The Pearlsong Letter

Photos from the Southern Festival of Books 2008

Pat Ballard, Peggy Elam, and Bunkie Lynn staffed the Pearlsong Press booth at the Southern Festival of Books Oct. 10-12, 2008. Anne Richardson Williams assisted in the booth on Friday afternoon while the trio were presenting "Tell Me Why I Should Love My Body" on the Festival schedule. (To listen to and/or download mp3 recordings of their presentation, click here.)

The Festival was held at Legislative Plaza in downtown Nashville. The weekend was sunny and warm -- hot enough that the group stashed the booth's freebie chocolate in a basket instead of including it in their giveaway "swag bags" (which contained flyers, postcards, bookmarks, and a "Queen of Rubenesque Romances" pen).

Here's Bunkie & Pat in the booth...

 

.....Peggy & Pat.....

...and a closeup of the booth displays.

Charlie Lovett, author of The Program, also stopped by the booth after his Saturday morning reading & discussion at the Festival. (Click here to listen to/download an mp3 recording of his portion of the "Paths to Perfection" session on the Festival's schedule.)

Pat Ballard, Peggy Elam & Bunkie Lynn tell you why you should love your body (Southern Festival of Books 2008)

Pearlsong Press publisher Peggy Elam, Ph.D., 10 Steps to Loving Your Body (No Matter What Your Size) author Pat Ballard and Bunkie Lynn, author of The Big Girls' Guide to Life, gave a body-positive presentation at the Southern Festival of Books last Friday.

(That's Elam on the right, Lynn on the left and Ballard in the middle in their publicity photo for the Festival. They're wearing T-shirts from the Love Your Body Project website.)

The Oct. 10, 2008 "Tell Me Why I Should Love My Body" session was led off by humorist Lynn, followed by psychologist Elam and the Queen of Rubenesque Romances, Ballard. Listen to and/or download mp3 recordings of the trio's presentation below. (Click on the links to listen online, or right click on the links and "save as" to download.)

Bunkie Lynn's intro
Peggy Elam's talk
Pat Ballard's talk
Closing chat with attendees

The trio staffed the Pearlsong Press booth at the Festival all weekend, handing out chocolate and "swag bags" and selling books, prints, and beaded bookmarks. (Click here for a blog post with photos of the Festival & booth.)

Lynn, Ballard & Elam have also started a body-positive "Love Your Body Blog."

Charlie Lovett reads from and talks about The Program at the Southern Festival of Books

Charlie Lovett read from and talked about his suspense novel The Program ("chick lit meets Stephen King") at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, TN last weekend. Listen to an edited recording of his talk here. (Click on the link to listen online, or right click on the link and "save as" to download the mp3 recording.)

Lovett shared the 9-10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 11 hour on the festival's schedule with mystery novelist Jennie Bentley, author of Fatal Fixer-Upper (A Do-It-Yourself Mystery) . Bentley is a Nashville Realtor ("Jennie Bentley" is a pseudonym -- her real name is Bente Gallagher.) Bentley's portion of the program is not included in the audio recording.

Lovett is the Writer in Residence at Summit School in Winston-Salem, NC and the author of 11 nonfiction books, including several on Lewis Carroll, and more than a dozen children's plays. The Program (Pearlsong Press, May 2008) is his first novel.

Linda C. Wisniewski to appear at IWWG Big Apple event this Sunday

Linda C. Wisniewski will be one of the 12 recently published International Women's Writing Guild authors participating in a "Meet the Authors" Open House in New York City Sunday, October 19, 2008.

The IWWG's 56th Semi-Annual Big Apple Writing Workships & Open House will feature a Saturday, October 18 writing workshop with Eunice Scarfe and Sunday "Meet the Authors" and "Meet the Agents" Open Houses. In the Sunday morning Open House, Wisniewski and authors Susan Breen (The Fiction Class ), Elizabeth Buzzelli (Dead Dancing Women: An Emily Kincaid Mystery ), Susan R. Gold (The Eyes Are The Same ) and others will talk about how they got published.

Wisniewski is the author of Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, and Her Polish Heritage , which was published by Pearlsong Press in April 2008.

Scarfe is a writer and educator affiliated with the Faculty of Extension Writing Program at the University of Alberta. She has written and published prize-winning short stories and started her own company, Saga Seminars: Writing Workshops for Women.

