to our lives. To teach us something. Or to illuminate some part of ourselves. I think you can find that at any bookstore but there is a unique atmosphere at independent bookstores that I really appreciate. It's the thought that around the corner anything could be waiting.

Your book blog is widely followed. How do you suspect most readers found you? How does it feel to have so many looking to you for insights and opinions?

I started my blog initially as just a way to keep track of what I read (I'm notoriously bad about remembering character names and plot elements). Then I realized that there is this whole community out there of booklovers. I started leaving comments on other blogs and eventually people found their way to mine. The more I blogged the more I realized that some of my favorite teen books were being banned in school libraries. I feel like high school is a time when you need books the most - what better tool to help you figure out the world? So now my mission is a little more directed and serious. I want to provide a forum that discusses teen books in an open and constructive way. So it feels really good that people visit my blog and it's always exciting to have readers ask for an opinion or leave their own.

What's the best book-related question you've ever been asked?

Wow, I'm thinking this may be the best book-related question I've ever been asked...because it's so hard to answer! How about if I could have any signed, first edition book, what would it be? Someone asked me that recently and it left me debating back and forth. Here's my top four answers (of the moment): Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone, A Light in August by William Faulkner, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Paradise Lost by John Milton. What about you - if you could have any signed, first edition, what would it be?

What's the most pressing book-related question you've yet to find an answer to?

When will I get my hands on a copy of your next book? :-)

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Memorial Day Weekend

The horse show is in town. Past my garden the horses clop, the carriages roll, the big-hatted women wave. There's the smell of hay in the air, chewed grass, popcorn salts, heated oil, and at night the Ferris wheel scrapes the near-earth emanations of the moon. We're just community, this time of year. Striving toward nothing but living the blue-sky day.

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AndAnotherBookRead is Holding a HOUSE OF DANCE contest

Picture me slipping into a pair of pretty shoes, taking the foot-worn stage, and dancing.

That's me, right now. Happy. Thankful, too, because Tasha, a most delightful reader, thinker, blogger (is she really still in school, does she really run this blog and do all that mind-work, too?), has posted a HOUSE OF DANCE interview and contest on her reliably substantive blog.

For those who haven't already had the pleasure of meeting her, you can find her right here:

http://www.andanotherbookread.blogspot.com/

Go ahead. Take the plunge.

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Sharon Little: Songstress

Because I'd missed a train and my feet were tired. Because I was taking photos of a changeable sky. Because I sat down on a bench and I never sit down. Because she said something about my camera. Because I chose to answer even though I wasn't in an answering mood.

That's how it started.

She had a suitcase with her and a hard-cased guitar. She had fine, blue eyes and a sweep of something sweet across her face, smoke on her breath, on her voice. I knew she was a singer. I just didn't know what kind.

She said one thing. I said another. She laughed, and I heard and saw in the way she laughed a person going somewhere. A woman breaking through.

How it turned out is this: She's a real singer. The sort who has been writing songs since she was 15, whose debut CBS Records album—"Perfect Time for a Breakdown"— comes out next week, who is on tour right now with Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, whose name is sitting so perfectly there, in this week's issue of Rolling Stone Magazine—she pulled it from her suitcase, she showed me, she laughed, I laughed too, like I'd known her forever, like I'd been waiting 13 years, with her, for this. And you know how you just crave authenticity, how something draws you to it, how it breaks your heart and heals your heart when you happen on it? Sharon Little is authentic. Sharon Little is wide inside the time of her life; she is living songed-up, souled.

So that I wished (I never wish) that the train ride took a little longer. That we could talk a little longer.

I came home. Walked between the spits of rain. Opened my front door, turned on this box, plugged myself into her virtual portal, www.sharonlittle.com. Listened to her sing.

Take a train. Look for her. Go to Madison Square Garden, go to the Mann. Turn on the radio.

Buy her album.

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Dancing Classrooms Philly

I'll be down in Philadelphia today, judging and photographing the semi-finals of Dancing Classroom Philly's second season. A program brought to life in New York by the extraordinary ballroom dance team, Pierre Dulaine and Yvonne Marceau, documented in that fab 2005 film "Mad Hot Ballroom," and transplanted to Philadelphia just last fall, Dancing Classrooms is where you want to be if you're looking for kids who are willing to step on a stage and dream.

For kids who stand face to face, and dance.

For kids all busted through with pride.

The flowers will fall from their hair. The glitter will rain down from their faces.

The crowds (and there are crowds) will go absolutely wild.

