Month: March 2023

Tangled by Blood

Rebecca Evans (whom we’ve interviewed) has recently released Tangled by Blood: A Memoir in Verse.

Unlike other memoirs, Tangled by Blood is not a tale of redemption, but one of hard-earned love and high stakes. Through a shifting POV, Tangled by Blood offers social commentary on abuse, sexual trauma, addiction, and suicide. The poems and prose in Tangled by Blood reflect, among many things, fractured intimacy. This fracturing influences every subsequent relationship—carrying scars and wounds throughout one’s life.

Tangled by Blood is available at Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and MoonTidePress.

About the author (from her Amazon Author Page):

Evans is a memoirist, poet, and essayist. In addition to writing, she teaches Creative Nonfiction at Boise State University and mentors high school girls in the juvenile system. In her spare time, she co-hosts a radio program, Writer to Writer, offering a space for writers to offer tips on craft and life. She served eight years in the United States Air Force and is a decorated Gulf War veteran. She’s hosted and co-produced Our Voice and Idaho Living television shows, advocating personal stories. 

She’s also disabled, a Veteran, a Jew, a gardener, a mother, a worrier, and more. She has a passion for sharing difficult stories about vulnerability woven with mysticism and hopes to inform, in a new way, what it means to navigate this world through a broken body and spirit. 

Hiring: Education Programs Mgr.

The Cabin are looking for an Education Programs Manager. If you are incredibly detail-oriented, love people, and you’re passionate about growing a community of readers and writers through their Writers in the Schools programs, Summer Writing Camps, and other classes and workshops, they want to hear from you! Know someone who might be interested? Please help us spread the word.

The Cabin are a small, but passionate team that forges community through the voices of all readers, writers, and learners.

The Bones of the World

A STAFF PICK at Treasure Valley’s Rediscovered Books bookshop, this debut novel by Betsy L. Ross released just a month ago.

Dates to note:

  • 2 April – featured in Idaho Press Sunday edition
  • 6 April – featured in Boise Weekly
  • 13 April (4-5:30 MT) book signing at the downtown Boise Rediscovered Books
  • 19 April book signing at The King’s English in Salt Lake City

Written with a trenchant humor, The Bones of the World asks who we become as a result of suffering. Like Jakob, desiring revenge? Like Sariah, seeking the salve of a community that accepts her? Or like Rachel, opening to the ancestral suffering that is her life’s clay, and her role in the swell of its story? A deeply spiritual book, The Bones of the World seeks to locate the place of suffering in a holy world and explores why we must tell these stories that are so often hard to hear.

Available Rediscovered Books bookshop, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and Indiebound (see links on author’s website.)

Gaming + Writing

SHORT NOTICE ALERT: If you’re interested in writing for games, there’s a two-day retreat starting 31 March in Newberg, Oregon.

Register today for this intensive workshop organized by SOMA Games.

With a combination of group and individual sessions, assignments, and feedback specific to your projects, this two-day retreat will help you learn to start your writing career with the help of seasoned professionals

Food & Family

The 2023 TREASURE VALLEY READS selection is Madhushree Ghosh’s Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family.

A book which received much attention when it was released last year, it was published by University of Iowa Press (further reviews on that page):

Khabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions what it means to belong and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country? 

Join in with Treasure Valley Reads for 2023. Contact your local library for more information on any local events.

Khabaar is available at Rediscovered Books, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.

Photos courtesy of the author’s website.

Star-ring: You!

It’s been a few months, so we thought we’d check back in with organizer Tina Johnson to see how the WRITERS READ program in Star, Idaho is going.

Recall we first wrote about this opportunity for writers in December.

Tina reports that she thinks writers have found the evening to be a good experience — and I am not surprised!

Scheduling update

The program will continue on the third Tuesday of each month through June, at which point it will take a brief break for the summer, and resume in the fall.

  • 18 April
  • 16 May
  • 20 June

This could be a great event for Treasure Valley writers. Learn more about it, including how to sign up, in our earlier posting.

QUICK: Do This Survey

If you’re an independent (self-publishing) author who spends more than half their worktime on writing and publishing, ALLI (the Alliance of Independent Authors) is requesting your input.

Like right now. (Survey closes, I believe, in a matter of days.)

Here’s the survey link: SelfPublishingAdvice.org/survey23

If you want a bit more background, here’s more discussion on ALLI’s Self-Publishing News website.