Bunkie Lynn, Pat Ballard & Peggy Elam to present "Tell Me Why I Should Love My Body" at the Southern Festival of Books Oct. 10, 2008

Hendersonville,TN humorist/author Bunkie Lynn, Nashville, TN author Pat Ballard & I are presenting "Tell Me Why I Should Love My Body" at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct.10 in Room 29 of Legislative Plaza during the Southern Festival of Books in downtown Nashville. We are also sharing a booth at the Festival under the Pearlsong Press banner.

There is no charge for admission to the Festival or any of its events. See http://www.tn-humanities.org/festival/sessions.php for the full festival schedule.

Lynn is the author of The Big Girls' Guide to Life: A Plus-Sized Jaunt Through a Body-Obsessed World (a parody of self-help books) & the novel A Comedy of Heirs (Ladybug Publishing). Ballard is a romance novelist whose books feature Big Beautiful Heroines (or, as I like to put it, where the fat chick gets the guy). Pearlsong Press recently published her first nonfiction book, 10 Steps to Loving Your Body (No Matter What Size You Are), in which she shares the steps she created and used to heal the damage from an eating disorder and years of dieting. (10 Steps also contains what the author of Eating Disorders for Dummies has called the best collection of body-positive inspirational quotes you'll find anywhere.)

Lynn will start the presentation with humor, then I will address the "why" of loving one's body and Ballard will discuss the "how." Lynn & Ballard will be available to sign books after the talk, as well as at our booth during the Festival weekend. Their books will be available for sale at the Festival's bookstore/book tables as well as at our booth. I'll also be selling all of Ballard's other books and the rest of the Pearlsong Press catalog at our booth. Lynn, Ballard & I are also establishing a body-positive blog at www.loveyourbodyblog.com. For more info about Pearlsong Press books, see www.pearlsong.com.

Just to have some of my own writing to sell (since I've been so busy publishing other people's books I haven't been working on my own :-), I will have a few limited-edition illustrated letterpress prints of my poem "Sacred Space" to sell at the booth. The prints were published by Middle Tennessee State University's Tulip Poplar Press. The poem also ran in Psychobits, the newsletter of the Nashville Psychotherapy Institute, a couple of years ago.

Also...another Pearlsong Press author, Charlie Lovett of Winston-Salem, NC, is appearing at the Festival at 9 a.m. Saturday morning (Room 31) in a panel entitled "Better or Deader? Thrillers About Paths to Perfection." Lovett's novel The Program also has a body-positive message, and has been highly recommended by Library Journal.

So....feel free to share this post with colleagues, clients, friends & family who might enjoy, appreciate or just plain benefit from size- and body-acceptance oriented offerings at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville next weekend. And come visit us at booth #20 on Legislative Plaza! During our Friday afternoon presentation, the Pearlsong Press booth will be staffed by Nashville author Anne Richardson Williams, author of the memoir Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under.

Linda C. Wisniewski to sign copies of Off Kilter at the Doylestown, PA Bookshop Sept. 5, 2008

Linda C. Wisniewski will sign copies of her new book Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother, & Her Polish Heritage at the Doylestown Bookshop in Doylestown, PA at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 5, 2008.

For more information see the Doylestown Bookshop website at www.doylestownbookshop.com.

 

Charlie Lovett to sign The Program at Winston-Salem, N.C. Borders bookstore Sept.20, 2008

Charlie Lovett will sign copies of his first novel, The Program, at the Winston-Salem, N.C. Borders Books store on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2008.

Charlie Lovett to present at Bookmarks Festival in Winson-Salem, N.C. Sept. 13, 2008

Charlie Lovett , author of The Program, will be a presenter at the Bookmarks Festival in Winston-Salem, N.C. on Sept. 13, 2008.

The Program was published by Pearlsong Press in May 2008 and was "highly recommended" by  Library Journal, which called it "a lively first novel."

Bookmarks features national, regional and local authors and is held in Historic Bethabara Park.

Charlie Lovett appearance at Vermont College of Fine Arts

Charlie Lovett recently gave a reading of his first novel, The Program, to about 50-60 people at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, VT. The audience were teachers and students in the college's MFA Creative Writing Program.

The following morning (July 2) about 20 people attended an informal discussion with "visiting writer" Lovett.

Copies of The Program are on sale at the college's bookstore for about a week.

The Program was published by Pearlsong Press in May 2008.

Mary Saracino to read from & sign The Singing of Swans at Poor Richard's in Colorado Springs

Mary Saracino will read from and sign her 2007 Lambda Literary Awards finalist novel The Singing of Swans at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept, 13, 2007 at The Bookstore at Poor Richard's in Colorado Springs, CO.