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MySpaceHarperTeen

Last night, coming home, late, from the city, walking my own suburban streets as the train pulled away, I stared a full, salmon-colored moon in the eye and felt safeguarded, whole. Across the way the fragments and fractures of a carnival were being put into place. A Ferris wheel shimmered with moon. I could see inside the houses of neighbors, the wild shine of big TVs, a pot left to cool on a stove. Home, I thought. Belonging.

I'm blogging about HOUSE OF DANCE on the fantastic MySpaceHarperTeen site today. I hope you'll visit me, and all the talented HarperTeen authors, there.

http://www.myspace.com/harperteen

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Teen Readers

I was happy to read about the vitality and intelligence of this generation of teen readers in a recent Newsweek article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/136961), but I wasn't the least surprised. I workshopped with young readers for years; I saw their yearning. I heard their questions and stood nearby as they read well and wrote wisely. The teen readers I've come across are gloriously committed, smart, big-hearted. They're the type of people you want around when you've stumbled across some new lit passage you've got to love out loud.

Then there was this thing that happened the other day. I've had this high school student—I'll call him K—reading and writing with me this month, which is to say that he comes, we talk, I suggest some titles, xerox some poems, send him out into the world with a camera and pen, then wait to see what happens when he stops by again. A couple of weeks ago, I asked him to read Colum McCann's ZOLI. Next time we met, he said he hadn't. Well, yes, sure, I was disappointed. I'd wanted McCann for K, for K's sake, but I didn't bark, I just asked why. Why not ZOLI? Because, K said, he'd had Camus to read.

Camus?

For my book club.

Your book club?

Yeah. It's a bunch of us. We get together every week and talk.

So it was Camus last week. It'll be Orwell next week. Chances are they'll move on to Russian novels. It's classics, is what I'm saying, and no teachers, no parents are involved. These are high school seniors on the verge of the rest of their lives, getting together for books on Tuesdays, because it's fun, because it's good and right.

All hail the next generation.

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Putting it Down

The dance floor like a page approached, tread, scuffed, mooded over, pushed past.

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HOUSE OF DANCE Giveaway

Back when UNDERCOVER was a relatively new release, that wonderful Miss Em, whom so many know as a grand advocate for books and for those who write them, asked me some questions about the writing life, posted them on her blog, and conducted an interesting competition. We became friends; we couldn't help it.

It turned out that Miss Em was one of the very first people—in the world—to read HOUSE OF DANCE, and her note to me about it last winter eased my heart tremendously. Recently she interviewed me again and asked—and I think this was a touch of genius—that I answer some of my questions with photographs.

That interview, which is now up on Miss Em's blog, is part of a HOUSE OF DANCE giveaway, and you can participate by visiting here.

Thank you so much, Miss Em.

http://emsbookshelf.blogspot.com/2008/05/house-of-dance-interview-and-contest-to.html

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Steer Toward Rock: A Review

chicagotribune.com
"Steer Toward Rock," by Fae Myenne Ng
San Francisco's Chinatown is the setting for Fae Myenne Ng's story of love and yearning

By Beth Kephart
May 17, 2008

In 1993, Fae Myenne Ng, a Chinese-American writer who had grown up in San Francisco's Chinatown among sewing circles and kitchen knives, produced a first novel, "Bone," of authoritative power. A story of immigration and assimilation, suicide and escape, "Bone" was gristle, tenderness, viscera, spice. It was unflinching and spare, a dirge that began with the simplest declaration: "We were a family of three girls." You could taste the marrow in "Bone." Its essence rose up, as if from a pot of pungent soup.

On the radio, Ng was self-effacing, gracious. At readings she was startlingly generous with the long lines of fans who helped make her book a national best seller. She was—no question—the real deal, obsessed not with celebrity but with getting the story just so. She was the woman who would later write, "No story matters till it is finished and the only stories that need telling are the ones whose endings do not fulfill us."

It took Ng 15 years to produce her second novel, "Steer Toward Rock," from which that quote is taken, and those who privilege themselves by reading it through will not for one moment wonder why. "Steer Toward Rock" is Chinatown again, immigration, confession, disappointment, wreckage and salvage. It is relentlessly fierce and unstintingly lovely, another book that declares itself at the outset:

"The woman I loved wasn't in love with me; the woman I married wasn't a wife to me. Ilin Cheung was my wife on paper. Indeed, she belonged to Yi-Tung Szeto. . . . In debt, I also belonged to him. He was my father, paper, too."

Whereas "were" was the operative word in the opening of "Bone," "wasn't" sets the tone for "Steer Toward Rock," whose primary hero is a man known as Jack Szeto Moon and whose primary action takes place in a McCarthy-era San Francisco riddled by the relationships born of complicated Immigration laws. Jack's position in Chinatown is precarious from the moment he arrives on the S.S. President Coolidge. His papers are fraudulent. His "blood father" is in fact a gangster-quality adoptive father who has brought 19-year-old Jack into the country as a means (yes, it's complicated) of securing himself a second wife. "I listed you as a married man," the father tells Jack. "One day that immigration slot will be used to bring in my Replacement Wife."

It isn't long, however, before Jack has ambitions of his own: a woman he wants to claim, a family he hopes to build, a confession he's willing to make to secure his independence. Employed by his "fake" father as a butcher, Jack sees in himself a certain skill, a mastery, that allows him to imagine a coming happiness:

"I read meat. I moved my fingers through marbled flesh like a vulture's beak, I fanned muscle from tendon and found by feel the soft flank that was gold. I angled my knife tip under the head of a vein and yanked it out like coarse thread. I glided blade along bone so that flesh peeled away like petals of magnolia."

But it isn't just Jack's fake father who threatens to thwart Jack's dreams—it's also the woman with whom he falls in love and with whom he has a daughter. Joice Qwan does not wish to marry Jack, and nothing will persuade her. Even when Jack puts his life on the line, Joice refuses to honor his love, leaving him with a child to raise.

"Steer Toward Rock," then, becomes most essentially a father-daughter story, an almost story—a sometimes-violent story steamed through with tenderness. "Your girl wants to hold a common story with you," one of Jack's friends warns him during the difficult child-rearing years. "Don't make her sacrifice love to chase you. Fix that. Otherwise life doesn't lead life."

In "Steer Toward Rock," Ng takes her time, says what she truly means to say, stares complication straight in the face, stares it down. One feels her attacking this fiction-writing business as if it's the most important chance any of us will ever get to put the truth on paper, and one is left—it can't be helped—in awe of her talent. Ng exposes us, she makes us vulnerable, to line after line like this one: "If her father had lived, would he have taught her that desire wasn't a road to knowledge, that love was never ideal, that yearning was not hope?"

Steer Toward Rock
By Fae Myenne Ng
Hyperion, 255 pages, $23.95
www.chicagotribune.com/features/booksmags/chi-steerbw17may17,0,6390654.story

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Fragment from a Lisel Mueller Poem

... but this body
is home, my childhood
is buried here, my sleep
rises and sets inside,
desire
crested and wore itself
thin
between these bones—
I live here.

(From "A Nude By Edward Hopper" in THE POETRY OF SOLITUDE: A TRIBUTE TO EDWARD HOPPER)

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New Skin

I have discovered (again) that it is not until we get to the very last page of a novel's first draft that we know what we've been writing about. We've had direction, maybe, and, on good days, the wind at our back. We've had a chorus to return to, a choreography to hold us in, but it's in the final pages of crafting that we finally understand. That the bark is peeled back and we see the new skin of the tree.

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ZENOBIA: The Curious Book of Business

I want to dedicate today's blog to the kindness of Wayne Hurlbert, who brought an enormously generous spirit to his reading of ZENOBIA. His words can be found on his wonderful blog,

http://blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/2008/05/zenobia-curious-book-of-business-by.html

as well as below.

The heroine's adventure becomes a pathway to success for others, write co-authors Matthew Emmens and Beth Kephart, in their imaginative business fable Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business. In a surrealistic dreamlike world worthy of Franz Kafka or Lewis Carroll, job applicant Moira's journey to the mythical Room 133A, is an inspiration to the power of imagination in business.

Matthew Emmens and Beth Kephart (photo left) take the reader into a their business allegory where the characters are symbols and their actions are metaphors. Young job applicant Moira represents change and new ideas, as well as a vibrant creativity missing from the staid and declining Zenobia Corporation. Once an industry leader, the moribund company clings to past glories through suffocating rules, malignant office politics, and outright hostility to creative thinking or ideas.

Moira, in her symbolically outside the rule book red shoes, defies and overcomes that that institutionalized lack of imagination as she seeks her goal. Seizing a kite, as a metaphor for an idea, she literally climbs the treacherous corporate ladder. With unexpected help from unlikely sources within the company, walks a symbolic tightrope to achieve her dreams. In the process, others in Zenobia follow their dreams, and revitalize the hidebound company. Long stifled employees reach for the stars along with Moira, and dare to imagine what could be for the organization and for their own careers.

Matthew Emmens (photo left) and Beth Kephart take the reader on a voyage of possibility and of imagination. With their symbolic characters, aided by the delightful James Thurber-like illustrations of William Sulit, an alternative through the looking glass world is the creative result. Indeed, the entire book is a tribute to creative thinking, and of seeking new ideas for solving seemingly impossible problems.

The book is about dreams and imagination, and the importance of people within an organization. Moira needs help in her quest, and she receives it when it's needed most. By accepting help, she inspires greatness in others within Zenobia, as they reach goals they never imagined possible. At the same time, the Zenobians step out of their darkness, and help others to find the light of their dreams and ideas, as they too reach for the long dormant kite of imagination.

For me, the power of the book is its faith in the power of imagination and ideas, and how one person can act as a catalyst for change. Moira wasn't a high profile CEO parachuted into the company, and within the story, those closed minded applicants fail to reach Room 133A. They lack the imagination to expand their thinking beyond conventional wisdom. As a result, they are unable to revitalize the floundering Zenobia Corporation. Instead, a seemingly ordinary person, with her unconventional ways of thinking, applied imagination and creativity to the organization, and found the latent greatness within.

I highly recommend the business fable Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business by Matthew Emmens and Beth Kephart for anyone who seeks to follow their dreams to greatness, and to awakening their imaginations to new and wonderful possibilities.

Read Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business by Matthew Emmens and Beth Kephart and wear those non-dress code red shoes, grab hold of that kite of ideas with both hands, and let your imagination soar. Reach for the stars, and you can light up the sky.

Tags: Beth Kephart, Matthew Emmens, William Sulit , Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business, creative thinking, business book reviews.

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In Hand

I'm hoping that Jay Kirk, whose emails I rely on for the shock of light and truth, doesn't mind me quoting just ever so slightly from one of his emails yesterday, and if he does, Jay, I'm sorry. I had mentioned my own mental testiness of late—I believe I referred to my writerly state of mind as something resembling a "thick stew of self-castigation." I believe I was doubting myself. And because Jay is a phenomenal talent on the page, writing one of the best nonfiction books this world is ever going to get to read, when he's finished with it, and soon he'll finish with it, and because his teacherly talents are gigantic, too, he understood. "That's the awful-funny thing about writing isn't it?" he wrote. "How we're motivated by some version of self-hatred, or if that's too strong, at least the unrelenting desire to perfect and correct." But then he said, because he's a rescuer, too, "Ultimately, if you're totally monomaniacal, you can get it right."

Like catching a bird in one's hands, I thought—the wing weight, the heart throb.

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HOUSE OF DANCE

Once, in Venice, a day was thick with storm, and beneath every bridge, ever vendor umbrella, every café awning, people clumped together, waiting out the rain. San Marco Square was a lake and the canals were overflow. The pigeons couldn’t lift high, for the saturation of their wings. Boats went about like floating bathtubs. When finally the clouds cleaved from each other and the sky was blue, there was a breeze, and along the Giudecca Canal, at a wheezy bar, someone with a guitar began to sing. Old Italian songs of which even the smallest boy in the gaining crowd had a most familial knowledge.

So they danced. The old, elegant woman and her husband, each with a glass of wine high in one hand. Two barefooted passersby, in grunge. The little boy who took the light post as his partner, and spun and spun and spun, his hat smashed onto his head, his hat doffed off again. The sky soaked to purple after blue, acquiesced to crimson, to a bruise, and all that while they danced, and this is Venice to me now, soul gone spontaneous after storm.

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It All Began Here

My father has spent many months sifting through an attic room—searching for old ice skates, oboes, clarinets, report cards, ribbons, medals, his children's childhoods. News from the past surfaces almost every day. Revisions.

Working with my father not long ago, I came upon my mother's first photo scrapbook, which opens with the commemoration of my brother's birth. It All Began Here, she began, and square photo by square photo she proceeded to tell a story, her white pencil providing the grammar, the memoirist's view.

Lately I've been thinking about how much I struggle to tell stories that will speak to those I will never meet or know. And how finally, in the end, it's these private stories that matter most. The ones our mothers wrote down just for us. The ones we remember to rescue from time for those we see and touch.

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The Remains of the Day

"What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment."

Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day

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Reading

I've hit that wall; we writers do. It's time to return to the work of others, to be reminded (which for me is akin to being taught all over again) how pacing works, how suspense is hung, how knowing gets subsumed by feeling. Here on my desk, five books: The Remains of the Day, The Unaccustomed Earth, Anne of Green Gables, King Baby, and Sweeping Beauty. Reading them sometimes side by side. Hunting for epiphany. Hanging on hope.

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